Hearing the Falconer #40 ~ 10-May-2019 ~ Cory Booker Proposes New Gun Rules

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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10-May-2019: Cory Booker Proposes New Gun Safety Rules
Cory Booker's Plan to End Gun Violence
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As a moderate Democrat I believe in the right to keep and bear arms, but I also believe in reasonable regulations to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

If we do nothing to control who gets guns, that is going too far in one direction. If we try to stop law-abiding citizens from getting guns, that is going too far in the other direction.

Let's take a look at some of Cory Booker's recent proposals.

I disagree with the limit of one handgun purchase per month. Far more important is WHO is buying the handgun. For the same reason I am skeptical about banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Maybe.... But again, far more important is WHO is buying them.

So let's get to the parts I agree with:

• No loopholes for background checks. Yes. If you want to buy a gun you go through a background check. No exceptions.
• Federal background checks. Yes. Let's make sure the background check is thorough.
• Handgun microstamping to help trace shell casings back to the gun they were fired from. Of course.
• Require reporting of lost or stolen firearms. Critically important. We need to keep guns in the hands of good people. When a gun is lost or stolen we need to know so we can try to find out where that gun went.
• Close the boyfriend loophole. Certainly. An abusive boyfriend should be disarmed just as surely as an abusive spouse.
• More funding on gun violence. I certainly agree with this if it will give us some hope of understanding which people are most likely to commit acts of violence and how we can intervene in a Constitutional and effective way.

So, for a moderate Democrat, there are lots of good ideas in Booker's proposal. It needs to be tweaked to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens but there are some good proposals in here to help us stop bad people from getting guns.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Independent Thinkers

Truman

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It

Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

The Deliberate Moderate: Influencing From the Middle

Eisenhower: The White House Years

The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison

Lincoln

Reflections of a Radical Moderate

Washington: A Life

The Reluctant Republican: My Fight for the Moderate Majority

Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life

Theodore Roosevelt: A Life

The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides

Beyond Red and Blue: How Twelve Political Philosophies Shape American Debates

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Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Wayne Gadway