Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers owner, Paul Allen, is pushing a Washington State gun control initiative in response to the May 18 Santa Fe High School shooting.
The initiative, No. 1639, is called “Safe Schools, Safe Communities,” and it expands the gun controls placed on law-abiding citizens via the universal background check initiative that passed in 2014.
Allen tweeted:
Initiative 1639 raises the legal age for semi-automatic rifle purchases to 21, although the gunman at Santa Fe High School used a shotgun. It also creates “an enhanced universal background check system,” although the Santa Fe High School gunman used his father’s guns, thereby bypassing any point of sale check. The initiative would also put in place a firearm safety course for would-be firearm purchasers, requiring them to secure a certificate from the state before being allowed to purchase a firearm. Again, this would not have stopped the Santa Fe High School gunman because he used his father’s legally owned firearms.
The initiative webpage mentions everything from “domestic violence prevention” to a firearm’s “trace data,” which is leftist-speak for micro-stamping. Micro-stamping is a theoretical process by which a distinct mark is placed on each shell casing, giving each one a “fingerprint.” To date, the idea has been a miserable failure, inasmuch as it drives up costs without providing police with the windfall of information promised.
For example, on November 8, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Maryland ended its ballistic fingerprint program after 15 years, $5 million spent, and no crimes solved.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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