Gun Control Thoughts

A few, er, bullet points as the gun control debate staggers towards the next futile and ineffective "solutions" from our political class.

• Some on the gun control side, like Rep. Jan Schakowsky, view even minimal gun control legislation now as just a first step towards far stricter laws, including a possible handgun ban. That's not surprising, but the deafening silence from the supposedly moderate "nobody is going to take your guns" crowd is. As far as I can tell, nobody on that side of the issue has pushed back on Schakowsky's position. Kind of makes me doubt their credibility.
• I think right to bear arms advocates are making a serious mistake in placing too much faith that the current views of the Supreme Court on the Second Amendment will stand the test of time. A more liberal future court would not be troubled about throwing precedent aside after some inevitable mass murder down the road. The focus on a well regulated militia instead of an individual right would return with a vengeance. It would all be for the children, of course.
• A universal background check law with family loopholes and/or without record keeping would be nothing but a joke. It would not stop "clean" family members from making straw purchases and it would be impossible to prosecute. If that's all we will get, it would be far better to spend our efforts on improving the existing system as it is. 
• Speaking of background checks, all of the talk about using them to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill is fine, but what about the people who become criminals or mentally ill after they have bought guns? Don't we want to know about their guns so we can take them away? I know, my fellow gun owners, I'm talking about registration. Blasphemy! But as I've mentioned before, our individual right to keep and bear arms is not as plainly stated in the Constitution as it should be. If we're smart we will consider acquiring an unequivocally stated individual right to bear arms in the Constitution in exchange for a system that would tightly track guns and gun ownership and vastly reduce the chance of criminals and the mentally ill acquiring and maintaining possession of any kinds of guns. 
• Even Obama has tip-toed around the reality that most of the gun violence in this country is disproportionately coming from one group of people, namely urban gangsters. I'm not opposed to efforts to try to turn these sociopaths around, but I've yet to see anyone seriously discuss the screwed up cultural, family, and education conditions that create the little bastards in the first place. Intervention is fine, but if we continue to produce a fatherless, uneducated, and hopeless underclass it's just a variation of whack-a-mole. 
• We can't seem to talk about the above, and therefore can't do anything effective about it, without charges of racism poisoning the discussion. Then nothing changes for the overwhelmingly minority victims who continue to be preyed on and caught in the crossfire as a result. But that's not racist.