CSNbbs

Quote:With the recent mass shooting in Highland Park that took the lives of seven people, a renewed call for “gun control” from Democrats has begun. That comes just weeks after Republicans lined up to sign on to a gun control bill (now passed into law) with the idea that doing so would provide common ground on the issue.

As predicted, though, that didn’t even buy the GOP enough goodwill to make it through the next mass shooting, much less did it put the issue to bed for any length of time. Here’s what I wrote when Sen. John Cornyn was first announced to be negotiating with Democrats on gun control.

Here’s the thing, though. When whatever red flag laws that get passed fail to stop the next mass shooter, the call to “do something” will only grow louder. And the next “something” will be an even further encroachment. I understand the desire to act in good faith and attempt to take some of the heat off, but Republicans have to understand that the Democrat push for gun confiscation and an “assault weapons” ban will not stop with whatever compromise legislation arises here.

That leaves the obvious question for Republicans: Is it smart to give ground when the end goal of the Democrats is being telegraphed to you? I know my answer.

In the case of the Highland Park shooter, he had every red flag imaginable and Illinois’ red flag law still failed to stop him from obtaining guns. That was always the problem with any GOP compromise on this issue. When you concede ground, all you are doing is providing gun control proponents fodder to say “See, your solutions didn’t work so we need to do it my way now.”

I also shared similar thoughts on social media after the text of the then-bill was leaked.

Bookmark it, indeed. To be honest, I didn’t expect to be proven right so soon, but here we are, with Democrats once again going full bore on “assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazine” bans, both of which have already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It doesn’t matter, though, and you can expect the cries to “do something” to increase from here. If Republicans thought their rush to compromise would help take some of the heat off, they were mistaken.

NBC News provides a few examples.

Mass shootings won’t stop “until more members of Congress expand their definition of freedom to include freedom from massacre by semi-automatic weapon,” Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., told NBC News on Tuesday…

…“As families come together to celebrate America, they are gunned down in the scourge of gun violence plaguing it. This is a tragedy,” Markey said in a tweet. “The Bipartisan Gun Law was a first step, but Congress must do more to stop this deadly epidemic and save lives.”…

…“Last month, Congress proved that bipartisan compromises on gun safety are possible. Today proved that we can’t stop there,” Duckworth said in a statement on Monday. “We have to do more to keep our communities safe. We have to pass additional commonsense reforms that wide majorities of Americans are crying out for — that 6 Illinoisans can no longer cry out for. I won’t let their memories be forgotten.”

Comments like “Congress must do more” and “We can’t stop there” are so laughably predictable. The Democrats were never going to accept the GOP’s olive branch. Instead, they just took the inch and will proceed to fight for the mile. That’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats never stop. There is no end game for them. Progressivism is always marching forward toward an ever-restrictive state. Compromise doesn’t defuse such an ideology, it only emboldens it.

Republican voters deserve better than this. They deserve leadership in Washington that cares about more than just the next news cycle. Mass shootings are, unfortunately, inevitable until the nation gets ahold of the mental health crisis gripping isolated, depressed young men. The foolish decision to pretend as if passing some federal law would stop them has only backed Republicans further into the corner. Will any lessons be learned? Don’t count on it.

Quote:In a bizarre move, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart told the public and the press on Wednesday that he believes red flag laws in Illinois are “strong” even though the state with some of the strictest gun laws in the country failed to stop a 21-year-old shooter from murdering seven people at a July 4 parade and injuring at least 30 more.

While announcing seven counts of first-degree murder charges against Robert Crimo III for attacking paradegoers in Highland Park, Illinois, over the long weekend, Rinehart praised his state’s gun laws and called for a national ban on certain types of firearms.

“Illinois has a strong red flag law that keeps the community safe and respects everyone’s rights. We must vastly increase awareness and education about this red flag law called the Illinois Firearm Restraining Order,” Rinehart said.

According to Rinehart, the red flag law was designed to “ensure the safety of the individual and those around them” by confiscating guns and preventing certain people from buying guns.

“It allows individuals to stabilize their treatments — excuse me, stabilize their behavior — seek treatment, and access other resources that our community must invest in to give those who need help,” Rinehart continued. “Separate from these red flag laws, which are very powerful in Illinois, we should also ban assault weapons in Illinois and beyond.”

The first and most pressing question of all: If Illinois gun laws are so good, why wasn’t Crimo, who was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the community long before he shot up the parade and fled wearing women’s clothing, stopped by the state? If red flag laws are the answer to preventing deadly shootings, which we know they aren’t because they lack due process and are susceptible to politically motivated exploitation, why didn’t they stop Crimo (or any other shooters in states with red flag laws)?

All the stereotypical warning signs designed to trigger some sort of intervention were there. Crimo had a troubled history of posting violent content online that “reflected a plan and a desire to commit carnage for a long time in advance.” He had mental health issues that culminated in an attempted suicide in April 2019. He also had multiple run-ins with local law enforcement, who, at one point, communicated their concerns about him to state police. Yet he still freely carried out a horrific act.

Rinehart’s anti-gun tirade doesn’t make sense unless you come to terms with the fact that his plea for national gun-grabbing is a solely political talking point, not one that is designed to effect change that would actually stop bloodthirsty villain wannabes in their tracks.

Even if “assault weapons” were magically wiped off the face of the earth, as Rinehart seemed to suggest, who is to say that a clearly disturbed individual such as Crimo wouldn’t have come at the July 4 crowd with a knife, dagger, sword or even a vehicle, like the Christmas parade massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin?

After all, Crimo was in possession of 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword in September 2019 when he threatened to “kill everyone” in his home. Law enforcement confiscated those weapons before returning the knives to the then-teenager’s father who “claimed the knives were his and they were being stored in the individual’s closet for safekeeping.”

Crimo’s father went on to sponsor his son’s December 2019 application for a firearm owner identification card, which is required for gun possession by the state of Illinois, and the state police (yes, the same department that knew Crimo was deemed a “clear and present danger”) approved it.

But even if Crimo’s dad hadn’t sponsored the application or the state police had rejected it, there was nothing stopping him from purchasing more blades or seeking out guns from the gangs who sustain the massive weapons black market in the crime-ridden Chicago just 20 miles south of his residence in Highland Park.

The warning signs about Crimo were there but the truth of the matter is that no amount of “awareness” about red flag laws or bans on “assault weapons” will stop criminals with detailed plans to hurt, kill, and destroy.

Recall that 14 Republicans in the Senate and 14 Republicans in the House recently voted to push gun restrictions like those found in Illinois in other states. They claimed that these laws would make communities safer and prevent future tragedies like previous shootings Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. But they were clearly wrong.

There’s nothing praiseworthy about red flag laws or gun control when one of the strictest firearm regulatory states repeatedly failed to stop Crimo from carrying out a tragic and fatal attack. Begging for the federal government to remove Americans’ option to protect themselves against freaks doesn’t stop shootings, it disarms law-abiding Americans and leaves too much room for bureaucratic error.