Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
July 18
The Washington Post on closing gun-making loophole
Do-it-yourself has never been easier; just ask the owners of any of the more than 25,785 ghost guns seized nationwide last year. The internet has made it simple for Americans of all ages (and criminal records) to purchase firearm-making kits at discount prices. The result is a national crisis.
The Post reported this month on a rash of crimes using unlicensed, unserialized weapons: from an 18-year-old in Springfield, Va., who stormed into a garage during a fistfight and killed two unarmed 17-year-olds; to two teens in Brooklyn Park, Minn., who tried to shoot someone outside their car and killed their friend inside it instead; to a 16-year-old in New Rochelle, N.Y., who created a “factory” for firearms in his bedroom last year before killing one of his peers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has connected ghost guns to 692 homicides and fatal shootings through 2021. But authorities can’t link the guns to suspects, because they have no serial numbers to identify them.
The spectral nature of these weapons is a selling point for criminals who don’t want to get caught. It also helps those who can’t buy guns from licensed dealers. That includes people who would fail background checks, such as convicted felons or violent extremists. And it includes people too young to own guns legally. Manufacturers’ ability to ignore the usual rules surrounding firearms sales depends on a regulatory loophole: They argue they’re not selling guns at all. Instead, they market “frames,” for handguns, and “receivers,” for rifles — each of these constituting 80 percent of a gun rather than a gun in its entirety.
Turning one of these into a 100 percent complete gun is a breeze with an online tutorial. Even a novice can produce a Glock 19 or AK-47 in a few hours. Sometimes they have to buy the extra parts separately, but often they can opt for a package deal with the components included.
There is no good reason federal policy should allow anyone with an ounce of web-savviness to skirt the law. The good news is that the White House published a rule last summer clarifying that frames and receivers qualify as firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968. The bad news is that a federal judge in Texas vacated the stricture as an abuse of the ATF’s authority. Wiser minds might prevail on appeal, but Congress has room to act, too, by affirming that frames and receivers are firearms that require serial numbers as well as background checks on buyers.
The other option is for the states to act. Thirteen have already imposed regulations on ghost guns. The best approach is to ban the sale of unfinished firearms without serializing their parts and performing background checks, as well as possession of unserialized parts or completed products. States and cities with laws in place can take to court ghost-gun companies that ship into their borders anyway, just as Los Angeles did when its police department recovered more than 700 such weapons sold by Nevada-based Polymer 80. The District received a $4 million judgment in a similar suit.
Arguing against closing the loophole on ghost guns means arguing that dangerous criminals and reckless children should be able to log on to their computers and buy weapons of war. Is the gun lobby ready to make that case?
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/18/ghost-gun-control-crimes/
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July 14
The Wall Street Journal on the House and Ukraine aid
The House passed the annual defense policy bill on Friday, and what a shock it must have been for the press corps. The Beltway media spent the week informing readers that conservative social policies doomed the bill and that GOP isolationists might block support for Ukraine.
They need better sources. Neither happened, and Republican amendments to abandon Ukraine in particular were routed on the floor. The GOP’s abandon-Ukraine caucus is loud and damaging to the party, but most Americans appreciate the stakes for the U.S. in backing Kyiv.
The House bill authorizes $300 million in security assistance for Ukraine, which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene aimed to strip in an amendment. Her measure failed 341-89. Rep. Matt Gaetz tried to block all further military aid for Kyiv, which lost 358-70. A majority of Republicans joined Democrats in opposing both.
The measures would have damaged U.S. interests and been a disaster for the public’s view of Republicans as the party of a strong national defense. Since when are Republicans against helping people who want to fight for their freedom against Russia or China?
Not one to miss an opportunity to adopt a losing cause, Donald Trump belly-flopped in on Friday with a statement that when he wins the Presidency he’ll end the war in “24 hours,” details never to follow. “This conflict must end. Not one American mother or father wants to send their child to die in Eastern Europe. We must have PEACE.”
Not a single American solider has died in Ukraine, which is part of the point in supporting that country with weapons. Check Russia there so that U.S. troops don’t have to fight Vladimir Putin ’s tanks in Vilnius or Warsaw.
Mr. Trump lamented dwindling U.S. weapons stocks, a real problem that he could have done more to prevent while President. But the U.S. is replacing donated equipment with better kit, and new contracts are a start on reviving the defense industrial base.
The Trump-Gaetz view commands even less support in the Senate. That’s all the more encouraging given that Mr. Biden has barely made the case for supporting Ukraine to the public. But Congressional patience isn’t infinite, and Mr. Biden ought to use Congress’s show of political support to accelerate the delivery of weapons, especially the long-range missiles the President has been hesitating over.
The GOP isolationists rail against “forever wars,” but the real recipe for extended war is giving Ukraine only enough weapons to fight to a draw rather than to drive Russia out. That’s been President Biden’s strategy. Former Vice President Mike Pence had it right in our pages this week: The fastest route to peace is a Ukrainian victory.
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July 12
The Guardian on NATO's future
Despite excitable speculation before the Vilnius summit, there was never a serious prospect that Ukraine could join NATO while it is at war – as Kyiv has acknowledged. Membership cannot be granted retrospectively amid a conflict. Article 5, which sets out the principle of collective defense – an attack on one is treated as an attack on all – works as a deterrent, not as a do-over.
Nor was there much prospect of this meeting even agreeing to a concrete timetable for membership afterwards. The alliance operates by consensus, but the U.S. calls the tune because it pays two-thirds of the piper’s wages. It has made clear repeatedly that it regards membership for Ukraine as a distant prospect.
There are significant disagreements over how best to guarantee Ukraine’s security in future, while reducing the risk of Russian escalation now. Nonetheless, NATO looks stronger and more united than it has for years – while Russia is still regrouping after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny. Four years ago, Emmanuel Macron said that the alliance was “brain dead”. More recently, he acknowledged that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had revived it.
The renewed sense of purpose is reaffirmed in the outcome of this summit: an expanded alliance, with Sweden on course to join Finland as a new member after Turkey and Hungary dropped objections; agreement on much more detailed military plans; and increased commitments to Ukraine, albeit far short of its aspirations. With its counteroffensive yet to make significant progress, Kyiv must continue to press for more, faster, in both diplomatic and military terms. But it treads a difficult path. Both the British defense secretary, Ben Wallace, and the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, reminded Ukraine of the need for “gratitude” on Wednesday.
NATO has been strengthened more by necessity than choice. Europe’s challenges go far beyond Russia. The others were spelt out by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, in a speech last autumn that outlined how longstanding certainties had been upended: “You – the United States – take care of our security. You – China and Russia – provided the basis of our prosperity. This is a world that is no longer there,” he warned. There is an internal threat, too: “Inside our countries … the radical right is increasing.”
The greatest challenge is the prospect of another term for Donald Trump, who as president discussed withdrawal from NATO. Could pressure on Congress and the Pentagon see off such a threat in future? Perhaps. If not, European security minus the U.S. would be not only immensely militarily challenging, but would require extensive recalibration. Without Washington setting the line, decision-making might prove more difficult.
Even without a second Trump presidency, the U.S. pivot back to Europe may not survive its growing tensions with China. While spending across the European continent has risen markedly in recent years, there are questions about whether shifting rhetoric has been fully matched by reality, especially in Germany’s case. Living up to promises would both encourage the U.S. to remain engaged, and ready Europe for a world where Washington does not. The need to “keep the Americans in” is not a new problem – it was a key part of the founding principle of NATO, as described (unofficially) by its first secretary-general. But it has rarely been more challenging.
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July 18
China Daily on U.S./NATO actions and Asia-Pacific stability
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems to have put its plan of setting up a liaison office in Tokyo on hold, at least until autumn. Yet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s participation in the transatlantic alliance’s summit in Lithuania on July 11 and 12 sends a strong signal that the two sides are willing to further deepen their engagement.
According to reports by Reuters and Agence France-Presse, NATO intended to include the plan of setting up a liaison office in Japan in the statement it released after the gathering of NATO leaders in Vilnius. That it didn’t was apparently due to the strong objection of France.
Amid their anxieties at what has come to pass because of the organization’s relentless pressure on Russia, the European members have flocked to the shelter of the U.S. security umbrella. This has allowed mischief to grow within the organization. The reins are firmly held in the hands of Washington, and it sees but one point on the compass.
True, the U.S.’ permanent representative to NATO Julianne Smith said at the gathering that the organization was “not adding members from the Indo-Pacific,” and the NATO’s focus on challenges posed by China does not signal an intention to invite Asian nations to join the bloc. But the proposed liaison office is undoubtedly a result of the encouragement Tokyo has received from Washington. It wants Tokyo to become a bigger player in its “Indo-Pacific strategy” aimed at containing China. In view of that, rather than defining the limits of NATO’s outreach in the “Indo-Pacific”, as Smith claimed, the U.S. is strengthening NATO’s outreach in the region.
In interviews on Sunday, both Republican Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska, who was part of a U.S. delegation that attended the summit, and Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, were more frank, saying that NATO’s expansion into Asia is inevitable.
Sullivan even saw it as “progress” that the NATO statement mentioned China “almost 20 times” and that the organization had invited the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea to take part in the summit.
China has a different view of course. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that although the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago, NATO still holds the zero-sum and confrontational mentality that were products of that time. In seeking to reverse the wheel of history, it is acting against the trend of the times and the will of much of the international community, he stressed.
Whether the other NATO members will heed those words or continue on the course laid out for it by Washington will have a great bearing on what transpires in Asia in the near future.
ONLINE: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202307/18/WS64b68e50a31035260b817208.html
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July 12
The Los Angeles Times on abortion access
Ohio is the latest state in which voters will decide whether to enshrine in the state constitution the right to abortion that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Abortion access advocates in that state say they have submitted more than enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to protect the right to an abortion up to fetal viability — or beyond, if necessary to protect the health of a pregnant person. They were required to collect 413,000 valid signatures of voters across the state. Last week, they turned in nearly 710,000 signatures. “Toward the end it was difficult to find someone who hadn’t signed it,” said Gabriel Mann, from the advocacy coalition, Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and returned the decision on abortion to the states, reproductive rights advocates took that directive seriously.
Last year, about half a dozen states across the political spectrum — blue, purple and red — voted either to secure reproductive rights through state constitutional amendments or to reject ballot measures that would have specified that state constitutions don’t protect abortion rights. Those elections in California, Vermont, Michigan, Kansas and Kentucky demonstrated what poll after poll has shown: Most Americans support at least access to abortion during the first trimester, even in states with antiabortion legislatures.
When the Supreme Court overturned this ruling last year, it sent the issue of reproductive rights to the states, where the fight over access has been waged ever since -- and will continue into coming years.
But even if the Ohio secretary of state confirms that enough valid signatures were submitted, the vote on the Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety Amendment may be thwarted by an anti-democratic effort by the Ohio Legislature. The state’s lawmakers recently passed Issue 1, a ballot measure to raise the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%.
The Legislature also wedged in a special election for that measure on Aug. 8 — just a few months ahead of a regularly scheduled November election. If the measure passes (and it only needs a simple majority), it would raise the number of votes needed to adopt the abortion amendment.
This is an outrageous ploy to erect an unreasonable hurdle for supporters of reproductive rights to benefit an intolerant minority. Ohio has had a simple majority requirement for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments for decades. Of the 18 states that allow citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, most require only a simple majority to pass. That is the case in California. Less than a handful of states require more than a simple majority. The Florida Legislature successfully put a measure on the ballot in 2006 to raise the number of votes needed to pass constitutional amendments to 60% after environmentalists had gotten an initiative creating a high-speed rail system passed and animal welfare advocates won passage of an amendment guaranteeing minimum living space for pregnant pigs.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose — who has in the past said he wants to raise the threshold for voting on constitutional amendments — told a group this year that there’s one reason why he’s supporting the current measure: “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
The Ohio measure would also change the requirement that signatures gathered for a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment come not just from half of the state’s 88 counties, but from all of them. That would make Ohio the only state with such a requirement.
A year after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, abortion foes want more, even if most Americans disagree.
The states that voted to protect abortion rights last year did so with majorities below 60%. (Although Kansas came close with 59% voting against a measure that would have prohibited the constitution from protecting abortion rights.) If Issue 1 passes, it could be more difficult for Ohio to get the reproductive rights amendment over that threshold in November.
And Ohioans need constitutional protection for abortion. A six-week abortion ban passed by the Legislature in 2019 went into effect briefly after Roe was overturned and then was blocked by the courts, but that could change. Currently, abortion is legal in Ohio roughly up to 22 weeks of gestation with various other restrictions.
But before they even get to vote on reproductive rights, Ohioans need to go to the polls in August to make sure Issue 1 doesn’t pass. Its only reason for being on the ballot is to make it harder for people to protect the abortion rights that lawmakers would like to take away.
The Supreme Court returned decision-making on abortion rights to the states. But that doesn’t mean making it inordinately hard for voters to protect the rights they value. Ohio voters need to make sure their legislators get that message on Aug. 8.
The Associated Press
