Leftist Group Waving the White Flag on Banning Assault Weapons

The Wall Street Journal Washington Wire reports that the Center for American Progress (CAP) is "waving a white flag" on banning assault weapons in a study out today titled “Assault Weapons Revisited:”

“The answer is not that assault weapons aren’t dangerous and people having access to them is a good thing,” Mr. Gerney said in an interview this week. “There are other things that we can do to lessen the risks of assault weapons short of banning them. … When you’re making policy, it’s always a mix of what’s going to have a biggest positive impact and what is practical and politically possible.”

CAP says the appropriate focus should be background checks and licensing firearms.  And the Journal notes that even though President Obama pushed for renewal of the so-called "assault weapons" that was a threat used to push for a compromise on expanding background checks:

Instead, CAP makes an argument for six policy prescriptions that are equally unlikely to receive a hearing in a Congress with zero appetite for any gun restrictions: implement background checks for all gun sales, force dealers to report to the federal government multiple sales of long guns, expand the prohibition on interstate handgun sales to include shotguns and rifles, forbid the use or possession of machine guns by people younger than 16, and require licenses and permits to possess an assault rifle or manufacture guns using 3D printers.

We've already seen some of these proposals in Virginia.  There was a bill introduced in the last session of the General Assembly to ban out of state sale of long guns.