Congress Deadlocked on Mandatory Waiting Period for Handgun Purchases

By Ready to Fire News On Apr 1, 2019

Politics is all about compromise, but the House and Senate have been pushing around a mandatory 24-hour waiting period for handgun purchases that does anything but that.

Unfortunately, it looks like the bill — which started life as a 72-hour waiting period, but was negotiated down — still has plenty of life left in it as it heads to the House of Representatives. Gun control proponents are attempting to push through a 72-hour waiting period on all purchases, not just handguns, but that legislation has stalled and been pulled back. With all of the debate in the news, will this so-called “cooling off” period actually have the impact that gun control advocates expect?

Sometimes, you have to consider the source when you’re reading on the internet, and the article on CNN.com that details how handgun waiting periods save lives is certainly circumspect. Videos of adorable children aside, the hard evidence cited by the liberal news bureau includes a study from several years ago by Harvard Business School showing that there’s a 17% decrease in gun homicides in states where there’s a mandatory waiting period before purchasing a handgun. The data about suicides is not quite as clear-cut, with the researchers stating that “more research is necessary” before making a determination on whether there was truly a link between a waiting period and gun-related suicides.

Gun control advocates would strongly prefer a 48-hour or 72-hour waiting period, but some are perfectly happy to agree to a 24-hour period before people can make a handgun purchase. The idea behind the waiting period is that people will have time to cool off and rethink any actions that might be taken in haste. That could potentially reduce the number of spur-of-the-moment gun-related homicides or suicides, but would have little to no impact on many of the country’s mass shootings where the perpetrator generally plans their actions for a period of time before the incident occurs.

The most recent version of the bill does not include the safe storage legislation that was also proposed as part of the original 72-hour waiting period. That has been negotiated out of the deal, in the hopes of getting it through the House in a timely manner. Even if everything moves through the House as gun-hating liberals planned, there’s always the possibility that the bill will be pulled back into the courts before it has an opportunity to take root throughout the country. There are several states that have enacted waiting periods, and cities as well. This would be a federal law, making it illegal to sell guns outside the parameters of the waiting period.

It remains to be seen how exactly the House will act, but it never hurts to reach out to legislators and let them know your thoughts on upcoming legislation.

~ Ready to Fire News