Raphael Warnock Admits Laws Won't Stop School Shootings but Wants More Anyway

Often, the best thing for lawmakers to do is nothing.

The urge to "do something" in the face of tragic events, no matter if that something is constructive or destructive, is irresistible for most politicians. We see that with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D–Ga.), who concedes he can't think of any law that could have presented a recent school shooting. But that doesn't stop him from advocating more legislation anyway. It's a bad habit among officials that threatens more friction between government and the public without solving any problems.

"There Is No One Single Law That Will Stop All of These Tragedies"

Last week's murder of four people by yet another mass shooter at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia was a topic of conversation on the latest edition of Meet the Press.

"Do you think that there is any law that could have prevented this tragedy in your state, senator?" Meet the Press host Kristin Welker asked the lawmaker.

Warnock expressed sympathy for the people of Winder, as well as concern over the recurrence of mass killings in the United States which he described as a "tragic form of American exceptionalism." He went on at such length that Welker reiterated her original question, asking "is there a specific law" that the senator thinks could have prevented the crime.

"Listen, there is no one single law that will stop all of these tragedies," Warnock finally conceded.

That's where the conversation should have ended—at least when it comes to legislation. If somebody commits a horrible crime, and a legislator can't think of a law that would have prevented such a crime, then there's no role in the matter for legislators. And that's fine; government and law are blunt instruments that have little to offer beyond setting penalties to be imposed when somebody is caught engaging in what most people agree are unacceptable acts—such as murder. Preventing bad people from committing those acts anyway is more of a cultural concern.

But Warnock is a political creature who sees government as the solution to all of life's ills. Never mind that he can't think of "one single law that will stop all of these tragedies," he thinks the state should do something anyway.

The Senator Still Wants More Laws

"Any country that allows this to continue without putting forward just commonsense gun safety measures is a country that has, in a tragic way, just lost its way," he huffed.

But just what are "commonsense gun safety measures" if there's no one law that could have prevented the murders at Apalachee High School?

Welker pressed Warnock, repeatedly, on whether he'd advocate a "mandatory gun buyback" program—compensated confiscation—of the sort that Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris once favored, but now claims to reject.

"I think, again, there's not one single thing that will make all of this go away," he answered.

Warnock did vaguely favor getting "these military-style weapons" off the streets with regard to the AR-15 family of rifles, and he made happy noises about "universal background checks," but he refused to advocate for any specific law after admitting he couldn't think of one that would have changed events.

He did repeat his "tragic form of American exceptionalism" line while calling for unspecified "reasonable gun safety laws." He must have practiced that turn of phrase.

Unenforceable Laws Just Create Friction

It's for the best that Warnock didn't let himself get pinned down on gun laws. Governments can't even get people to register guns (for good reason, when confiscation is on the table). Connecticut's 2013 "assault weapon" (semiautomatic rifles with a military appearance) registration law achieved roughly 15 percent compliance, while a similar law in New York drew compliance from less than 5 percent of those affected (more than 40 percent of those who originally obeyed ignored mandatory re-registration in 2020). Trying to seize guns and fulfilling fears of a massive gun grab would certainly inspire even greater defiance.

Universal background checks are even less enforceable. Private kitchen-table transactions aren't subject to government scrutiny and control. Research into such laws finds low compliance.

Again, lawmakers can be somewhat effective when they confine themselves to setting penalties for committing acts that virtually everybody agrees are wrong. They're not good at scaring large segments of society out of doing things many people believe are perfectly acceptable exercises of individual rights.

And bad people who want to hurt others tend to do so even if the acts they have in mind—such as murder and mayhem—are illegal. They just use the tools at hand.

The Solution Isn't Found in More Laws

In the U.K., where guns are strictly restricted, criminals often choose to use knives (or illegal guns—they're criminals, after all). Lawmakers responded with strict laws, calls for knife registration (really), and a recent ban on machetes and "zombie knives" (scary-looking knives inspired by zombie movies).

Somehow this hasn't stopped people who don't care about laws from continuing to commit crimes.

Part of the issue is that politicians exaggerate problems for political gain or because people get scared and press lawmakers to "do something." The UK's "knife-crime epidemic" involves hundreds of deaths in a nation of 67 million people. Likewise, Warnock insists "it's not safe to be in" schools, shopping malls, spas, and medical clinics, which is nonsense. Despite a surge in crime coinciding with the pandemic lockdowns, violent crime appears to have resumed its downward slide.

"Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%)," according to Pew Research.

Mass shootings are undoubtedly troubling, but they remain rare, accounting for 0.2 percent of firearm deaths (suicides make up 60 percent). That makes them a poor target for policy of any sort.

But when you're a political creature like Raphael Warnock, your hammer is legislation, and every concern looks like a nail. He concedes he can't think of a law that would make a difference and then calls for more laws, anyway.

While Warnock refuses to specify just what laws he means, we can be sure that legislation intended to resolve a real but rare concern but applied to everybody will meet defiance and cause more friction between government and the public. Often, the best thing government officials can do is nothing.

Comments

[SQRLSY]

What about the currently raging horrible epidemic of messy housekeeping? WHEN are politicians going to do SOMETHING about messy housekeeping?

Also about spell check not working in these cumments?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"...is a country that has, in a tragic way, just lost its way,"

Indeed it has, but not in the way Warnock seems to believe; and no law is going to fix that. When a society has lost a sense of morality and cohesiveness, it is not subject to being fixed by "government as the solution to all of life's ills."

[jimc5499]

Here's the problem with "universal background checks". The background check is only as good as the information in the database. The Virginia Tech shooter should have been in the database, he wasn't. The School's Medical Services diagnosed him with mental issues that were required by law for them to report. They didn't. No one was held accountable.
During an investigation into why a driver's license wasn't suspended, hundreds of boxes of documents were found in storage. None of these documents were processed. It was found that the employees responsible for processing these documents, hid them stating that they were processed in order to obtain their bonuses for the year. In those documents were several people who should have been added to the background check database.
No one was held accountable.
There have been other similar things that have happened, but, no one has been held accountable. The one common factor in all of them is that Public Sector Union employees were responsible. The Democrats go on and on about "background checks" and "common sense gun laws", yet they are the ones responsible for dropping the ball when it comes to the laws that we have in place.

[flag58]

Under federal law being diagnosed with a mental illness is NOT grounds for a denial.
"Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed (not admitted) to a mental institution" is.

[Z Crazy]

In his defense, most murders happen OUTSIDE school.

We need these laws to make it easier for c ops to put away the crook and the mugger and the carjacker and the gang member!

[CindyF]

American citizens have purchased over a million guns a month for each month over the past five years. That is according to NICS checks and does not include sales and purchases between private individuals. Nor does it include those in most states with CCW permits who do not have to go through another check in order to purchase a gun.

Harris wants mandatory "buy backs" which basically means turning your firearm over to the government for a lot less money than the gun is worth. So basically theft of private property by the government.

The majority of people who purchased one of those firearms mentioned above are not going to turn their defense weapons over to government bureaucrats. At that point the only people with guns would be government officials and criminals. You'd best just join the criminal element and keep your gun.

As Warnock admits, none of the laws proposed by Democrats would have made a difference in the shooting in Winder. The kid violated several laws. One or two more laws weren't going to make a difference.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Gun ownership is a Constitutionally protected right, as important to me and others as our rights to free speech and freedom of religion, plainly protected by the words "shall not be infringed". And yet, again, contrary to the implied common assertion that they are unregulated or underregulated, guns are more regulated than just about anything on the planet that's not a nuclear reactor.

There are no laws that "enable" mass murder, or murder of any sort. Indeed a shooter in such situations has broken so many laws that a few more laws that would not have stopped them in the first place (e.g., many shooters pass background checks and purchase weapons legally) are inconsequential in their thought process. The actual threath posed by people owning these weapons is very small, despite the publicity. Each year, more people are choked or beaten to death by bare hands than are killed by so-called "assault weapons".

I also commonly see the retort to figures like these "Still, if it saves just one life, isn't it worth getting rid of guns?" The debate, such as it is, usually ends when I say "If it saves just one life, isn't is worth getting rid of cars?" because the argument there is circular if one side says cars and guns are both inanimate tools that are dangerous in the wrong hands (and sometimes even in the right hands, accidents happen) and one side says that guns are inherently different from all other tools.

And victims of stabbings, bombings, acid attacks, truck or car ramming attacks, are also innocent dead. And many laws already broken in the course of those actions. A reasonable person does not rush to ban knives, chemicals, pressure cookers, nails, pipes, cars, trucks...yet a common argument is made along the lines that "Yes, drunk-drivers kill people with cars, but we don't ban cars because cars have other uses. Guns are only made for killing people."

Whenever someone tells me that "Guns are only made for killing people" I point out that I've fired literally thousands and thousands of rounds, including many through so-called "assault weapons" and never killed anyone, so I must be using mine wrong. In reality, a firearm is designed to fire a projectile at high speed at whatever it is aimed at. There are some 300M firearms owned by private citizens in this country; 43% of all US households own one or more firearms. Some estimates are that 20 billion rounds of ammunition are used every year in the US. More than 100M people use their 300M firearms, firing billions of rounds of ammunition to do somthing OTHER than killing people with them.

Mass shootings only happen because evil people commit evil acts. Yes, guns in the hands of evil people are dangerous. But evil people bent on committing evil acts will use whatever they can get their hands on. For example 2018 Hancock Park Synagogue attack, 2017 New York City truck attack, 2017 Charlottesville attack, 2017 Barcelona attacks, and 2016 Ohio State University attack.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Banning or restricting guns in any meaningful way in this country is little more than moral/political grandstanding. A major reason for this is not only our constitutionally protected right to own and bear arms, but that the vast majority of people affected by such laws are law abiding and will never pose a threat to the public. If these "advocates" were at all serious [beyond supporting their cause] they would invest those efforts into making schools into more difficult targets. But then I don't suppose "even if it saves one life" is worth doing that if you're passion is to ban guns.

[B G]

You'd think that anyone with a JD degree and a bar license would have to know enough about the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights to know that any "mandatory buyback" which didn't pay full market value would be a violation of the 4th Amendment and to do so with firearms would also violate the 2nd.

I know she came up in the CA machine where amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10 are "disfavored", and that any violation of civil liberties which angers the NRA and the "gun nuts" is considered to be wholly justified in the eyes of her chosen constituency, this is pretty brazen.

Warnock (and likely the new DNC talking point which will show up in MSM headlines by the middle of next week) referring to it as part of "american exceptionalism" is likely breaking the trail toward an open call for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment as part of the DNC platform by the 2026 midterms if not this coming November.

[Michael Ejercito]

Mass shootings are undoubtedly troubling, but they remain rare, accounting for 0.2 percent of firearm deaths (suicides make up 60 percent). That makes them a poor target for policy of any sort.

This was a point Brett Bellmore made. in. last Thursday's Open Thread.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/09/05/thursday-open-thread-207/?comments=true#comment-10713859

"People particularly care about mass shootings because gun controllers decided a while back that every local ‘mass shooting’ would be reported nation or world-wide, in order to give people the wildly mistaken impression they were somehow common.

In reality, mass shootings are responsible for about 0.1% of firearm homicide deaths. If you could reduce non-mass shootings by 1% at the expense of doubling mass shootings, you’d go for it in a heartbeat, so few people die in mass shootings.

So, why the focus on mass shootings? Why focus so much energy on the rarest sort of homicide?

Because the objective isn’t to reduce deaths or violence. It’s to whip up hysteria in order to produce public support for gun control."- Brett Bellmore

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"Because the objective isn’t to reduce deaths or violence. It’s to whip up hysteria in order to produce public support for gun control.”- Brett Bellmore

That is their cause. It is not to make schools or other public venues safer, but to restrict firearm ownership as the only viable solution.

[Michael Ejercito]

Thse same people push for decarceration and defunding the police.

Here is an interesting article.

https://www.newsweek.com/you-can-have-gun-control-you-can-defang-police-you-cant-do-both-opinion-1794484

[Medulla Oblongata]

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban did nothing to make anyone safer. Assault weapons are a fictional category of firearms categorized by cosmetic effects that some people find "scary" but have zero to do with the muzzle velocity, rate-of-fire, stopping power, magazine capacity, or lethality.

For example, a common Ruger 10/22, never fell under the ban, since it lacked the necessary cosmetic features. For about $100, one can purchase some plastic to replace the wooden parts. The resulting rifle, which has the same barrel, feed mechanism, trigger mechanism, magazine is somehow now magically an "assault weapon"?

The ban failed on several accounts. First, it named specific models from specific manufacturers. Manufactures could simply discontinue a model, make minor modifications to create a new model, and viola! No longer banned. Another way it failed was to, in an attempt to prevent the first circumvention, describe cosmetic artifacts such that weapons could be manufactured that did not have the listed cosmetics. It failed because it did not ban possession and force confiscation of existing "assault weapon" firearms, but even it if had magically made those firearms disappear from the face of the earth, it didn't address the millions of other rifles, shotguns, pistols, or revolvers.

Ultimately, though, it failed because it, like many other gun-control laws, ignored the plain fact that criminals don't obey laws. If gun-free zones don't make a potential mass-murderer stop his plan of action, if multiple murder charges don't stop them, why would a simple ban stop them?

The only logical thought process here must be "We know that banning these weapons will only punish the 99.99999% of gun owners who are predisposed to obey such laws, but maybe, just maybe, it makes it hard enough to discourage one potential mass-murderer from obtaining such a weapon, who will just decide to drive his pick-up truck into a crowd instead."

----------

On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and the injury of 434 others.

On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada from his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel. He fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people[a] and wounding at least 413.

[Michael Ejercito]

It is plain and clear to anyone that California's assault weapons ban did not eliminate gang violence.

[VinniUSMC (Banana Republic Day 5/30/24)]

Butbutbut, if guns are illegal in all of the US, then that'll fix it, for sure. -Ignorant Leftists

[B G]

Even setting aside the facts that anyone planning on mass murder isn't going to hesitate to break other laws along the way, and the fact that "assault weapons" bans are almost never based on functional rather than cosmetic criteria, there's one other huge fact that renders such bans ineffective at reducing violence.

"Assault Weapons" as defined in these laws are almost never used in crimes anyway. The vast majority of AWs are types of rifles. Rifles as a whole are used in fewer crimes, and fewer homicides each year than knives, and also fewer than "blunt object/bare hands".

Even if a ban could actually take away access to some class of item, the impact of such a ban would be limited at most to the portion of violent crime/killing which happens using the banned item to begin with. This means that the absolute limit to the potential impact of banning "assault rifles" would be the tiny portion of crimes and deaths in which rifles are involved (and that's assuming the criminals don't simply substitute some non-banned tool for the prohibited on they might have otherwise used, or get their hands on one via the black market).

Restricting sales of AR-15s as a plan to reduce violent crime is like restricting sales of Ferraris to reduce speeding in school zones, or subjecting Michelin rated restaurants to special health department scrutiny to reduce incidence of food poisoning in an area. They just aren't a significant part of the problem to begin with and even the biggest possible impact won't make much difference.

Political priorities probably get skewed by the fact that even with all "mass shootings" making up a fraction of a percent of gun deaths, a tiny fraction of such incidents (depending on how they're defined) get 90% or more of all media coverage of all kinds of crime. In most of the US, the recent school shooting in GA will probably get more total media attention from nearly every media outlet in any given area than the sum total of all other crime taking place within 100 miles of that outlets headquarters (except for the "police blotter" section of any local newspaper).

[Medulla Oblongata]

There are, depending on what you want to count as a firearm regulation, several hundred to several thousand guns laws. Firearms are sales are the most heavily regulated consumer good ever made. In case after case, proposed new regulations would NOT have impacted a shooter. For example, universal background checks would not have stopped most shootings, as many legally purchased weapons that included background checks.

Mass-murdering shooters are already, well, murdering multiple people and they consider gun-free zones target-rich environments (because law-abiding people who carry firearms regularly obey those laws).

The 2nd Amendment says "shall not be infringed". We do not require people who want to exercise their 1st Amendment rights to submit to fingerprinting, background checks, government-forced "education". We can't even be bothered to ensure that people who are voting are even legally voting in the proper district or are who they say they are, because asking someone for an ID to vote is somehow a crime against humanity. I had to provide multiple government issued photo ID, get fingerprinted, subjected to 2-month background check period, and pay not insignificant fees to get a carry permit, and still have to show ID and answer intrusive questions on Form 4473 EVERY TIME I buy a firearm.

But I do all that because I obey the laws. A criminal buys a gun in an alley from another criminal; or steals it from someone.

[Medulla Oblongata]

I've seen arguments like "The majority of American support stricter gun control, but the NRA is a major obstacle to this."

True, the majority do support stricter gun control--in the abstract. They share "magical" thinking. When proposed changes are actually understood, support falls rapidly.

Let's consider just "universal background checks", aka "closing the gun show loophole".

First, let's dispense with the notion that there's such a "loophole". Any licensed firearms dealer must perform background checks for all firearms purchased, even if those are sold at a "gun show". Full stop.

Under the law, occasional (*as defined by the federal government) sales between private individuals are legally allowed--this is the so-called "gun show loophole". It has nothing at all to do with gun-shows, per se.

However, it is already a felony offense to provide a firearm to a person the seller/lender knew or should have known was prohibited from firearm possession (i.e., due to some previous felony conviction that disallows them from gun ownership or possession). Most law-abiding gun owners who are selling guns in a private transaction take measures to ensure that the person they are selling to is not a prohibited person (e.g., asking to see a valid concealed carry permit). Ultimately, though, most private transactions are between family members or close friends.

A poorly written "universal background check" law, like the original proposal in Washington state, makes no allowance for temporary transfers or transfers between family members. Technically, under such a law, if my wife handed me a gun she owned (guns are not considered community property under this sort of law), we'd both have committed felonies. If my brother-in-law came to our farm and borrowed a rifle to go deer hunting, we've committed felonies. If my friend and I were at a gun range, and my friend said he had never fired a .357 magnum and would like to shoot mine, and I let him, again, felonies. If grandpa gives his grandson the family heirloom .22LR rifle as a gift, again both would be felons. Each such transaction above, under some of these poorly written laws, would require both parties to traipse to a FFL dealership, pay a fee (usually $25 or $50), wait 20 minutes or so for the background check, then continue with their day. Of course, a return trip and another fee and another 20 minutes wait is required to return the borrowed firearm.

Of course, even without a universal background check law, any of the above situations would already be a felony if the recipient is a prohibited person.

A rational common-sense "universal background check" would be carefully crafted to not create felons for innocent transactions. For example, if it specified a requirement for sales between persons not in an immediate family and if it provided a non-FFL route, such as a bill-of-sale where a photocopy of a valid concealed carry license demonstrates that the buyer is not a prohibited person. That would be bad enough in the whole "shall not be infringed" sense, but I would rail against a poorly crafted law that would do nothing to stop criminals and only create accidental felons for actions that are not dangerous to anyone.

[Bubba Jones]

I think there are more late term abortions of healthy infants than they are school shootings. The typical reasons given for these abortions are: lost job or broke up with boyfriend. The same reasons as for any other abortion.

Would democrats accept a ban on abortions to solve this problem?

[Michael Ejercito]

They do not consider abortion to be wrong.

and not because of a belief in "My Body, My Choice".

[Uncle Jay]

"My body, my choice."

That was my mantra to everyone who took the potentially lethal COVID vaccine.
The far-left useful idiots who were stupid to take it went into a nut roll when I told them I refused to take the jab and used "their" slogan.

[AT]

The problem is that shooters keep going after schools or festivals or nightclubs or whatever. They should really be going to legislative houses and city counsel meetings.

[Restoring the Dream]

Most mass shootings are gang related and committed by people who resemble Raphael Warnock.
Also, Raphael Warnock looks like a nail.

[DesigNate]

“Often, the best thing for lawmakers to do is nothing.”

Politicians don’t know how to do that. And even if they did, certain people would set their hair on fire and run around screaming that they were doing nothing.

[Eeyore]

We have already started charging parents with crimes related to their kids. Let’s just take it one step further and make it a crime for a teacher to fail to stop a school shooting. What could possibly go wrong?

[rbike]

Only white parents it seems. It is kind of odd. And racist?

[Uncle Jay]

Let's be honest here.
Both parties do not want gun control.
They want gun confiscation.

[JohnZ]

Warnock is a communist.