So, if it is violating the Constitution, and you think it can be changed, are you willing to agree that these weapons are legal until the Amendment process is brought to fruition?

That's WONDERFUL news, you see Congress actually CAN cut spending if inspired to do so! Now if they can stop funding research into so many other things, maybe we can get back on track. Gee, it took 2.6 million to determine homicides were more likely to occur in homes where guns were kept!? seems kinda obvious to me that intruders will be shot by those same guns and an intruder is more likely to kill if confronted and accidental deaths are also going to happen, one word ...duh! (2.6 million to come up with that, I just did it for free.)

Because of the NRA's successful campaign to eliminate the scientific research into the public health effect of firearms, very few researchers specialize in the field anymore, University of California, Davis, professor Garen Wintemute told Reuters. He said there isn't enough money to sustain research.

Since there is a lack of funding for independent research, the gun debate has been lacking in unimpeachable statistics that could effect a change in the status quo.

As it stands, the main available statistics regarding the gun debate are raw gun homicide and suicide stats collected through the FBI, international data and data from groups with a direct stake in the gun debate — for instance, pro-gun stats from the NRA and pro-gun control stats from the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.

The scientists writing the letter to Biden wrote that, effectively, the NRA has successfully hamstrung a credible gun control conversation. When the only statistics available are imperfect, it becomes that much easier to disregard them.

GMTom wrote:That's WONDERFUL news, you see Congress actually CAN cut spending if inspired to do so! Now if they can stop funding research into so many other things, maybe we can get back on track.

Gee, it took 2.6 million to determine homicides were more likely to occur in homes where guns were kept!? seems kinda obvious to me that intruders will be shot by those same guns and an intruder is more likely to kill if confronted and accidental deaths are also going to happen, one word ...duh! (2.6 million to come up with that, I just did it for free.)

Since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000 people. One should also bear in mind that just 2.6% of all murders are committed using any type of rifle.

The large-capacity ammunition magazines used by some of these killers are also misunderstood. The common perception that so-called "assault weapons" can hold larger magazines than hunting rifles is simply wrong. Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles. A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. The 1994 legislation banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets yet had no effect on crime rates.

Ms. Feinstein's new proposal also calls for gun registration, and the reasoning is straightforward: If a gun has been left at a crime scene and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link the crime gun back to the criminal.

Nice logic, but in reality it hardly ever works that way. Guns are very rarely left behind at a crime scene. When they are, they're usually stolen or unregistered. Criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind guns that are registered to them. Even in the few cases where registered guns are left at crime scenes, it is usually because the criminal has been seriously injured or killed, so these crimes would have been solved even without registration.

Canada recently got rid of its costly "long-gun" registry for rifles in part because the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police could not provide a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a gun murder.

The cost of U.S. gun violence in work lost, medical care, insurance, criminal-justice expenses and pain and suffering amounted to as much as $174 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Maryland.

Or we could Constitutionally ban potato chips, soda larger that 16 oz., cigarettes et. al.

But wait, that would require political leadership throughout the amendment process