The fact is we have taken steps to improve background checks, which goes at the issue of preventing those who should not have guns from acquiring them.
It would also require increased cooperation by states with the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and would prohibit people deemed by the courts as unfit to own guns from obtaining them.
So the question is simple: what is the best way to ensure that those who should not have access to guns are kept away from them in the first place?
Taking guns away from honest citizens leaves them defenceless against criminals, who will ignore any gun-control laws, argue opponents of such measures.
Other steps under consideration include better monitoring of people with mental illness to prevent them from obtaining guns.
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County officials also cited concerns about clerks having to register thousands of formerly legal semi-automatic weapons and renew pistol permits, as well as enforcement of provisions that could require county sheriffs' deputies to confiscate guns from owners deemed ineligible to have them.
Crime prevention includes annually taking 8, 000 guns, 800 of them illegal, from people who are stopped, Kelly said.
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New York requires locked storage of guns if you live with someone prohibited from them because of a crime, commitment to a mental institution or court protection order and made the unsafe storage of assault weapons a misdemeanor.
Thune said lawmakers should aim instead at preventing future mass killings by improving mental health programs and increasing the records that state governments send the federal background check system so the checks can do a better job of keeping guns from people who shouldn't have them.
Because they would be so small and light, it would even be possible to launch them from ground-based guns.
Froman, the NRA board member, said she'd like to see more sharing of resources to ensure a database of the mentally ill would prevent them from having access to guns.
And Brazil has just slapped a 150% export tax on guns to try to stop them being smuggled back from Paraguay.
It would also stem the flow of guns purchased legally in one state from reaching people in other states where they are not legally allowed to own them, said Leahy, one of the bill's authors.
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