Side story on the recent gun spree

[Fuchs]

Let us return to basics. Do you believe in natural rights?

That's totally unrelated. I certainly have never heard of gun possession being called a "natural right", and don't think "right to live" is particularly useful for a firearms policy discussion since the value of life should be obvious anyway.


I have thoughts about natural rights that could contribute to an interesting philosophical discussion about rights in general, but not here.

Why? And why should the lack of a permanent ATF director hinder enforcement of firearms laws?

What I read about the issue points at gazillions of small provisions inserted by NRA's representatives in Congress into bills. These provisions ban this ATF action, exclude that, de-fund something else and so on.
Up front the NRA appears to call for enforcement of existing laws before any new laws be considered while behind the scenes they make sure there's not going to be such an effective enforcement, thus the argument never goes away.



@motorfirebox:
That's a defect of many if not all Western democracies.
The general public has limited attention resources, and spectacular issues as well as issues pushed by effective special interests are most likely to capture this attention.
Meanwhile, the parliament can do its routine business largely unobserved, and not necessarily in our best interests.

The assault rifle-related and other gun rampages of heavily armed madmen capture the attention, and political activism leads to proposals aimed against this spectacular stuff.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of deaths in the statistics is being caused in a less spectacular way, and public attention is no help against it.

Same as with 9/11 and tobacco-related massacres. The average tobacco industry worker puts shame on the average AQ terrorist in regard to lethality.