They don’t want to take your guns, you paranoid extremist Constitution humpers. They merely want common-sense gun transfer reform! American Spectator:
For months now the Washington Post and its polling partner, ABC News, have been doing their utmost to support the Obama administration’s campaign against the Second Amendment. The “gun show loophole” has been a recurring theme in this campaign, with the Post recently reporting that “nine in 10 Americans support requiring background checks on people buying firearms at gun shows.”
With this barrage continuing, we should all be clear about what’s in play here. First of all, there is no “gun show loophole.” Sales at gun shows by dealers already require background checks. As anyone who’s actually been to a gun show knows, background checks are the norm. Moreover, as a private seller, today one is not allowed to conduct a background check on a prospective purchaser. Only licensed dealers are allowed to do that.
Enter Senator Chuck Schumer, who has introduced S. 374, quaintly titled the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2013. Believe it or not, I have yet to see in the national press, or hear on national broadcast news, a single straightforward description of exactly what this bill would do, and to whom.
Because S.374 is not as long as the so-called Affordable Care Act, we need not pass this bill to find out what’s in it. I have read the bill. I know what’s in it. As a result, I now understand why the President’s supporters in the mainstream media have not rushed to describe just how drastically this legislation would infringe the rights of law-abiding gun owners, or how little it will do to make it more difficult for “dangerous people to own guns.”
— Wait, I’m confused. You mean to tell me Schumer’s “reasonable,” “common sense” approach to fixing gun violence won’t actually fix gun violence? How is that possible? I mean, he said it would — and evidently even some staunch Republicans, like John McCain, eg., are prepared to support it. So if it doesn’t fix gun violence, what exactly does it do? He asked, leadingly.
The Schumer bill would regulate not just sales, but gun “transfers” of all sorts. It requires reporting gun ownership to licensed dealers in almost all circumstances involving any kind of “transfer,” including one in which a friend or relative is given temporary possession of a firearm on a hunt, at a shoot, or to examine for possible purchase. A simple, “Here, fire a few rounds, see what you think,” brings into play vast federal regulatory and prosecutorial machinery.
Well, sorry to interrupt again, but it’s clear you’re framing the bill’s language in a way designed to make it sound ridiculous. However, were you to say that it requires reporting gun ownership to licensed dealers before a transfer in which a friend or relative is given temporary possession of a firearm and told, “Here, go kill a classroom full of grade school children and then bring this back to me,” it no longer sounds quite so ridiculous does it?
The bill’s purported “family” exemption provides almost no shelter. It applies only to “bona fide gifts,” not (gotcha!) to sales or temporary transfers. Even the narrow exemption for gifts does not benefit cousins, or uncles and nephews, or in-laws. Moreover, an exemption for “hunting or sporting” purposes defines the eligible premises, such as shooting ranges, so narrowly that many venues will not qualify.
If enacted, this bill’s impact on the ordinary activities of law-abiding citizens will be sweeping and unprecedented. By design the law will criminalize safe and responsible conduct that has been legal throughout the history of our republic.
Considering some specifics illustrates my point. Accordingly, I invite readers to think about whether, and how, they believe the federal government should regulate the following:
1. Uncle George owns a farm, where he has taught his nephew Abraham shooting skills and gun safety over a number of years. On Abraham’s 18th birthday, Uncle George gives Abraham a 20-gauge shotgun once owned by Abraham’s grandfather.
2. Abraham lends the shotgun to his long time hunting buddy and best friend, who uses it on a hunting trip and returns it to Abraham ten days later.
3. Uncle George and his friends have an informal hunting club, which leases “hunting rights” from a rural landowner. The “club” holds shooting competitions on an open field on the landowner’s property. At one of these “shoots,” George allows another “club” member to use a pistol George inherited from his father.
4. George’s friend asks about purchasing the pistol. He visits George’s farm to discuss a possible purchase and examine the pistol carefully. George and his friend walk to a hillside well away from George’s house, where the friend shoots the pistol at targets on a dirt embankment.
5. George agrees to sell the pistol to his friend. Before doing so he calls a licensed gun dealer he knows, asking the dealer to run a background check on the prospective purchaser, just in case. The dealer agrees, and tells George by telephone that the purchaser checks out. After hearing this, George sells his friend the pistol.
6. George takes his family on a month-long vacation to Europe. Concerned about a break-in during his absence, he leaves his firearms and other valuables with a trusted neighbor for safekeeping while he is away.
7. Nephew Abraham’s apartment is burglarized. Thieves steal his prized 20-gauge shotgun. The day after the burglary he calls the local police. They come to his apartment, interview him, and tell him they’ll make some inquiries and get back in touch. Abraham takes no further action, waiting to hear back from the police.
Under the Schumer bill, George or Abraham, or both, can be prosecuted for federal felonies in each and every one of the situations described above. As a bonus, the licensed dealer who ran the background check can also be charged for failure to examine the firearm sold and include data on it in federally required records.
[my emphasis]
Oh.
Well, then. I retract my original objections. This bill is not only ridiculous, but it is unenforceable outside of a police state. I know this, because I live in Colorado, whose Democrats, on a party-line vote, just passed similar legislation, signed into law by the Democrat Governor at the prodding of a New York Mayor and the US VP — even though the same kinds of activities as are listed above make of Colorado citizens, who since the founding of the territory would have been law-abiding, newly dangerous felons, and not only felons, but felons who are charged with committing gun crimes.
Any doubt on how Democrat politicians will use prosecutions of such people as George and Abraham to pad their numbers for prosecuting “gun crimes”…?
[…]
All guns to be sold privately — or even loaned temporarily during target practice or on a hunting trip — must first be taken to an approved federal agent for inspection and registration. There will be inconvenience, forms to complete, and delays and invasions of privacy of unpredictable magnitude. The bill expressly empowers Mr. Holder to determine how high a fee federal agents can charge for every backyard loan or sale to a cousin. Experience teaches that over time the fees will escalate along with the expense and complexity of the entire process.
Under Mr. Schumer’s bill, the burden of exercising one’s Second Amendment rights will grow steadily. The bill will impose onerous burdens on law-abiding individuals. It will make it far more difficult and expensive than ever before for people to acquire, own, and use firearms — in safe, ordinary, and currently lawful ways. Inevitably, it will lead to the creation of a faceless bureaucracy that will impose costly and intrusive controls on activities that law-abiding citizens have engaged in for a couple of centuries now without federal “assistance.”
The Schumer bill is yet another federal scheme that will transfer power and wealth from the people to our (by the way, well-armed) ruling elites here in The Nation’s Only Boom Town. And, as intended, it will result in the incremental erosion and infringement of Second Amendment rights.
We read these days that purchases of firearms and ammunition by private individuals are at an all time high. It is no wonder. Perhaps the phenomenon is what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would call “a cry of defiance, and not of fear.”
Yup. And that defiance is only just beginning, I suspect. Because George and Abraham never before even followed politics, much less thought about engaging in civil disobedience. But they’re certainly paying attention now. And a “tyranny of the small, low-information voter majority”-game plan, which is what Democrats seem to be attempting, isn’t going to end well.
Or at least, without quite a fuss.
There was a term for laws like this which was in the letter from “The Outdoor Channel” on why they were leaving Colorado.
“Flypaper laws”, designed to capture and kill liberty for all.
“If proposed, I will not support. If enacted, I will not comply.”
It isn’t. 90% of people support this common sense solution which if it might save even one life we have an obligation to try and those kids from Newtown deserve a vote.
Why do you hate children and want them to die?
Or, what Squid said.
If you ask people whether gun control laws that they think are reasonable should be enacted, the 10% dissenting are just disagreeing with the “should be enacted” part of it.
The rest is just a Jedi Mind Trick that concludes that of course everyone is going to have the same assessment of reasonability that Teh Won does.
Also interesting to note: the percentage of the adult population that has had a felony conviction was as of a few years ago over 10%. So I am crying bullshit from about 3 different directions on the 90% claim.
The Obama administration didn’t ban the mining of coal. They just regulated it into bankruptcy. They’ll do the same to gun owners. The law won’t ban guns. It’ll just regulate them so much you’ll go bankrupt–or crazy–trying to use them. Bureaucrats–it’s what they do.
Schumer’s law should probably have a “David Gregory Loophole” for ideologically correct citizens? Funny thing is they don’t even need it.
Actually, they’re designed to capture and kill liberty for people for whom the elite have cultural and political antipathy. They won’t be enforced against the right sort, you know?
Chuck-You Schumer got that nickname for a reason.
Another petty fascist New Yorker crushing the little people under his $1,000 designer heels.
I heard a quasi-peculiar thing t’other day: Bob Beckel, leftist Democrat demagogue piece of shit extraordinare, asserted that the Virginia Tech massacre perpetrator, Seung-hui Cho, had not undergone a firearms background check when purchasing his guns. And Beckel made a point of repeating this assertion a bit later. Not one of his fellow ‘panelists’, antagonists all, said a word to the contrary (this, the quasi-peculiar part).
Yet his assertion is a lie, plain and simple. And a commonplace, for all of that.
And, the reason you have your guns in the first place:
http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2013/04/04/msnbcs-harris-perry-americas-kids-belong-their-communities
Alec,
Eggs, omelettes… you know the routine.
Brings new meaning to the old Miami Vice-era “You Belong to the City”.
I’d never thought about it literally.
I don’t know why they keep citing polls about how much loss of liberty people are willing to accept, since taking away rights is not something to be done via polling data.
Well, I do know why they keep citing polls. It’s because they are the enemy.
sdferr, Beckel has pickled his brain. He was actually defending Columbia’s hiring of Kathy Boudin, saying she had “paid her dues”. Tell that to the nine kids of the dead cops and security guards who grew up without their fathers. He also insists that Ayers and Dohrn aren’t commies. Someone needs to mail him some pictures of the folks, including Ayers then fiancée, who got blown to smithereens in the townhouse explosion.
“Kill your parents.” — Bill Ayers
Yes, Dennis. What will happen is that you’ll be required to own firearms insurance, and the insurance companies will be regulated by the government so that no one except people who have as much money as Nancy Lanza had will be able to afford them.
Firearms insurance? Membership has its benefits.
The point, I thought, leigh, was the strange silence of the others as his lie passed unremarked as a lie. And in consequence, the notion that background checks would necessarily identify likely deranged individuals (as a matter of foolishness) was also unexamined.
Firearms insurance? Who are they kidding? One in six or seven drivers doesn’t carry car insurance.
These silly lawmakers…knowing how effective bans and regulations are why dont they just cut to the chase and ban and regulate evil people?
Oh, I got your point, sdferr. I thought it was strange as well and hope that it is corrected in the future.
Meanwhile, it appears that the shrink in the Aurora shooting let the po-lice know one month prior to Holmes going shooting gallery at the movies, that he was a danger to himself and others. What happened with that little bit of information?
A piece from 2000 about how the “Instant Check” system has always kept records of sales information and that a federal court upheld its right to do so.
A video by the same author on the Cam Edwards show discussing this latest Schumer bill.
And the text of Schumer’s 2011 “Fix Checks” bill and the authors testimony to Congress on that bill.
The 2011 bill is very similar in language, but wordier, and close to exactly the same in effect as his 2013 one.
“Fuss,” you say.
“People lined up in front of a brick wall and offered cigarettes and blindfolds,” I suspect.
Same same.
I guess I am willing to fight, I just hope they tired of prying guns from cold dead hands before they get to me.
The NYT opines on scrapping the 2nd.
ATF decides that an FFL is kinda-sorta like a [negative] lottery ticket.
I read that this morning, Geoff. The ATF might wish to be less hasty. There are a lot of FFL holders out here.
Ignorance would be funny if it stuck to playing with rattle snakes.
here in California people have been protesting a new gun shop in liberal Los Gatos. Not before it got final approval from the town but, after Sandy Hook.
One day the owner talked to the protestors and asked them what laws they wanted that would make it okay for the shop to stay open. All there answers were already law in California (private sale “loop hole”, magazine capacity limits, bans on certain “assault weapons”, waiting periods, etc). Federalism provided them with what they want in CA and they don’t even know it.
They were probably too busy smoking weed while making posters, bgbear. Actual research? Too time-consuming.
I’m in favor of all laws being reasonable, if I get to define “reasonable.”
What, you have a different definition? Why you gotta be so unreasonable?
Jake Tapper: Shouldn’t Obama and Bloomberg maybe learn the basics about guns before trying to regulate them?
26 Were Killed in Newtown; Seven Were Slaughtered in Kermit Gosnell’s Death-Lab.
So, the Media’s Done About One Story on the Gosnell Trial for Every Four on Newtown, Right?
I guess these idiots are determined to make me rich. When they pass this bill, I am betting that they will forget to put anything in about people MAKING THEIR OWN GUNS. So, as a result, people will stop buying guns from each other and they will just call me and people like me to come over and help them MAKE A NEW GUN WITH NO RECORDS.
Morons.
They’ll get around to regulating the other parts as well, eventually.
how about manual lathes, drill presses, mills foundries? or “blueprints” and specs? outlaw ain’t hard with de intertubes
Jeez, they actually pitched to Davis with the sacks full. Oh, twinkies, mercy.
Rifling the barrel would probably be the most difficult operation to do at home. You would also need the proper broach to finish the chamber.
I guess it’s time to start buying the tools.
The NYT “rewrite” article is a great example of *why* the debate “never goes anywhere.” It’s full of distortions, lies, and obviously the author, who claims to be a Constitutional Scholar, clearly has no familiarity with the Goddamned thing nor any sense of the thoughts of those who wrote it, which They Happen To Have Written Down And Preserved For Him To See, he just didn’t bother.
Because what he wants has nothing to do with what he says he wants.
And rewriting it or deleting it doesn’t change *the right*, as the founders said quite explicitly, because the Bill of Rights *recognized* natural rights, it does not establish them.
Everyone *has* these rights, most governments simply violate them as part of their daily routine.
see baracky is bringing back manufacturing jobs;)
rino power
Classic: Anti-Gun New Jersey Mayor Drunkenly Seeks Oral Sex — at Gunpoint
I think if it comes down to building one’s own guns, I’ll just make friends with some toughs who can get me the real deal.
You don’t actually need to rifle a barrel. As Glock has shown, a polygonal barrel that twists is just as good as a rifled barrel, and if you are working from scratch, the polygonal barrel is actually easier to make. Also, barrels are really cheap, in bulk, so people can stock up and have them handy when they start trying to regulate them. I have finally come to conclusion that these people are losing the battle. They will do the best they can to make us all give up our weapons, and all that will provoke will be a shooting war, in which we hold all the weapons.
OG, I agree: They have lost the battle. We still need to win the war, though.
Defining “win.“
And in which “their side” is lousy with turncoats.
I like it, Geoff.
I think it is time to just boycott travelling/vacationing in or through states that have fucked up laws.
This is what your enemy thinks of you. But, you probably already knew it. It also is comforting, as it reveals your enemy couldn’t find his ass with a map.
There’s some real genius in the comments there:
Please, please, please start making that argument. Loudly, constantly, religiously.
John Edwards was right, there are two Americas. The liberty loving one, and the tyrants. What an informative time we live in, as the two identify themselves.
Guns go “poof!”
I was unaware that clean, unused firearms were perishable. Who knew?
Well, if a lawyer says it, it must be true!
That is an ignoramus.
My most often used firearm is a shotgun whose action was made in 1894; the barrel is practically new having been made in 1932. My most used rifle was made in 1948. We get a serious 1661 mm of rain annually. And yet, none of my firearms has perished! How can this be? I live outside the progressive reality universe.
Asa Hutchinson is on FNS to talk about the NRA’s school safety review. Chris Wallace’s first question is “Your plan doesn’t protect theaters and malls, so are you really solving anything?”
Click.
nyc is effed. and fire doesn’t melt steel.
Chris Wallace spends more thought on which pocket square to wear with which tie than on anything. He’s done thinking by the time he steps out of the closet.
My most recent two rifle purchases were of a couple that were both made in 1912. One was re-barreled in 1963 for a new caliber. Both are in excellent shape and shooting condition at 101 years old.
As to the “lawyer” in Pablo’s other quote. He keeps saying the term “regulation” but this word does not mean what he
thinksasserts it means. This affliction of the left gets discussed in these parts quite a bit.‘Well-regulated’, the only definition currently valid:
So, a bunch Anonymous sorts decided they were going to wipe Israel off the internet today.
Their website, courtesy of the Israeli Elite Strike Force.
I ♥ Israelis.
Heh. Hatikva’s pretty good, but as music goes the U Michigan fight song has more oomph.
It’s a shame the NYT comments are closed, because I would dearly like to ask Mr. Lawyer Man: “Assuming the Founders’ knowledge that the regulation of gun owners’ rights was essential, what such regulations did they put in place?”
Don’t confuse him with the facts when he’s trying to pound the law, Pablo.
Somebody needs to invent a protectant of some kind. Something hydrophobic. It would also be nice if it lubricated too, —keep friction from wearing metal parts where they come into contact with each other.
Somebody needs to invent a protectant of some kind. Something hydrophobic. It would also be nice if it lubricated too,[..]
A condom, for $1000, Alex.
Indeed. The simplest explanation of the phrase is to say that the militia (consisting of the whole people) have to be as proficient in the use of arms as a regular army.
The existence of a regular army today does not automatically repeal the Second Amendment, however much fools like Warren Burger might have wished it could.
Rep DeGette. You see, firearms metal is like its magazines. Single-use disposable.
It’s true. I’ve seen movies wherein people change mags in the middle of a gun fight and simply drop the empty mags. They don’t pick them up and put them in their pockets. QED!
When everything they know is wrong, it should be relatively easy to beat them. But they are relentless, and they just keep on spouting their lies and idiocies to each other. I don’t think they are making much traction with the rest of the country.
Ach, but 90% SW! It’s 90%. Repeatedly. ObaZma’s men know. 90%, if we didn’t hear them the first
lietime. 90. Got it?Our smart, educated betters know what’s good for us, sdferr. My problem always has been not realising who was better than me.
Gopnik: “We cannot limit its bad uses while allowing its beneficial ones, because it has no beneficial ones.”
See? Unmitigated evil. Especially when employed saving the lives of anyone who would use one. They only need to die in order to provide a benefit worthy of recognition.
No one anywhere, at any time, has ever used a semi-automatic rifle to save his or her own life or someone else’s. Gopnik sure knows stuff.
New trash to take to the kerb. Along with some old trash.
There’s a decidedly pacifist odor emanating from the pathways of the more libertarian among us. Though it seems clearly present to me, I can’t quite account for its origin. Well — other than to grasp that peace is our value, of course.
That’s odd because when Uncle Sam put a full auto in my hands he never once suggested that I should kill as many people as possible. It’s almost as if there was another reason for it.
It’s almost as if there was another reason for it.
Well, you are a bunny with a pancake.
Pancake bunny with a full-auto, SW. Take heed.
I am only a plaid serviette, leigh. I have nothing to fear.
I thought of you yesterday and your tartan yesterday, SW. I came across a tactical kilt. Fine for storing extra shotgun shells and snacks. The advert never mentioned if it was available in clan tartans. Surely, if it is not, what’s the point?
Cripes. Editing on the fly doesn’t work.
I assume that a tactical kilt has storage other than or in addition to the sporran, which really wouldn’t be good for more than half a dozen cartridges, and a pretty Paltrow sized snack.
Some info about that here.
The stupidity of the gun-grabbers would be their undoing in any society that wasn’t corrupt.