Brilliant political cartoon.

I realize that Ms. Knauf and her fellow journalist Olivia Messer (on whose Twitter feed this cartoon appears) couldn't care less about the unauthorized, unattributed sharing of copyrighted journalistic content, but (out of some quirky character flaw) I do, so here's a link to the original posting of this work by Bruce MacKinnon of the Halifax Chronicle Herald: http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorial-c…

From the original page: "Disclaimer: Copying or reprinting images found on The Chronicle Herald website is disallowed."

And here's Ms. Messer in response to someone querying where the cartoon appeared: "saw it online via a friend's facebook but a reverse google image search yields no online results."

Hey, with friends like these, who needs copyrights?

run run run to get your bump stocks now, gunners. only $99.95 while supplies last.

@1: With or without the Senate filibuster rule?

Stop focusing on that damn bump stock, it is completely irrelevant and it is going to be used as a way to avoid an actual gun control debate and actual gun control reform.

Bump stocks are not why this happened, or why it was so bad. It is 100% irrelevant. You may as well get guns which are colored black banned. It would serve the same purpose.

Don't get me wrong, the things should never exist, and they do nothing but make guns less safe. But by focusing on those stupid things (which you can essentially make with a piece of string), you are playing right into the hands of the people you revile.

@5:

In a (somewhat more) perfect world we wouldn't be talking about just bump stocks. IMO, there are several concrete actions that MUST and SHOULD be taken. And even if the legislation was just limited to this list, I think it would go a very long way toward significantly reducing gun violence in this country:

1. Mandatory background checks and licensing for all gun purchases - NO exceptions
2. Mandatory firearms safety training
3. Mandatory gun locks and/or secured storage
4. Ban ALL mechanical modifications to firearms beyond their original manufacture (this would include bump stocks & suppressors)
5. Ban armor-piercing bullets
6. Ban high-capacity magazines
7. Deny licenses to those diagnosed with severe mental health issues or who have been convicted of assault or other violent crimes
8. Mandatory life sentence without parole for anyone convicted of using a firearm in the commission of a crime

That's it. Just do those things and we would see gun violence drop - not to zero, because that is simply unrealistic - but way down from where it is now. And it wouldn't deny ANYONE (with the specific exceptions listed above) their Second Amendment Right to possess and bear arms, because you will note none of these actions actually ban the weapons themselves.

@7: all those, but also some kind of mandatory insurance, like for owning/driving a car. When someone uses a gun to kill people, everyone else's insurance automatically goes up. Nominal charge for first handgun or hunting rifle, then incrementally higher charges until assault weapons are pretty much unaffordable. Even if gun shops give them away, no one can afford to insure them (and harsh penalties for those who fail to pay the insurance). You want to own a weapon, under your 2nd amendment rights? Fine, own one, own 50, but it'll cost you.

@8:

I think you could run that under the "licensing requirement", as we do with drivers: you can get a DL without having insurance, but you have to have proof of coverage to operate a motor vehicle.

@6: Ever head of the term "political capital?"

@7: Sure, but in the real world, passing any gun related ban is a hard sell, and will require lots of work and time, work and time that is not therefore going to things that might actually make a difference. Also, the more things you ban related to guns, the more it will make people think of a slippery slope to confiscation. This is just how people work, and you can't just ignore human nature.

Also, your #8 is a really, really horrible idea that is going to swell prisons even further, and would have serious impacts to some communities that you would then call abhorrently racist after the fact.

@8: If you did that, you are essentially creating a constitutional right that is based on personal wealth. That is unconstitutional.

Keep in mind that while many may not want this to be the case, the 2nd amendment is just as legally sound and carries the same protection of the 1st amendment, or all of the bill of rights. You would never say "speaking this many words costs you X, and this many costs you X+Y," and you would never say "keeping the cops from illegally searching your car costs you X, while keeping them from illegally searching your home costs you X+Y."

What @5 said.

Unfortunately, it's too late, it's already fully distracted everyone.

@COMTE
"Mandatory life sentence without parole for anyone convicted of using a firearm in the commission of a crime"

That might sound good to the Republicans, but that is not the solution to gun violence.
I was once robbed by two young men. They had a gun. One of them was only 15 years old.
I would not send those kids to prison for the rest of their life for stealing $60 from me.

I guess I should ask you, what exactly do you mean when you say "using a firearm"?
If you just have a gun, but you don't fire it, is that still using a gun?
You see, I wouldn't have given those kids my money if they didn't have a gun, so they used the gun in the commission of a crime, but they didn't actually pull the trigger. In fact, they didn't even point the gun at me, they just showed me that they had a gun.
What are your thoughts?

These are some really nifty ideas.
Really.
Just be sure not to infringe on the people's right to keep and bear arms.

@Teddy

You can modify a semi-automatic rifles to continuously fire with a piece of string, that is true, but it is not like a bump stock.
With a bump stock you can stop firing, with the string method the gun continues to fire until all of the ammunition is spent.

As for a bump stock making a firearm less accurate and less safe (for the user), that's true enough, but if you are a mass shooter shooting into a crowd of people, accuracy is not important. As for the safety of the shooter, Mass Shooters tend to not worry about their personal safety all that much.

The shooter was able to fire at least twice as many rounds with the bump stock then he would have been able to without it.
Twice as many rounds fired means twice as many victims.

I do agree that attempting to ban bump stocks or Gat cranks isn't going to solve the problem. People could just make these things in their garage if they really wanted them.
[The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home | WIRED
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/cody-wilso… ]
That doesn't change the fact that the use of bump stocks made this particular event as deadly as it was.

@5 Ah. Yes. There it is. The call of the gun nut telling everyone to stop focusing on "the thing," but no, we must focus on some other thing... and, wait, no, some other thing... and later another thing.

Jesus. No civilian needs commercially available bump stocks or commercially available silencers or large capacity magazines for ANYTHING. I've owned guns my whole life. Get up hunting and shooting. And NOBODY need this bullshit. They just want to satisfy their big toxic macho jerk off.

Who gives a fuck if they "can" be made. Then force these lunatics to make them. I can make pizza too, but yo know what it sure is a lot easier to order one delivery.

Stop making amassing a lethal arsenal of mass destruction such a casual affair for anyone with a credit card. Making it slightly more difficult is one tiny step forward.

Just admit it. 57 dead innocent human beings, the children at Sandyhook, is worth it to you to have all your cool toys you see in Call-of-Duty. So you can go "pew. pew. pew. POW!"

@7

I'd vote for that, and I'd vote for you.

@7

I'm all for the idea of banning weapons access for the mentally ill in theory but the practice is harder to execute.

With the largely uninformed and heavily biased culture we exist in about what mental illness is and does, the definition of severe can boil down to anyone who has ever taken an MAOI or SSRI because anti-psychotics alone don't do the job and some anti-psychotics actually provide relief for neurobiological disorders that aren't classified as being related to mental health.

Otherwise, we have to delve deeper into individual's medical history which is an issue of privacy. It's so easy say 'no mental illness' and I think we can all agree that this in principal a good thing but I don't think we understand enough about mental illness and lean too hard into the stigmas to ever take a draconian, rights crushing approach at present.

@13

We have laws that say you have to have a license to operate a motor vehicle, but no laws saying you have to have a licence to own one.

Discharging a firearm isn't some weird nebulous hand-wavey thing, it's about aw cut and dried as you can get.

Similarly, there are people who drive without insurance, and the courts handle them differently when persons or property are harmed as a result of operating a motor vehicle.

This would be more or less the easiest legislation to write in recent memory, with more than enough existing law to use as reference.