Passing any sort of gun control is impossible for political reasons. Republican legislators and judges block gun control whenever they can. It's about one third moneymaking for manufacturers and two thirds culture war at this point. The hardline opposition mainly dates to the Obama administration, when the Republican legislative strategy became blocking anything that Obama wanted to do.
Many Republicans will tell you that there is an absolutely vital constitutional right to own, carry, and stockpile all kinds of firearms. Some of them believe it. But this doctrine was only popularized in the 1970s and still does not have majority support today [1].
When you tell people universal background checks a.) effectively require a registry for enforcement, and b.) don't work at all [0], their opinions tend to change. The not-working part is a feature of every "common sense" gun control measure, especially if we're talking about specific mass shootings.
If we actually want to curb gun-related deaths, start with the war on drugs and reforming urban culture — but that's hard and risky for politicians, so instead they choose to go after legal owners.
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Passing any sort of gun control is impossible for political reasons. Republican legislators and judges block gun control whenever they can. It's about one third moneymaking for manufacturers and two thirds culture war at this point. The hardline opposition mainly dates to the Obama administration, when the Republican legislative strategy became blocking anything that Obama wanted to do.
Many Republicans will tell you that there is an absolutely vital constitutional right to own, carry, and stockpile all kinds of firearms. Some of them believe it. But this doctrine was only popularized in the 1970s and still does not have majority support today [1].
[1] https://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm
When you tell people universal background checks a.) effectively require a registry for enforcement, and b.) don't work at all [0], their opinions tend to change. The not-working part is a feature of every "common sense" gun control measure, especially if we're talking about specific mass shootings.
If we actually want to curb gun-related deaths, start with the war on drugs and reforming urban culture — but that's hard and risky for politicians, so instead they choose to go after legal owners.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10472...!