In which I remind DU that the assault weapons ban doesn't do what you think it does

[Recursion]

88. Well, I don't own any guns, personally

Though I've used them professionally for a good part of my adult life.

Like I've said in this thread, I'm ambivalent about bans for the most part. Not because I think they're a horrible infringement of people's rights (unless we're talking about a literal total ban on all guns), just because I'm skeptical they will actually get guns out of the hands of people who want to misuse them, for the most part. I may well be wrong, but that's why bans aren't where I push.

On the other hand, if we're going to try bans (and the pressure from the base is such that it's pretty much guaranteed we will), I want a ban that makes sense and actually does what it accomplishes, which is why I keep flogging this particular horse about the AWB. (And for that matter I'm much, much more concerned about handguns than rifles or shotguns.)

My own inclination is to focus on when and to whom firearms are transferred.

Ideas I think would do a lot of good are:
* Require background checks on all purchases
* Catch and punish straw purchasers (people who buy weapons for other people who can't pass background checks)
* Improve the reliability of the Federal background check database, including dragging unwilling states into actually helping
* Remove the insane legislative restrictions on what the ATF can and can't do; let them actually enforce the laws
* Get and act on actual empirical data from the CDC to find and address patterns of gun violence
* Trace the provenance of every single gun that was used in any crime, to look for patterns in how criminals actually get guns
* Enforce the law in every one of those cases where a firearm was found to have been illegally transferred
* Mandate safe storage of weapons to make theft less likely (yes, that would be hard to primarily enforce, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying)
* Significantly increase the ATF's funding so they have the personnel to actually do these things (actually enforcing a lot of these will take significant manpower for investigations, sting operations, etc.)

I think these are good ideas that are consistent both with reducing gun violence and with respecting that many people do legitimately own firearms for legitimate reasons.