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Comment by gen3 | Hacker News Reader

The group said its proposal includes:

    Support for state crisis intervention
    Investment in children and family mental health services
    Protections for victims of domestic violence
    Funding for school-based mental health and supportive services
    Funding for school safety resources
    Clarification of definition of federally licensed firearms dealer
    Telehealth investments
    Penalties for straw purchasing

The plan also calls for an "enhanced review process" for young gun buyers.

"For buyers under 21 years of age, requires an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement," the statement said.

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They might as well pass it, but it's not going to help much

    Support for state crisis intervention

I have no idea what that means. It sounds sorta like "The next time somebody makes a threat we'll do something about it, until we realize that the Internet is full of death threats and we're going t ignore all of them."

    Investment in children and family mental health services

Good, but it's not going to prevent mass shootings.

    Protections for victims of domestic violence

Again, good, but not going to prevent mass shootings.

    Funding for school-based mental health and supportive services

Again, that's good, but it's nowhere near enough to help out the kind of seriously disturbed people at issue here.

    Funding for school safety resources

This is going to be worse than useless. This is security theater.

    Clarification of definition of federally licensed firearms dealer

I didn't realize that this was an issue. Congrats on closing some sort of loophole, but there are plenty of ways to get a gun.

    Telehealth investments

Yay, but what does that have to do with anything?

    Penalties for straw purchasing

Something that should have been done a long time ago, but it's not even a band-aid.

All in all, this is one of those situations where doing anything is impossibly hard. They got 10 Republicans, the minimum number to do anything at all -- and it's doing barely better than nothing.

Even at that, I'd give at least even odds that this fails to pass. It requires every single one of the 50 Democrats to agree to it. Any of them could object for any reason -- perhaps they don't like the way it stigmatizes mental health, or perhaps they think that "state crisis intervention" could be used to harass gun owners. There is no room to negotiate about it, since any change will alienate somebody who hammered out this compromise in the first place.

>> Clarification of definition of federally licensed firearms dealer I didn't realize that this was an issue. Congrats on closing some sort of loophole, but there are plenty of ways to get a gun.

They're probably aiming at situations where a person has an FFL for a side-business, selling guns from home, but then also occasionally sells guns that they own personally as a private person. This is totally legal but it's tricky. People who collect guns often buy and sell a lot without ever intending it to be a business, but they sometimes get accused of being a dealer without a license.

>> Penalties for straw purchasing Something that should have been done a long time ago, but it's not even a band-aid.

Already there, since forever (in the form of USC 18 1001 or whatever statute covers making false material statements to the US Government), and totally redundant anyway. The Gun Control Act already makes it a crime to transfer a gun to someone who is prohibited from having one. A straw purchase just means acting as an agent for someone else when buying a gun (thereby lying to the Gov., which is what makes it a crime) If they could have bought the gun themselves anyway, then who cares? Or if you made the purchase but never transferred the gun to the prohibited person, then again, who cares?

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