These four items are not new ideas, and how a reader might consider them now depends on how the ideas are parsed, which in part depends upon preconceived notions of the topics and what the EBI mean literally and figuratively.
The first two we'll deal with (items 4 and 3) are good ideas, overall, certainly.
4. Increasing access to mental health services.
This is pretty specific, in a way, but in a lot of other ways is unrelated to the either of the ostensible goals. (A. Protecting children in particular and communities in general. B. Reducing gun violence.)
That is, simply increasing access to something, even mental health services, doesn't in and of itself help unstable people and doesn't in and of itself hinder the unstable from performing violent actions with firearms or otherwise. A sociopathic predator with more access to services isn't "a solution" to a particular problem. That is, "being able to more easily visit a mental health professional" doesn't in any way equal "fewer strangulations, rapes and decapitations"
But yes, certainly. Having such services more available, and then having them used in proactive helpful manner towards and by those who need such services, that should help to make people safer in general. So this area is a good one to work at, even if it does nothing specific or direct to locate and treat those who may commit unexpected violent actions. But doing something specific and direct is the solution part. Either way, access to mental health services is a very good thing to increase, even though it doesn't actually touch upon either of the things this press release purports to deal with.
3. Making schools safer
Less specific (more vague) but yes still a good idea. Generically, who wouldn't want safer schools? The question though is how does one actually make schools safer. After all, they are already legally gun-free and drug-free zones. Harsh quick penalties are used against those who even bring in such things. Yet clearly, there are those who totally ignore both of those; thus the laws in and of themselves don't physically stop anyone. Like everything, the laws (the legal system) can only react after the fact to those breaking them.
Any modern horrible slaughter that has taken place at a school has been perpetrated by the purposeful actions of violent people. Some would say by evil depraved homicidal maniacs. Either way, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect they would suddenly begin to follow any new laws. They didn't follow the old ones. Blatantly ignoring laws proclaiming it a federal felony to be armed within some distance of a facility is quite an indicator, yet that's the simple part. These people also broke stricter laws against torture, terrorism and murder.
How do you make schools safer from the actions of criminals and the unbalanced? If we operate under the assumption that laws can do nothing more than they already have, what things beyond them can be implemented and be expected to work.
Both 4 and 3 together lead to other questions. Now that we've got the ideas of more mental health and safer schools, in this context we'd have to ask, how are those implemented, what do they do well, by "reducing gun violence" and how does that lead back to protecting children and communities. We've gotten rather circular there though, and it's really another subject (the specific steps) so let's move on.
The second item is not so helpful.
2. { }
This is problematic because it's comprised of three things, two of which are both the same thing and drastically different, and the third of which makes a silent but unwarranted comment on the first two, and is both related and unrelated. So we'll have to break them down.
Banning military-style assault weapons
Since the point of the overall topic is not really protecting people but protecting people by reducing gun violence ( "we want to reduce gun violence" which "makes everyone safer") the question to ask here is in that same context, how to reduce gun violence. It's a fairly simple question too, since "assault weapons" are a particular subset of rifles mainly.
Does banning semi-automatic rifles with a certain look and set of features reduce gun violence?
Arguing over how to prove or disprove that there's a direct exact specific cause and effect relationship from one to the other is a whole other in-depth unclear, and effectively unanswered, subject.
Yet like the president refers to the Sandy Hook tragedy directly as example, so shall we. There is no argument at all that in this case Lanza used one of his murdered mother's rifles which meets the definition of "assault weapon" to murder more people.
There are a number of points here though. He could have done the exact same thing with one of her other "non-assault weapon" rifles or pistols. We've also got that there's some large questions if such a ban could be passed on the federal level, much less followed at a regional level where states and localities have either laws either already restricting such things or guaranteeing the ability to own such things.
Regardless, even under such a ban, her weapons would likely have been grandfathered, and he could still have used the exact same one. Or if not, he had alternatives that wouldn't have been banned, some which were more deadly per round . Lanza shot many of his victims a number of times. We already know at the most rapid firing rate, once every seven seconds. This is not any faster than any long arm made in the last few hundred years can accomplish. We are not trying to lessen the horror of what Lanza did, or trying to trivialize how deadly firearms are, but "banning assault weapons" has nothing to do with this, be it any particular .223 rifle or otherwise. (For those who imagine an assault weapon is a fully automatic machine gun sort of firearm, they are not, and Lanza's most used weapon for carrying out his carnage wasn't either.)
Banning high-capacity magazines
This is essentially repeating the first call to ban, even more so considering one of the requirements for an "assault weapon" is a detachable magazine. Clearly ammunition feeders are very non dangerous in and of themselves, but with a weapon that has a high rate of fire, or with weapons that are slow to reload, magazine size and more frequent reloading might put a killer in a vulnerable position for the length of time during reload.
In the case of Lanza, he switched out magazines mostly every 15 rounds, far short of the 30 rounds in what he had. He fired an average within the speeds of feeding in rounds one at a time. True, there are circumstances where a killer who only had one weapon would have been vulnerable if they were forced to reload every say 5 rounds. However, one imagines Lanza had a reason for also carrying two pistols with him, even with the size magazine he had. These killers may be crazy, but they're also likely aware of how to make sure they aren't vulnerable. No matter how many rounds their magazines hold or how many rounds a weapon with no magazine has. One way, they carry more weapons, including bladed ones.
Still in this case perhaps even that point isn't in consideration anyway, since all his victims were unarmed adults and children incapable of fighting back physically.
Most of the same issues with the first ban idea fit here for this ban, including that such existing magazines would be grandfathered, and so even with a total nation-wide ban, Lanza still would have had them, regardless if he needed them or not.
Taking other common-sense steps to reduce gun violence
This last part of item 2 takes it as established already, takes it for granted, that the first two ideas are common-sense, which they clearly are not. They're ideas with unknown effectiveness and unknown results, and as we have seen, would not have made a difference in this particular case, under any number of multiple ways of considering it. The same thing also applies to many other of the recent mass murders, on school grounds or otherwise.
Taken together, item 2 is a three-part idea that is so vague as to be meaningless, perhaps even counter-productive. The first two parts don't answer the question of how wanting to ban assault weapons with or without high-capacity magazines are common-sense; that is, how doing such is both achievable and gives the intended results. The last third part is devoid of anything solid that details what these nebulous steps (common-sense or otherwise) to reduce gun violence are.
The real question then is what are some steps to take that would reduce gun violence? What would be the most helpful in answering that question is to detail actions that are known to stop criminals (those using guns criminally) from being violent. How exactly do we accomplish the goal we say we are going for?
We'll look at the first item, and give the conclusion, next post.
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