The long fight ahead: Gun progress and the lack thereof in America – New York Daily News

Both President Biden and Manuel Oliver, the father of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre victim who heckled him Monday, are right. As Biden said, the new laws represent the most significant federal gun-safety step in decades and, as Oliver effectively expressed through his pain, it is woefully insufficient to stem the rising tide of gun killings.

Which is to say, the progress just notched should be far more a moment for galvanizing public support for bolder measures than cause for back-patting and self-satisfaction.

The package provides more mental health services to people in psychological distress, incentivizes state passage of red flag laws, tightens background checks and more, likely saving hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. But given that an America awash in guns is suffering record highs in firearm deaths suicides, homicides and others there will still be a steady drumbeat of killings on street corners, and a steady accretion of bodies killed or maimed by mass shootings in schools, malls and other common spaces.

Manuel Oliver, father of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, interrupts President Joe Biden speaking during an event to celebrate the passage of the "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act," a law meant to reduce gun violence, on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, July 11, 2022, in Washington. Oliver was escorted out of the event. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Because Republican elected officials and their allies in the courts almost uniformly reject anything that might chip away at what they perceive as a near-absolute guarantee to be armed almost anywhere, its on Biden and his party to keep pushing for more robust gun safety statutes, and to use public powers creatively. A short list of next targets:

Repeal the gun industrys horrendous federal liability shield.

Move a new ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines to the Senate floor, to see who, after so much additional madness, will go on record again as defending their legal sale.

Press again to ban gun sales to any civilian under the age of 21.

Ensure genuinely universal background checks, and prevent gun sales from going forward when their check cannot be completed in three days, and require microstamping federally to better track crime guns.

Use executive authority to pressure gun makers to stop selling their products through problem dealers.

Guns kill nearly five Americans every hour. Do not rest until the carnage calms.

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The long fight ahead: Gun progress and the lack thereof in America - New York Daily News