This OP does not exist in a vacuum. Emma Gonzalez has in fact specifically called for particular new gun laws. See, for example:
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/emma-gonzalez-parkland-gun-control-cover
There, Emma writes,
We need to digitize gun-sales records, mandate universal background checks, close gun-show loopholes and straw-man purchases, ban high-capacity magazines, and push for a comprehensive assault weapons ban with an extensive buyback system.
It would also benefit us to redefine what assault weapons are so that when we call for a ban against them, it’s clear that we aren’t trying to ban all guns. No one needs to use an assault weapon to protect themselves while walking home at night. No one should be allowed to use an AR-15...
Let's dissect this quote a bit, shall we?
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We need to digitize gun-sales records" - Classic first step in national registration, which historically (Australia, Canada, etc.) has often been followed by confiscation or heavy-handed "buybacks" at the least.
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mandate universal background checks," - Sounds good, but basically means national registration if said background check is tied to a particular firearms purchase.
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close gun-show loopholes and straw-man purchases, " - Straw purchases are already prohibited by Federal law, so that is literally a straw man. And while gun control activists love to make hay about the "gun show loophole," all it boils down to is a legal sale of private property between two individuals who are meeting up of their own accord. While this surely is at times an avenue by which criminals obtain firearms, it is a small problem compared to thefts of firearms, etc.
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ban high-capacity magazines," - In the gun control world, this generally means standard-capacity magazines of >10 rounds. Yet, I see no evidence that this would eliminate mass shootings. In fact, there is peer-reviewed science that says exactly the opposite:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1525107116674926
Let's just put the whole abstract here for study:
Do bans on large-capacity magazines (LCMs) for semiautomatic firearms have significant potential for reducing the number of deaths and injuries in mass shootings? The most common rationale for an effect of LCM use is that they allow mass killers to fire many rounds without reloading. LCMs are known to have been used in less than one third of 1% of mass shootings. News accounts of 23 shootings in which more than six people were killed or wounded and LCMs were known to have been used, occurring in the United States in 1994–2013, were examined. There was only one incident in which the shooter may have been stopped by bystander intervention when he tried to reload. In all of these 23 incidents, the shooter possessed either multiple guns or multiple magazines, meaning that the shooter, even if denied LCMs, could have continued firing without significant interruption by either switching loaded guns or changing smaller loaded magazines with only a 2- to 4-seconds delay for each magazine change. Finally, the data indicate that mass shooters maintain such slow rates of fire that the time needed to reload would not increase the time between shots and thus the time available for prospective victims to escape.
So what will Emma call for when >10 round magazine bans fail to stop mass shootings? Would a five-round magazine capacity (pushing American firearms owners back to mid-nineteenth century technology) suffice? Does she plan for the same limits to apply to police officers? If not, why not? Regardless, as I said above, the solution to these problems lies outside the gun control arena, not in arbitrary limits on the Second Amendment.
Anyway, onward with Emma's quote...
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and push for a comprehensive assault weapons ban with an extensive buyback system." - This translates as confiscation. A ban with a "grandfather" clause is a ban with a 1-generation delay (sorry, no dice), and an "extensive" (does she mean "mandatory"?) "buyback system" does not read like she plans to offer citizens a choice. Well, she can pound sand. As an individual, she is a survivor who deserves to tell her story. But once she enters the policy arena and calls to deny Americans' their Constitutional rights, she becomes an opponent with bad ideas, nothing more.
I could go on, but the fact is that she is proposing a ban on the most popular centerfire long rifle sold in the USA today and its close mechanical cousins ("
No one should be allowed to use an AR-15" ). These rifles happen to be used in less than 0.5% of all firearms-caused murders across the nation.
This is not moderate.
This is not "common sense."
This is, in fact, "ignorant" of the popular will and Second Amendment jurisprudence about the enumeration of this right explicitly protecting firearms "in common use."
So again, I will say that Emma Gonzalez is saying ignorant things that, as policy proposals, will not keep Americans safer, no matter how fervently she and her anti-2A allies wish it to be so. Pursuing these proposals will alienate rural and Second-Amendment-supporting citizens from the Democratic Party, and help to keep at least the Senate under Republican control for the foreseeable future. If you're comfortable with that, bully for you. But I'd like to see a country governed by leaders that respect the whole Bill of Rights WHILE ALSO addressing violent crime in strategic and effective manners.
This is not "knee jerk" on my part in the slightest, thank you very much.
-app