The Republican Party has control of the House of Representatives. That means legislation isn’t happening without their willingness to make it happen. I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing, either, because it keeps a lot of stupidly partisan crap from happening.
It doesn’t guarantee good laws are passed, mind you, but it does keep out a lot of the worst ideas.
Speaking of “worst ideas,” let’s talk about Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s nonsense for a moment.
You see, as he was trotting out his partisan talking points masquerading as a public health directive, the Republican Party was at work in the House doing, well, something very different.
Murthy recommends several potential mitigation efforts, including risk-reduction policies like “treating firearms like other consumer products, including requiring safety testing or safety features,” and “implementing universal background checks and expanding purchaser licensing laws.”
The bill from the Republicans on the Appropriations commerce, justice and science subcommittee would do none of these things. In fact, the committee’s GOP leadership is proud that their proposal would do the exact opposite, “adding new provisions that strengthen Second Amendment protections.”
The bill would cut funding allocated to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and severely restrict how the money it does receive can be used. The most sweeping of the “riders” attached to the bill would straight up ban ATF from using its appropriations to “implement, administer, apply, enforce, or carry out any [ATF] regulation” that has been issued or finalized since President Joe Biden’s first full day in office. That would include the rule that Biden announced in April that would finally close the so-called gun show loophole that allows the private purchase of firearms without a background check.
If these sweeping restrictions weren’t enough, the bill also specifically takes aim at many of Biden’s efforts to reduce gun violence. No money would be allowed to be spent on implementing last year’s Executive Order 14092, which instructs his Cabinet to implement 2022’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and double down on the enforcement of other gun safety laws. A final rule from ATF to curb the availability of so-called ghost guns — unregistered firearms assembled from kits at home — would be blocked from being funded while the Supreme Court decides the rule’s fate. The same goes for a rule that would require pistols modified with stabilizing braces to face the same regulations as short-barreled rifles.
The bill would also cut federal funding for standing up and supporting states’ red flag laws, which the federal government shouldn’t be supporting in the first place.
How’s that for a response?
In fairness, I don’t think it was intended to be any such thing, but the author of this op-ed seems to view it as such, and, frankly, it amuses me to do the same.
The truth of the matter is that Murthy’s proposals are nothing but a rehash of the Biden administration’s anti-gun agenda, only now it’s dressed up as a “public health emergency.” Murthy thought of gun-related violence as a health crisis at least as far back as 2020. He’s only making a thing of it now because it’s an election year and the Biden administration is desperately trying to make the president’s records on guns look good.
If his proposals centered on education, training, and counseling for those impacted by violence or those inclined to be violent themselves, I’d be willing to talk. Instead, it includes things like assault weapon bans and having Congress dictate “safety features” that likely don’t even exist or, if they do, make the guns largely unusable for self-defense purposes.
So Republicans deciding to basically do the exact opposite of that is the perfect response in my book. If it upsets people like the op-ed author, well, that’s just a pleasant bonus.
