IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Newsday: The Daily Point: “The new mainstream”
Key Point: “However, freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin of Shirley has offered narrower legislation. His bill would allow such purchases, unless the Justice Department goes to court and obtains an order to stop a specific individual from making a purchase. The shift of the burden away from an automatic ban for anyone on the list pretty much makes the law useless, but it shows the concern that even conservative Republicans now have about failing to do something as a response to the attack.”
ICYMI: Newsday: Daily Point: “The new mainstream”
Newsday
By Randi F. Marshall
December 12, 2015
It’s been three years since Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Many thought that would be a turning point on gun control.
It wasn’t. It did, however, organize a movement that was disparate, perhaps laying the groundwork for the change that could come now. Three years later, the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have created a new urgency and perhaps a new consensus that something has to be done to ease the fears of Americans.
The rise of the Islamic State and alarm over self-radicalization have moved the views of Rep. Peter King into the mainstream and opened up a lane to his right on terrorism and how to combat it. King has repeatedly sponsored a bill that would ban weapon sales to those on U.S. terror watch lists, leaving it to the individual to prove he or she doesn’t belong on the list.
However, freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin of Shirley has offered narrower legislation. His bill would allow such purchases, unless the Justice Department goes to court and obtains an order to stop a specific individual from making a purchase. The shift of the burden away from an automatic ban for anyone on the list pretty much makes the law useless, but it shows the concern that even conservative Republicans now have about failing to do something as a response to the attack.
— Randi F. Marshall