Man with a plan
Michael Bane posts his Five Point Plan for a national political strategy on guns. I really like number 5:
Dismantle the onerous conditions of the 1968 Gun Control Act, the machinegun amendment of the 1986 FOPA, the 1990 Crime Control Act and the 1999 “Al Gore Stands Up!” trigger lock requirement.
Publicola has more and doesn’t think Michael’s plan is enough.
July 10th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Not to be snarky, but of course Publicola doesn’t think the plan is enough. It’s an incremental step (or steps) rather than the whole enchilada.
Personally, I think it’s a great goal for now, and if we could get even most of the points between now and, say, ’08, we’ve done well. The point of the list isn’t to restore the 2nd ammendment to a point where the founders would recognize it, but rather to take advantage of the relative strength of the pro-gun side now, so that when the pendulum swings back the otherway (whenever that happens, and you know it inevitably will), we aren’t so screwed.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I agree with Publicola’s sentiment, but we’d be expending a boatload of political capital just getting rid of the Hughes Amendment. Just doing #5 is going to take a lot.
July 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
The Hughes Amendment is going to be a tough one… “you’re going to make machine guns legal?!?!” But, with all the misrepresnetation on the assault weapons as machine guns, the antis have, to some extent, shot their load already. So, as hard as it might be, if we’re going to do it it won’t be any easier than while “assault weapons” are still being discussed and called machine guns. (Well, barring some really strange election results, anyway)