Feinsteins Gun Bill

Let's not pass it so we won't have to read it and thus find out what's in it.

The bill bans some 150 firearms by name, and goes on to include any she might have missed by description. From page 2:

 17 the term "semiautomatic assault weapon"

18 means any of the following, regardless of country of manu-
19 facture or caliber of ammunition accepted:
20 ‘‘(A) A semiautomatic rifle that has the capac-
21 ity to accept a detachable magazine and any 1 of the
22 following:
23 ‘‘(i) A pistol grip.
24 ‘‘(ii) A forward grip.
25 ‘‘(iii) A folding, telescoping, or detachable
page 3 OLL13052 S.L.C.
1 stock.
2 ‘‘(iv) A grenade launcher or rocket launch-
3 er.
4 ‘‘(v) A barrel shroud.
5 ‘‘(vi) A threaded barrel.

Now we drop down to page 13 and note That a "grip" is:

 (46) 
2 The term ‘pistol grip’ means a grip, a thumb-

3 hole stock, or any other characteristic that can function
4 as a grip.

 Which says that her ban extends to any semiauto rifle with a detachable magazine .

Page 11 bans Mannlicher stocks as they look like barrel shrouds if they have a piece over the top of the barrel or perhaps because shoulder things that might go up.

S-150 is drawing so much attention that it's unlikely to go anywhere. It does, however, make the rest of the lot of bad gun law look more reasonable by comparison.

Keep reminding your representatives that none of the proposed new gun laws actually address the problem of suicidal madmen looking to run up the body count on their way out, and you are really tired of being blamed for their actions.

Letter From Sen Bennet

Got this today in response to a letter I had written to Sen Bennet:

Dear Bill:

Thank you for contacting me regarding some of the different gun proposals that have been introduced during the 113th Congress, including S.33 introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg, S.150 introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein, and the proposal put forth by President Obama. I appreciate hearing from you.

The numerous tragedies that our nation has had to face over the past year have been staggering. My own family, like all Americans, has been repeatedly shocked and deeply saddened by the violence we have witnessed, and my heart continues to be with the victims and their families. As Coloradans, we know how this type of tragedy can shake a community to its core and in the aftermath of these abhorrent acts our priority should be on supporting the survivors and families, and healing our communities.

We must have a real discussion in this country about finding ways to stop these senseless shootings. I believe a combination of improved access to mental health services, restrictions on certain weapons intended for warfare, and elimination of the gun show loophole are sensible steps that can protect our communities and particularly, our children. In Colorado, we support the right to bear arms and the ability of people to recreate, hunt, and protect their homes, and we want to keep the wrong weapons out the hands of the wrong people. I believe we can have a civil discussion that addresses these issues and as the recommendations by the President's task force are considered in Congress, we will ensure that Colorado's voices are heard.

In addition to the bills referenced above, there are a number of different legislative proposals on gun policy currently before Congress. I am evaluating all of the different bills, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as we work on this issue in the Senate. Let us all continue to keep the communities affected by these tragic acts in our thoughts and prayers.

I value the input of fellow Coloradans in considering the wide variety of important issues and legislative initiatives that come before the Senate. I hope you will continue to inform me of your thoughts and concerns.

For more information about my priorities as a U.S. Senator, I invite you to visit my website at http://bennet.senate.gov/. Again, thank you for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Michael F. Bennet
United States Senator

Emphasis mine. Weapons intended for warfare are routinely issued to soldiers. They are generally not available to the general public. What we have here is a political dog whistle calling for a ban on modern sporting rifles. You can tell that Sen Bennet  is not up for re-election next year.

Perhaps we should be asking him not to ban personal defense weapons, which is what the DHS calls a select-fire M4. After all, who made them so much better than me?

Your Safety

Your own personal safety, that is. Guess who's responsible? You.



And not just in Milwaukee. Might make a good subject in a letter to some politicians too.

Pro Gun Art

Paula sent me this,which I thought was a nice picture:

It looks to me like it belongs on one of those motivational posters or a PSA of some sort. Put something together and tell me where you posted it in the comments.

Udall and Bennet Feeling the Heat?

Colorado Sen. Bennet has come out in favor of some of the less extreme gun bans,and Udall has always been a loyal water boy for the prez, but the mail seems to be piling up:

WASHINGTON — A Democratic push to ban roughly 150 types of assault-style weapons Thursday has placed Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall in a tough spot.
Neither Democrat has committed to supporting the legislation carried by their Senate colleague Dianne Feinstein of California, saying Thursday they want to study the proposal to make sure it aligned with Colorado values.

Feinsteins bill is extreme enough that the Dems don't have 50 votes for it in the Senate. Still, that they have 40-odd should remind us that the fight is tough and will not be easily won. Keep those cards and letters coming, and don't forget your local reps either. Some of them think they can fix what they perceive as trivial problems by passing sweeping legislation that endangers us all.

There are some good ones coming up that deserve support. They will go nowhere without it.One allows teachers with a CCW to carry on campus. It only takes 5 minutes and at that rate you should be able to get in two a week.

Birthdays

Today is the birthday of Ernst Heinrich Heinkel, German inventor (1st rocket-powered aircraft), 1888

The introduction of canned beer, 1935

Tamera, who just bought her first soccermommobile.

And Me.

If I had known I was going to live this long, I might have taken better care of myself. Then again, maybe not.

John Moses Browning was yesterday.

Udall Firmly Backs Obama/Feinstein

From the Colorado Observer:

WASHINGTON — Colorado’s Mark Udall indicated support for two key proposals of President Obama’s legislative package to reduce gun violence, taking a stand slightly to the left of his fellow Senate Democrats who also are up for re-election in 2014.
The Colorado Democrat told Denver’s FOX affiliate last month he supports a renewal of the assault-weapons bans that lapsed in 2004.
After Obama rolled out his legislative proposals and signed executive orders Wednesday, Udall released a statement that indicates he also supports a ban on magazine clips of more than 10 bullets.

Udall has always been a hard over leftie. You wouldn't know it from the weasel-worded campaign fliers he e-mails out to his constituents

He's up for reelection in 14.

We're Winning

John Morse is about as rabid an anti-gun Dem as we've got. He's also Senate Majority Leader here. If he thinks he can't get any gun laws through, we must be having an effect.

Keep the pressure up. As the Air Force says: Make the rubble bounce.

And The Survey Says...

Joe Huffman has the complete results of a Fox News survey on guns up at his  place. The highlight of the exercise is this:

Q: If the government passed a law to take your guns, would you give up your guns or defy the law and keep your guns?
A1: Give up—22%
A2: Defy law—65%
A3: Don’t know—13%

Interesting response there, no?

More or less simultaneously, the Denver Post has an anonymous editorial up asking who the heck those uppity county sheriffs think they are, saying they wouldn't run right out and enforce any gun law that came down the road?

The Sheriffs are coming across as a lot smarter than the Post editors or at least a lot more in touch with reality.

QOTD

“If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have any weapons at all!” 

                                — Democrat Congressman Henry A. Waxman (California).

Fox Butterfield, please call your office.

Gun Law - Upcoming

In the Colo legislature this week. Go here and locate your rep then let them know where you stand. You can put your position in the e-mail header then go into detail in the body. Great detail is not necessary.

SB 13 009 is up on Monday, 01-28-13 at 1:30 PM in the Senate Judiciary Committee in Senate Committee Room 356. This is a good bill that would allow school districts and boards to allow school employees with concealed carry permits to carry on school campuses. Please support. SB 13 009 is the third bill up out of three bills following state agency reports. This bill could run late or they could change the order of the bills.

HB 13 1043 is up on Tuesday, 01-29-2013 at 1:30 PM in the House Judiciary Committee in Room 112. It is the second bill up. This is a potentially dangerous bill that changes the definition of "deadly weapon" in Colorado Law to mean any loaded or unloaded firearm, regardless of the intent of the person who is carrying the gun. This change would impact about 120 laws in the state. From a layman's perspective, it looks like this change could create an aggravating factor for any criminal charge levied against a person in possession of a firearm, even if the charge had nothing to do with the gun. Please oppose.

SB 13 062 is up on Wednesday, 01-30-2012 at 1:30 PM in the Senate Judiciary Committee in Senate Committee Room 356. This bill would make businesses that forbid conceal carry civilly liable in the event that disarmed patrons are killed are injured in a criminal or terrorist attack. SB 13 062 is the last bill of three to be heard. Again, the committee chair could change the order of the bills.

That last one would immediately eliminate every No Guns sign in the state. It's a private business owners prerogative wheather to allow or forbid CCW, but at some point public safety becomes involved.

Dear Sen. ________:

Please support SB 13-009 which allows K-12 faculty who have undergone the training to get a CCW to carry concealed while on the job. In the wake of school shootings, it is apparent that the only effective defense against a suicidal madman is an armed presence.

This and replacing the "No Guns" signs at the school entrances with "Your CCW welcome here" at a cost of about $10/school would pretty much bring school shootings to a stop.

Thank you
Joe Voter

Guns And The Media

The local fishwrap, Pravda-On-The-Platte*, has a couple of noteworthy items in it today. First and foremost, they actually published a pro-gun editorial cartoon, although the editorial board probably didn't see it that way:

Captures the national zeitgeist quite nicely don't you think? It captured mine anyway.

At the same time they posted a survey that showed that people think that protecting gun owners rights is more important than controlling them by 50-45%. Remember gun control is about control, not guns.

Best way to reduce gun violence in this country? Heavy-handed enforcement of existing laws = 56% v passing more laws = 35%, so the obvious solution is more laws.

I notice that support for the NRA is running 56-40, which makes the NRA more popular than the president.

There is 41% support for allowing teachers with a CCW to carry on the job, which is encouraging. Free CCW classes for teachers is being offered by the RMGO. Go here to enter their drawing for an EBR and make a donation. $25 helps defray the costs of the course.

Finally how many guns are in your household? None = 57%, one or more = 43%. The 43% number is up from the generally reported 33% I'd been hearing only a few months ago.

*With the publication of the editorial in Pravda warning Americans to jealously protect their gun rights, I may have to come up with another appellation for the local newspaper monopoly. I'm open to suggestions, and the contest is on.

High Noon in Denver

Here's a picture I took at about 1 PM from the park across the street from the capitol.

What you can't see from this angle is the drive directly in front of the building. The crowd at the top of the hill is some 20 people deep. I'm guessing the crowd ran 5-600. Not bad for approximately 2 days notice.

The shroud on the building top is so you won't notice the Democrats scraping the gold off the dome.

Magazine Ban Oversight

New York rammed a gun law through which, among other things limits detachable magazines to a maximum of 7 rounds. Inadvertantly they forgot to exempt their own lackys, the police. They promise to fix this, but:

Recently the NYC cops shot a gunman outside the Empire State Building, firing 16 rounds, and hitting 9 bystanders in the process.

Previously, in the Amadou Diallo shooting, the cops got 19 hits out of 41 shots, batting .463 which is quite respectable if you're playing baseball.

Prior to that the LAPD, resounding to a domestic disturbance/man with a gun, fired some 215 shots at the perp as he walked out of his house, got in his car, and drove away, putting not a scratch on him but doing some $6000 worth of collateral damage.

After a while it becomes obvious why the cops need those big magazines. Some of them no doubt hunt, which answers the assertion that "Nobody needs 30 rounds to shoot a deer."

Not to worry, the legislature promises to fix the oversight

Rally At The Capitol

• • 

    Saturday, January 19, 2013
  • 

    11:30am until 3:30pm in MST

• Call 719-200-6797 for more information Don Dobyns

• https://www.facebook.com/events/587941534554264/?ref=22 Flyer: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4262789643167&set=oa.466250933438973&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf&_fb_noscript=1 http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/anti-gun-control-rallies-scheduled-state-capitols-nationwide_696294.html  Click to enlarge.

Newsmax Poll

Hit this poll:

Either they're swamped, or it's closed. Anyone see the final results? When I saw them at noon, it was running about 80% against any form of gun control at all.

Update: Admittedly Newsmax is a conservative site. Here's a poll from Fox with a much wider coverage that suggests that people favor more guns in the hands of the citizenry than more gun laws by about 2:1

Executive Orders

The president has mad his speech, and the use of children as human shields seems to have worked. I'd comment, but here's an executive summary that puts the whole thing in perspective. Entertaining and worth the read.

However:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

Tell the government to follow the law.

Widen the existing database on legal gun owners.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

Tell the regulators to stop the stupid and useless regulations.

Abolish any thought of privacy you harbored regarding your medical records. Now the Norks will be able to steal them from the BATF in addition to the national health.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

Pay the states back for the unfunded mandates that the Feds keeps making.

Or, far more likely, threaten to withhold money they would otherwise be entitled to.

Bold type is my comment. Government is evil, uncaring, greedy and incompetent. Expect the worst and you will seldom be disappointed.

Human Shields

Obama plans to announce his plans to disarm the law-abiding surrounded by children.

Crassest use of human shields I've heard of, even including the middle east.

The Red Line

Bill Whittle has a video, or part of one in which he sidles up to the question of when do you refuse to comply with the law?

He lives in Cali. and has an AR which has the "bullet button" and 10-round magazines and required him to get a background check and go through a waiting period. If you buy from a dealer there, you don't have4 a choice. He suggests that when the government calls for you to turn the guns in, that's where you should refuse to comply.

Bad idea Bill. When it gets to that stage it's way too late for non-compliance. The red line for non-compliance is when they ask you to register the gun. Without registration, and with face-to-face sales without checks, whether a person actually has the gun in question is questionable. It's difficult to get a search warrant on those kind of shaky grounds. Not impossible, mind you, but somewhat more difficult.

Update: Just found this:

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Winston Churchill

 

Health Care

The quickest way to reduce health care costs is to simply eliminate health care. Several countries operate on this principle and if you make it to age 20, your odds of making it to age 70 are actually pretty good.

Found this over at Theo Spark:

It has a Zazzle watermark, so you can probably get it there as a t-shirt or coffee mug. Make a great Christmas present for your doctor, no? It accompanies an article by Alan Caruba decrying the state of health care in the country.

Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban or severely restrict the painkillers which makes hiring the fellow with the gun look like a realistic alternative. But wait! He also wants to ban the fellows gun and take yours away from you. What's a person to do in such a state?

In England, the NHS routinely decides that if your odds aren't that good, it simply cuts off your food and water. In just a few days, you're no longer a burden to society. Here it looks like the magic number for the "Liverpool Care Pathway" as it's called in the old country will be 70.

Want to live longer? Get elected. Some senators have been preserved into their 90's.

How Evolution Works

The ladder goes both ways:

I wouldn't mind it at all if the folks in the zone didn't insist on taking me with them.

H/T Theo Spark

Shooting Accessories

This has got to be the living end for high-precision, long range shooters, the Tracking Point XS1.

The scope runs on Linux and adjusts the reticle to take into consideration range, tilt, wind, humidity, and altitude density. An iPad app mirrors the scope display so your spotter can see the same thing you do. It requires that you use their own ammo to guarantee repeatability and starts at around $17,000.

I'll wait for the price to come down. For that kind of money I can hire "Big Luigi" Salmonella to go out there and personally stab my intended target to death with his notoriously large stiletto.

H/T to John for the tip.

Redneck Nerf Gun

I submitted my pedal air gun to the instructables contest. If you like it, please vote for it. The contest regrettably ends soon, so if not this year, then maybe next year.

Proposed New Gun Law

Of all the dreck that's being proposed in the congress, here's the only one so far that might actually help.

H.R.133
Latest Title: To repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and amendments to that Act.
Sponsor: Rep Massie, Thomas [KY-4] (introduced 1/3/2013) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 1/3/2013 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Imagine the deterrent factor of a $10 sign on the school house door reading "Your valid CCW welcome here."

Drop your rep a line and suggest he co-sponsor this.

Update:
Sir;
  You are probably aware that Congressman Massie (KY) has introduced HR133, a bill to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990.   The President has called for quick action to prevent another school shooting, and this is the most realistic answer to a problem that no "assault weapons" ban will cure.

It's unfortunate that we need to protect our children with firearms, but it has been proven over and over again to be the only effective method we have.

Signs proclaiming "NO GUNS" have proven to be magnets for unstable people, not a deterrent.  Far more effective would be a sign proclaiming "Your CCW Welcome here."

Had she been allowed to be armed, Principal Dawn Hochsprung and 25 others might still be alive.

  I urge you to support HR133 and to go further and take the lead to allow responsible people inside schools to be their own first line of defense.

Respectfully,

The nraila site has a setup that allows you to email your rep, all your reps, or your entire state delegation.

Anthropogenic Global Warming Is Baloney

Statistics means never having to say you're certain, reads the t-shirt, but sometimes it's useful to point out a lack of certainty. In complex systems, it is possible that some result and one variable correlate fairly well, but as we know, correlation is not causality. It's entirely possible that some combination of other variables is in fact the driving factor, and the first variable is just along for the ride.

What's Up With That has found a scholarly paper that looks at climate change and concludes that human activity really has little or nothing to do with it. I have been exposed to statistical analysis, and I recognize the words he's using, but the papers author is going somewhat deeper than I had to. Still, the conclusion:

Panels a and b both show that there is no relationship between temperature and the anthropogenic anomaly, once the warming effect of solar irradiance is taken into consideration. “…our rejection of AGW is not absolute; it might be a false positive, and we cannot rule out the possibility that recent global warming has an anthropogenic footprint. However, this possibility is very small, and is not statistically significant at conventional levels.”

 Emphasis mine. Still, as long as "green" business can act as a money laundering machine for politicians, we'll have to listen to the moonbats.

Gun Law Opportunity

It seems the Swiss are annoyed at misuse of Swiss gun law stats, and have set out to straighten the record. Interesting article, and worth a read. The complaint goes on at some length, but look:

The Bradys and other anti gun folks are really fond of citing overall gun deaths in the U.S. and include suicides in their totals, which puffs up the stats considerably as some 60% of U.S. deaths by firearm are suicides.

In Switzerland, the number is only about 20%. What's the difference? The Swiss are not noticeably less depressed than Americans, but they do have physician assisted suicide (PAS) available to them. The implication here being that if we could get Obamacare to include PAS in addition to the death panels, we could reduce our overall firearm death rate by some 40%!

Write today and demand this be added. 20 dead school kids is a tragedy, but 20,000 PAS is a statistic. It's for the children!

Colorado Gun Law

If this is any indication, I have to say the legislature is taking the "Softly, softly, catchee monkee" approach to gun control here. Refreshing, I suppose, compared to the ham-fisted approach in Illinois.

Rep Claire Levy and Sen Rollie Heath have introduced what has to be called the Seung-Hui Chu Virginia-Tech memorial bill which while bowing to the Colorado Supreme courts ruling that a CCW is pretty much valid anywhere, chips away at the phrase "pretty much anywhere".

If you have a CCW here you are allowed to carry on college campuses, but not in K-12 schools or government buildings. This bill would continue campus carry, but not in any campus buildings. The newspaper article in Pravda-by-the-Platte does not mention a number assigned to the bill, nor does it mention any provision to provide secure lockers for CCW folks to leave their carry pieces in when they enter a building.

If enacted the bill would turn every college campus building in the state into a copy of the Lubys restaurant in Texas where Susanna Hupp watched her parents murdered before her eyes as she left her CCW gun locked in her car outside. Of course legislation that enables mass murders also enables further such legislation, which may be the point. To make an omelet, one must break a few eggs.

With a couple of minor tweaks, the above 2 paragraphs would make a nice letter to the legislators in question. Be interesting to see their responses.

Speaking of responses, I wrote our Senatorial delegation regarding gun control bills in the 113th congress. I got a non-committal response from Sen Bennett who is safe until 2016, and no response from Sen Udall who is up in 2014. Excerpt form Bennett:

We must have a real discussion in this country about finding ways to stop these types of senseless shootings.  While no one law is likely to prevent a deranged individual committed to taking life from doing so, we should have a comprehensive and civil conversation about finding the right and most effective solutions to protect our communities and particularly, our children. This includes exploring a number of areas, such as mental health services, violence in our culture, and a review of our gun laws.

The phrase "real discussion" is Demspeak for "I'll talk and you'll listen". Calling for a review of gun laws similarly suggests some kind of draconian ramp-up toward turning the whole country into Chicago. 

Free State Project

The Free State Project is an informal activity by libertarians to encourage the like-minded to move to a single state and by voting and running for office, turn the state into a bastion of free-market capitalism. The state selected somehow was New Hampshire.

They are making inroads there. As they say in the Air Force, If you're taking flak, you must be over the target.

A New Hampshire legislator wants her constituents to know that she feels conservatives are the “single biggest threat” her state faces today and she wants to use her powers to legislate to “pass measures that will restrict” the freedoms of Granite State conservatives.

Setting an example for the rest of us. And here I'd thought the Libertarians would never elect anyone to public office higher than Town Dog Catcher.

Gun Sales II

QOTD from Phelps:

There are 800,000 law enforcement officers in America.
The FBI did five million NICS checks for people buying firearms in America — in November and December 2012 alone.
That’s over six guns per cop in the last two months.
Confiscation?  You better start negotiation.

I knew we were buying a lot of guns, but this really puts it in perspective.

Next item to consider: The usual suspects are putting forth the usual bromide gun bills as quickly as possible so as to take advantage of the rather short spate of attention that a mass shooting generates. Already in Illinois a proposal that might charitably be described as Black Belt Ignorance has been withdrawn for lack of sufficient votes.

The Illinois law was the first to actually get any kind of consideration, at least partly because it's being pushed in a lame duck session in which some number of the members have nothing to lose. It also got a lot of mention in the gun blogs and internet forums and newsletters asking the readers to send e-mails to the Ill legislature.

Folks, when they feel the heat, they see the light. Don't let up. Several bit players in Washington have proposed lesser bills individually banning standard-capacity magazines and other such affronts to the stability of modern society. The thinking here is that if you only ask for the moon, and put off the request for the sun and the stars, you might get something and you can go for the rest later.

You don't need to be specific as to which anti-gun bill you oppose, just put something like "No on Gun Control" in the subject line and write something very general in the body.  The unpaid, overworked staffer whose job it is to keep the tote board up to date will credit your mail in the correct column, and move to the next one..

Letter writing this year needs to be the literary equivalent of the fire bombing of Dresden. Twice a week is about right, and it only takes about 15 minutes to cover both State and Federal officeholders. Bombs away!

If you want to get specific, there's a list of the offerings so far at the Federal level at No Lawyers.

Gun Sales

NICS is quick to point out, and I readily concur, that a NICS check is not an indicator of a gun sale. Sometimes it's multiple gun sales, and sometimes it's just a background check for some other reason. Still, the odds are good. So congratulations America, in addition to smashing the previous monthly record for checks of just over 2M, 2012 is another banner year:

19.59M for 2012.


While it it true that a NICS check does not necessarily mean a gun sale, it is interesting to note that civilian ammo supplies for the more popular calibers are down to 10% of normal, so someone is planning on doing some shooting.

Somewhat more ominously, it was observed that at a gun show in PA where activity was frenzied, sales of the "burial tubes" favored by survivalists were noticeably lagging.

Again, happy new year. Here's a musical interlude possibly appropriate to the occasion.

Yowza!

Got phase 1 of resolutions taken care of already. Wrote both Senators and my state rep and Senator, one of the four is actually on my side. The graphic in a post below showing school shootings before and after making schools gun-free zones will be on the projector screen during the debates.

Pravda-on-the-Platte publishes an article in which one of our state legislators is suggesting that the costt of the background check be transferred from the state, where it is now, to the gun purchaser. Here in CO, a BC goes to the CBI who routes it through the NICS system which presumably helps filter out certain misdemeanors and mental adjudication, assuming that the mental issues are referred to the state in the first place.

The cost savings would supposedly be routed to the state mental health agencies and the upshot is that the gunnies would be made to pay for it. This is thought to be fair since mass shootings involve both crazy people and guns.

This is unlikely to fly for several reasons.
First it's a tax, which the libs love, but it's a tax on an enumerated right, which is a setback legally.
Second, the gunnies didn't make all the crazy people that way, just a hand full of activists.
Third, we already pay the salaries and benefits of the entire legislature which in my mind is enough subsidy for the mentally deficient right there.