Thogey wrote:So is Trump a gun grabbing liberal, or is he just not paying attention?
He spent most of his life on the side of gun banners, then changed his tune 180 degrees shortly before running for president as a Republican. I don't doubt that his personal beliefs are still in line with the gun banners. The question is how much is he willing to restrain those views in order to maintain conservative support. If he wants to win reelection, he won't entertain an "assault weapons" ban, or other major gun control initiatives, at least until after 2020.
In addition to the bump stock ban, don't forget Donald's "take guns now, due process later" position, and Barr's similar support for "red flag" laws, under which a law enforcement officer, healthcare provider, family member, or really anybody a judge deems competent, can petition a judge to order that somebody's guns be taken away until they are proven safe to own them.
A Maryland man was killed in November when police showed up at 5 AM to take his guns. He answered the door with a gun in hand (which I would do too if somebody was beating on my door at 5 AM). Reports say he initially put the gun down, but picked it back up when the police said they were there to confiscate his guns. An officer grabbed the gun to take it away from the man, the gun discharged without hitting anybody, and another officer reacted to the shot by shooting and killing the gun owner. Police and policy makers twisted the incident to brag about the success and necessity of the new law by speculating how bad things could have been if they hadn't shown up at 5 AM one day to take this man's guns. Good thing they showed up at 5 AM and killed the guy before he could have maybe actually potentially someday committed a crime?
More than 100 such confiscations were conducted in Maryland in the first month after the law took effect in October. Maryland is not a big state. That is a lot of literal gun grabbing, and the type of law Barr wants on a federal level.
spacecase0 wrote:trump is clearly not ideal
but can you imagine what hillery would have done so far ?
Yes. She may very well have proposed gun control measures, which would have gone nowhere in a Republican controlled House and Senate. Republicans likely would have maintained control of both houses at the midterms, as the party not in control of the executive typically gains seats. And if Hillary ordered the Department of Justice to reinterpret old laws to ban bump stocks, Republicans in the House and Senate would have cried foul and thrown a fit instead of sitting idly by.
For all of the fear instilled, how many broad gun control measures were actually passed with Obama as president? Gun control supporters pretending to be conservatives and acting from within the Republican party are more dangerous than openly anti-gun Democrats. Now Democrats control the House and Senate Republicans will be pressured by the party to go along with anything Trump proposes, lest the party look fractured and weak.
I said it back when Trump started pulling ahead in the Republican primaries and I stand by it: Trump as a Republican is pragmatically a bigger threat to gun rights than Hillary as a Democrat. A Republican proposing gun control measures can get them passed.