PD Editorial: Will action finally follow gun safety pledges?

In the days after a gunman killed 58 people at a Las Vegas music festival, members of Congress vowed to outlaw a little-known gadget that allows semiautomatic rifles to mimic fully automatic weapons.

Four months later and one committee hearing later, no legislation has advanced.

Barely a month after the Las Vegas massacre, a man whose history of mental illness should have disqualified him from owning firearms burst into a Sutherland Springs, Texas church and slaughtered 26 people in the pews.

In the aftermath, a bipartisan group of senators announced legislation to improve background checks on prospective buyers.

To date, nothing has happened.

The nation is again reeling from a mass shooting, this time in a South Florida high school, with 17 more lives senselessly and violently ended.

And politicians again are promising action.

On Thursday, a contrite Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said he had “given the impression that doing nothing is doing what we should be” but is now open to “anything that would work.” Another example is GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee. After Parkland, he said Congress has fallen short of ensuring that people who aren’t supposed to be armed can’t obtain guns. “We need to concentrate on that,” he added.

By Monday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was telling reporters that President Donald Trump is open to tightening up background checks. A day later, Trump asked the attorney general to propose a regulation banning bump stocks.

Bump stocks, background checks, calls to action.

It’s all familiar, and it will be truly praiseworthy if Rubio and Grassley and Trump (who just 10 months ago assured National Rifle Association convention delegates that the “eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end”) follow through on their pledges to support greater firearms safety.

Better background checks won’t end gun violence, but they would save some lives. Enacting universal background checks, as proposed by Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena and others, would save even more.

As for bump stocks, there’s no legitimate need for civilians to possess these tools for mass killing. But the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told Congress as recently as December that it lacks regulatory authority to restrict them. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to outlaw bump stocks. Even if regulatory authority can be found, a law is stronger protection. Congress should pass Feinstein’s bill and send it to the president expeditiously.

Yet, after so many years of bait-and-switch politics in Washington and many state capitals, it’s easy to be cynical about whether these post-Parkland conversions will last.

An early test came this week, and the outcome was disappointing. Busloads of students, classmates of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students who died last week, weren’t enough to persuade Florida state legislators to even debate, much less vote on a proposal to ban some assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

On the same day, however, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a California law requiring a 10-day waiting period on all gun purchases. In letting a lower court ruling stand, the justices reaffirmed that Congress and the states can enact sensible gun safety laws without running afoul of the Second Amendment. But will they this time?