Seems that our esteemed junior Senator from Vermont has a thing for proposing stuff that, well, is already being done. He’s done it twice this week so far, and the week’s not over yet.
Redundancy #1 — This merits a double facepalm with oakleaf clusters. It occurred at the Brown and Black Forum last night:
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday attempted to defend his controversial vote to protect gun producers and sellers from legal liability if a gun is used in a crime, but proposed a revision to the law that already exists.
[...]
"If you are a gun manufacturer who is selling guns into an area and you’re selling a whole lot of guns, and you have reason to believe that a lot of those guns are not meant for people in that area, but are being distributed to criminal elements, should you be prosecuted? Damn right," he told Fusion's Jorge Ramos.
However, that measure already exists. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the law that Sanders supported contains six conditions in which gun manufacturers would not be shielded from lawsuits. One of these includes "an action brought against someone convicted of 'knowingly transfer[ing] a firearm, knowing that such firearm will be used to commit a crime of violence' by someone directly harmed by such unlawful conduct.”
Redundancy #2 — And less than twenty-four hours later, guess who voted with the GOP to call for something that already exists? Yup, that would be Bernie, who did what Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown were too smart to do, and voted for Rand Paul’s “Audit the Fed” grandstanding bill — even though the Fed is already being audited by Deloitte and Touche.
As fellow Kossack “shrike” said in response (and yes, I asked him for permission to cite him by name, so no, this isn’t “calling him out”):
The Fed is fully audited by Deloitte & Touche each year. Rand Paul’s “audit” is an attempt to have Congress dictate monetary policy so that the Fed’s independence is eliminated and any stimulus (which greatly helped in the recent recovery) could be thwarted by legislators.
Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and every other Democrat aside from Tammy Baldwin knew enough to stay away from this turkey of a bill. Bernie embraced it.
Ai-yi-yi.