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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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There was a pretty famous one in 2013 that received NRA support, but was shot down because Dems preferred a version that didn't bother with a fig-leaf of due process.

Which kinda points to the problem. It is quite possible both for the ATF to require ridiculous levels of paperwork and come down like a brick shithouse on FFLs that don't require clients to spell out Yes and No on every line, while also ignoring a vast realm of straw or otherwise unlawful purchases (plausibly including the son of a sitting president!). It is quite possible for there to be a lot of support for Universal Background Checks in general, and then actually-written background check proposals to be so badly drafted as to require restructuring hunter education classes.

More broadly, there's also an issue where this is all very obviously just another step toward the next big restriction. We don't have particularly good reason to believe the rules that actually do get enforced actually prevent mass or spree shootings, and a lot of times they get brought up even when they very clearly couldn't prevent them (eg, several bills named after an incident where the mass shooter stole a firearm involved background checks) ... but they are great at making it difficult to be into firearms, or to get new generations into firearms.