US Senator Angus King, appalled by the bloodshed from the shooting in Lewiston, Maine (and who isn’t), has co-sponsored a different sort of gun regulation bill. He thinks it could survive constitutional scrutiny, but he’s looking in the wrong direction.
The bill would limit the number of rounds in a gun magazine and require gas-operated, semi-automatic firearms to have permanent or fixed magazines to prevent shooters from rapidly reloading.
Unlike other proposed assault weapons bans that he opposed, King said their bill focuses on the mechanisms that can make some semi-automatic guns so deadly rather than their appearance or model numbers.
The bill would also make it illegal to make certain modifications to semi-automatic guns. But it would exempt certain types of common gun used by hunters and for self-defense, such as semi-automatic shotguns and handguns that operate with a recoil mechanism.
During a video press conference, King and Heinrich said they have studied the constitutional concerns raised about past gun control measures and they are confident their bill will pass the test.
This slightly narrowed red-headed step-child of a gun-grabbing bill is, to borrow from Hamlet, sound and fury, signifying nothing. Democrats want more, Republicans want less, and it won’t stop mass shootings, certainly not like the one in Lewiston. Even a quasi-capable shooter with a ten-round magazine could cause significant injury and death in a barrel full of disarmed fish with just one weapon. (Related: Lessons from Lewiston, Maine.)
As with almost every other shooting to which the media and gun-grabbin’ pols append the word “mass,” the problem was -and always is – the lack of return fire. Robert Card’s targets were in a gun-free zone, and they did as asked. They disarmed themselves and were shot or killed. Angus figures that this must be the natural state of human beings because,
“The key here is in the midst of a mass shooting, it’s when the shooter needs to re-load that there’s an opportunity either for people to escape or for first responders or for people in the room to disarm the shooter,” King said during the press conference. “But if there’s not lapse in the firing, that can’t happen.”
Or, and here’s a crazy idea: you could stop disarming the “people.” Something that undoubtedly passes constitutional muster.
Ask proprietors to stop disarming them. This increases the likelihood of one or more law-abiding, armed “first responders” who can immediately return fire.
A strange thing happens when people are shooting at you. You have to find them and shoot back, or that plan to take a bunch of people with you goes sideways. If armed citizens spend any time at the range, the shooter may already be leaking precious fluid. They might be dead. A thing that is nearly impossible in a gun-free zone.
So far, that’s not been the case with successful gun-free-zone mass shootings.
State Rep Jim White has proposed legislation in Maine that actually makes sense. His bill would make proprietors of gun-free zones responsible for the safety of the people they disarmed by holding them fiscally liable for harm as a result of the restriction. It has no chance of passing Maine’s Democrat majority legislature or Democrat governor, and as luck would have it, congress won’t be passing the bill proposed by Angus King.
The question of constitutionality is moot. But the problem of disarming law-abiding citizens continues, and it is more nuanced than you’d like. A commenter on a past Lewiston post noted (and I’m paraphrasing) that by entering businesses that are gun-free zones, you enable them, support them, and disarm yourself. That doesn’t mean you deserve to get shot, but if armed citizens took their business elsewhere, and many do, you’d solve two problems. They wouldn’t get your business, and you wouldn’t be disarmed.
