{"id":7522,"date":"2013-03-17T13:32:24","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T17:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=7522"},"modified":"2013-03-17T17:25:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T21:25:31","slug":"for-many-americans-strict-gun-control-has-already-arrived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/03\/17\/for-many-americans-strict-gun-control-has-already-arrived\/","title":{"rendered":"For many Americans, strict gun control has already arrived"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A sign posted in Webster, NY, where a mentally ill man attacked firefighters. Photo from WXXI<\/p><\/div>\n

If the last couple of weeks are any guide, America’s national culture of the gun is evolving in complicated and nuanced ways in the new era sparked by the deadly\u00a0 mass-shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

It now appears likely that Congress will pass only the most modest legislation<\/a>, perhaps making it slightly more difficult for people suffering a mental illness to buy a gun, and perhaps toughening the penalties for illegal gun trafficking.<\/p>\n

The NRA and its supporters have rallied the vast majority of Republicans — and a fair number of Democrats — to oppose a more aggressive ban on assault rifles, a more comprehensive registry of firearm owners, or new restrictions on gun show sales.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, a growing number of states are moving rapidly to place strict new limits on firearm ownership, led by a sweeping assault rifle ban in New York and by a wave of dozens of gun control bills that are expected to pass in California<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Late last month, a gun control advocate won a special election for a congressional seat in Illinois, where an assault rifle ban is moving through the state legislature<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the courts — including the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court — have offered a complicated set of legal rulings that allow states to regulate firearms, so long as restrictions and guidelines don’t reach a certain threshhold.<\/p>\n

(Exactly where that threshold lies, and which state laws violate the Constitution’s 2nd amendment, will be tested by a wave of additional court cases that will follow as new gun control measures are passed.)<\/p>\n

These developments come as studies show that gun ownership continues to decline in America<\/a>, down from 50 percent of households around 1970s to somewhere between 35 and 43 percent today.<\/p>\n

So what does this all add up to?<\/p>\n

Clearly, firearms are an important form of cultural and political expression for millions of Americans, many of whom see guns as necessary equipment for protecting themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

And it appears that no consensus has formed nationally that would lead to sweeping Federal measures.\u00a0 Even modest baby-step gun control efforts may, in fact, be DOA.<\/p>\n

But on a state-by-state and city-by-city level, it appears that gun regulation and even fairly sharp restrictions on gun ownership will be a growing fact of life for a big chunk of the nation.<\/p>\n

The states with the toughest gun control measures<\/a> either now on the books or looking very likely to pass, post-Sandy Hook, are home to about 25% of the nation’s population.<\/p>\n

This is a situation that isn’t likely to make anyone happy.<\/p>\n

Gun advocates think the state laws are an encroachment on their civil liberties.\u00a0 Gun control groups think it will be much harder to regulate guns effectively on a piecemeal basis.<\/p>\n

In the near-to-mid-term, however, we may find ourselves living with yet another deep fault line running between more progressive “blue” states — which tend to be more urban — and more tradition-minded “red” states with larger rural populations.<\/p>\n

States like California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York may see fairly strict gun control become the new normal, and gun ownership continuing to decline.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, states like Florida, Kansas, North Dakota and Texas may continue to evolve toward an even more freewheeling, unfettered approach to guns — even more “military” style firearms — as has been the trend in recent years.<\/p>\n

One final wrinkle, however, is the fierce internal division that exists within<\/em> many of these states.<\/p>\n

In urban Chicago and New York City, gun control is hugely popular.\u00a0 In rural downstate Illinois and upstate New York, much less so.<\/p>\n

So while the states move in different directions on firearms, experimenting with different rules and different approaches, the fault lines in the gun rights debate remain very close to home.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the last couple of weeks are any guide, America’s national culture of the gun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[8615],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7522\/revisions\/7523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}