Report Urges New Bans on Firearms

President Obama has been largely silent about gun control during his first term, but many gun owners have expressed concerns that he would address the issue if he is re-elected and no longer constrained by re-election worries.

Gun control advocates who have also stayed relatively quiet during Obama’s first term are already coming forward. The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research has issued a new report whose recommendations include the regulation of gun designs and banning “problem drinkers” from owning firearms.

The Insider Report disclosed in April that Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that Obama “intends to destroy the Second Amendment” during his second term.

LaPierre said: "All of our Second Amendment liberty, all of the rights we've worked so hard to defend, all of what we know is good and right about America — all of it could be lost if Barack Obama is re-elected."

And he asserted that Obama has not pursued an anti-gun agenda during his first term because of a "political calculation" aimed at NRA supporters and gun owners who might oppose him in his re-election bid.

In its report, the Johns Hopkins Center, an arm of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said “there are enormous economic costs associated with gun violence in the U.S.,” claiming that firearm-related deaths and injuries resulted in medical and lost productivity expenses of about $32 billion in one recent year — as well as around 30,000 deaths and more than 335,000 injuries a year.

The Center’s "Case for Gun Policy Reforms in America" argues that the Second Amendment doesn't prevent lawmakers from strengthening gun laws that are already on the books, CNS News noted in an article about the Center’s report.

Among its recommendations:

Increase the number of “high-risk individuals” who are prohibited from possessing guns by extending the ban on firearms ownership to people convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, people who committed felonies as juveniles, and alcoholics and problem drinkers.
Raise the minimum age for buying a gun from 18 to 21.
Regulate gun sales between private individuals who are not licensed gun dealers. The Brady Law requires prospective buyers to pass a background check only if they are purchasing the gun from a licensed firearms dealer.
Boost regulation and oversight of gun sellers.
Eliminate so-called “right-to-carry” laws, which allow individuals who are not legally barred from possessing firearms to carry concealed weapons in public either by making it easy to get a permit to do so or by not requiring permits at all. The laws “do not make us safer and likely increase aggravated assaults,” the Center argues, rejecting research that shows just the opposite, CNS News observed.
Regulate the design of guns. "Not all firearms are created equal," the report states. “Aside from ammunition capacity, other characteristics of firearms that are relevant to public safety include how easily the gun can be concealed, and how prone it is to misfire or fire unintentionally.”
Reintroduce the now-expired 1994 ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he does not favor “new pieces of legislation” on guns – “or making certain guns illegal.”

President Obama has called for enforcing the laws already on the books and for reintroducing the ban on assault weapons.

Obama's strategy, according to the NRA’s LaPierre, is to "get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearm freedom — erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. Constitution."