Millennial women seem to care about protecting gun rights at least as much as abortion, despite having an uncomfortable leaning toward the assault weapons banning kooky socialist from Vermont. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t really matter whether the Millennials don’t have the gun banning fervor of those that came before them. If they care enough about the issue, they’ll vote on it. If they keep voting for people like Hillary and Bernie, they’ll soon find they don’t have any gun rights. How much do they really care then?
Not Good News for Bloomberg
Their CONSTANT repetition of “90% of all Americans Support Gun Control” with nothing else to back up those numbers, shows their desperation.
Nearly everyone I know wants background checks before a gun transfer. This includes people with fairly large gun collections.
We all know that Bloomberg uses this to his advantage, and for now we’ve been pretty good by just blocking his onerous extensions one way or the other.
But this is a losing argument long-term. Sorry, but they got a winner here. Most people will eventually support “background checks” and whatever gets stuck on with it. We’d be a lot smarter if we tightened up the system and put some teeth into the idea that “bad guys” won’t get guns.
Like Bloomberg, our side could put up a background check bill to reinforce NICS, prosecute felons who attain guns, and straw buyers who abet their crimes. Remove ambiguity on “commercial” sellers and make it far, far easier to become an FFL. Better yet, create a “non-stocking FFL” that can call in checks and sell the few guns they get transferred through them. Give them their cert for $25 and drop the inspection regime. And then put a protection in place for personal transfers below a certain volume threshold?
You all could come up with better solutions than me. So why don’t we? Why don’t we “fix” the background check system before Bloomberg does it for us?
Because you can’t negotiate with the left. They never keep their agreements and they will be back with the goalposts moved thanks to us.
I’m not looking to agree with them. We own the Senate, the House and maybe next year the Executive.
Just pass a good FFL bill and wrap it all up by calling it an “enhanced background check” bill. Ignore the left.
They build rhetorical magic carpets. I don’t understand why we don’t just hijack those things and ride them the direction we want. My biggest frustration is how we let the other side define the argument, and then we play by their rules.
In case this needs to be said plainly, “steal their issue and use it for our own needs.”
Coburn tried that after Sandy Hook and Schumer laughed his proposal out of the room.
This.
The problem with background checks is that they’re a Trojan Horse: Their purpose is not to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but to give the state a list of transfers that can be referenced to create something that looks and functions very much like a registry (even when the courts decline to call it such, as the PA Supreme Court did).
Coburn’s bill got laughed out of the Senate because it would have done what the left SAID they wanted to do while denying them the ability to collect the data they actually want.
TLDR: It’s not about background checks at all, and it’s not about keeping guns away from criminals. It’s about creating a national registry that can be used to facilitate confiscation.
Exactly. Last June I blogged about this. You can’t pre-empt the other side because they’re being disingenuous. They don’t want background checks, they want a framework. https://www.firearmspolicy.org/blog/compromise-on-gun-rights-no-thanks/
Stop playing into the other side. They don’t want background checks. If it was just universal background checks with exceptions for CCW and immediate family, we’d already have it. Most people would likely be ok with a background check only system that we could all use.
No, they want universal background checks with registration. They want to track when guns are sold, who has them and what guns they are.
When background checks only are proposed, the other side refuses our “compromise”. You need to ask yourself why. The answer is obvious: Because it isn’t background checks they are after; it is backdoor registration.
No registration and anti-gunners don’t want UBCs. Which tells me that us compromising on UBCs is step towards a further tightening in the future.
I’m personally a fan of dismantling the point-of-sale system in favor of a new version of an FFL like the FFL03 but for all firearms. Call it an FFL11. Make everyone a licensee. Eliminate the intrastate handgun purchase restrictions and everything becomes a licensee-to-licensee transfer. Private sales are defacto as a licensed transfer. Everyone is background checked at issue, once a year/six months/whatever and everyone maintains a bound book of transfers and acquisitions. Laws with serious teeth would restrict the BATFE from copying out private bound book records by any means outside of a warrant.
Everyone is licensed. All gun transfers are registered. They just aren’t logged with the government! Decentralized record keeping keeps the uncertainty in the system. Sounds like an anti-gunners dream right?
Nope. They’d still reject it because the heavy hand of government permission isn’t involved and the records don’t lie with the government (they aren’t now but those against guns don’t know that either), no FBI violating NICS record destruction rules and would actually increase gun acquisition and ownership freedom.
And that is why it would be opposed. They don’t what to make things easier for gun owners; they want to DESTROY US. Once you understand that visceral hatred of gun owners, you understand why your compromise, offered with the best of intentions, would be refused. Because they don’t have the best intentions in mind at all.
Y’all have a hard time readong or something?
All previous background check bills were wolves barely disguised. My point is the meme has traction, and we will lose long-term if we just hope to keep beating it back every time. In order to do so, we need to win every time. They only need to win once.
I think this is another “assault weapon” issue – i.e. a term that has little technical meaning but which can be used to wrap all kinds of gun-control goodness into a little PR blanket.
Patrick,
See my post below regarding the handgun ban “built-into” Bloomberg’s universal background checks. His agenda can be defeated, and badly, when voters are informed about this.
You are correct that this is another “assault weapon” fraudulent issue – and the key is voter education upfront – not 10 years later.
Dont try that nonsense here. We analysed Schumer’s bill here awhile back. It’s not about background checks for transfers. It’s about criminalizing innocent conduct like letting someone try your gun. It’s about making gun ownership risky.
And I acknowledge that, fully. They use background checks as a trojan horse. I advocate taking away the horse.
Who the heck are these people of whom you speak?
The ones who come to me and ask me to teach them to shoot. And some of the ones I know who go to IDPA matches. And the voters who don’t hate guns but really think ‘universal background check’ sounds nice. And the cops I teach to shoot. They love the idea of background checks.
So yeah, more than one.
If you don’t know these people, you need to get out of the bubble. I work/live in multiple states and these folks are everywhere. They number greater than we do. And eventually the other side will use them to win. Again. They do it every time because we are too daft to spin things our way.
My point is that we take the issue and spin it our way. If we cannot think that to a logical end in our favor, then we deserve to lose.
Frankly, I find that nonsense. The police I talk to know background checks are meaningless. And PoliceOne’s survey doesn’t support you.
I’ll manage my social life for myself, thanks.
Bloomberg’s universal background check agenda can be defeated, and we are working hard in Maine to do it. The following issue is really turning a lot of Mainers off to Bloomberg’s agenda.
Handgun Ban “Built-Into” Universal Background Checks
Informed voters are coming to realize that the upcoming Maine 2016 universal gun background check referendum includes a toxic “poison pill†— the de facto handgun ban for young people ages 18 to 20. This is because of a fundamental incompatibility between the referendum, federal, and Maine laws. There is no “fix†for this.
If passed, the referendum would prohibit private gun transfers without a gun dealer-administered background check. Gun dealers, however, are prohibited by federal law from transferring a handgun to anyone under 21 years old. Yet, under Maine law, adults 18 and older can own a handgun and apply for a concealed carry permit. Currently, this incompatibility between federal and state law is resolved via responsible private gun sales. But that would all change if voters were to pass the referendum.
On March 23, Colin Goddard, a spokesman for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, stood before a college-age audience at the University of Maine in Orono and asked for help to promote the referendum. Whether he realized it or not, he also was asking his audience to vote away their right to have a handgun transferred to them. It takes a lot of ignorance and chutzpah to request something like that from impressionable college students that would be directly affected by this.
Maine voters can put a stop to this freedom-robbing deception by voting no on the universal background check referendum.
Bottom Line;
All the “kool kids” 18-20 are opposed to the background check referendum.
Do 18-20 year olds really give a shit about their constitutional rights? Most of them are too poor to get into shooting. I didn’t get into it until I was in my mid 20s, and even then it was largely because I could afford it. I would have voted “no” on the referendum, regardless, but I’ve always thought this was an important issue. I wouldn’t bet that you have that demographic locked up as a whole.
That “tag line” is meant to get them excited about their constitutional rights, and to defend them, as the trendy, in-thing, to do.
Which it is.
Mind if I think out loud, generationally?
Millennials have never experienced any gun rights worth speaking of. Neither for that matter have Generation Xers.
I know I will never see again the gun rights I took for granted until I was in my early 20s. Even supposed gun rights advocates have no expectations of achieving that state of affairs again. It is often hard for me to work up any real enthusiasm for the sops that pass for gun rights, today.
Which leads me to the thought that, Millennials perhaps instinctively have difficulty getting worked up over something they know in their guts really doesn’t amount to all that much, at the same time they would recoil in horror from the level of gun freedom some of us knew into young adulthood.
Forgive me — just thinkin’.
I don’t mind at all. I think the first step when you find yourself cut by a knife wound is to first stop the bleeding. In 2008-2010 timeframe, I thought we had accomplished that, but the 2012 elections and Sandy Hook re-opened wounds.
If I could accomplish it by fiat, I’d be fine going back to a world where you could buy a submachine gun cash on the barrel, or I suppose these days from a collector in Arizona via Gunbroker and Paypal, no questions asked, and freely shippable between private entities interstate.
But if we get there at all, I don’t think we’ll get there in my lifetime. There are certain fights that will have to be left to future generations to win or lose. I place a higher priority on spreading Constitutional Carry than I do on getting rid of the Brady Act or the Gun Control Act. In fact, I’d like to blow a few holes through the National Firearms Act and Hughes Amendment before tackling either. That’s not to say that I think background checks, mail order bans, FFLs, etc are effective or desirable, but that public opinion now is such that we’re stuck with them for the foreseeable future.
Absolutely. The goal should be to increase firearm access. As bad as background checks can be due to registration and the general principle, expanding who and what has access is more important.
Getting rid of the Hughes Amendment will increase MG access, even with the rest of the NFA issues.
Getting SBRs, SBSs, and suppressors off the NFA will likewise increase those.
I’m all in favor of a self background check system, but I’d only propose that if something would pass anyway.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think the biggest loss was from when you were younger? Was it cultural? Was it legal (e.g. GCA ’68)? I never knew the gun culture before the 90s. It was the assault weapons issue that got me into this. That was my starting frame of reference. I’ve read and talked to people who’s frame of reference predates mine, but not too many people engaged in the issue prior to GCA ’68, and who live in this area of the country.
Why are we constantly naval-gazing Generation Me? Why does this poll surprise us?
It’s fairly obvious the members of this generation want everything, just like mommy and daddy say they deserve:
– They want abortion anytime, anywhere.
– They want to marry anyone they want, anytime, anywhere.
– They want free education…or at least subsidized education.
– They also want Uncle Sugar to pad their lifestyle until they get that job tending unicorns. Free!
– Many also want (not a shock if you are following the gist) all the guns. Just because.
Me, me, ME! That’s what this generation wants: everything. They don’t like being told, “No.” They are the offspring of a libertarian and her creepy authoritarian rich “uncle” who just wanted to bang his hot niece. The inbred lineage of that incipient fornication results in “The Millenials”.
We use that to our advantage or keep surprising ourselves until someone else uses it to put us back into submission.
I’m sorry, I was too engrossed in myself to notice where you explained why that was a bad thing.
By the way, we are the largest livinggeneration, that’s why we are important.
Ooooh. So you’re saying maybe we should offer a subsidized firearms program to attract more MillEnnials?
BTW speak for yourself… no one is beating me into submission. ;)
OK, I’ll bite.
There was a 10 year period where you could not purchase an AR-15 unless you committed a serious felony. Are you suggesting that you personally will be able to surmount that challenge when it comes?
Or pick your state law that will jail you for doing nothing wrong. Felonies for driving past a school?
Look, I’m all for playing along the tough warrior game, but unless you plan to go off the grid (and never get caught), you need to plan on team building. Millennials have shown a willingness to play along. That doesn’t mean we play all their games, but that means we team where we can and when it makes sense.
Is that too happy for a warrior like you? ;)
Are you utterly ignorant of the reality of 1994 Assault Weapons Ban? Could not buy an AR15? If you want parade of horrible, you will have to not make a basic mistake like that one.
Patrick I get that. However, much like Sebastian mentioned in another thread, what got me interested (as a millennial at the upper end of the age group) was actually the AWB itself, or rather its expiration and threat to re-authorize. I didn’t own any firearms before or during the AWB. However after I had purchased my own handgun (a Ruger P85 purchased second hand for $160) it dawned on me how quickly things could change after something legal is banned.
The message of “now it’s legal, now it’s banned” resonates with 18-35 year olds. As much as I detest video games, I also realIze that there were (and still continue to be) fights on that. I posted a link to the anti-encryption bill that Feinstein is proposing.
I think this is along the same grain as what you posted, which is to say all of this plays with Millennials, though I would hesitate to assign them all to one ideological group like that based purely on age.
As for fights, we each have our own. No, I would not give an inch on a theoretical AWB federally, nor would most of the country. It’s a bridge too far, and that’s why it’s no longer spoken of seriously. Even in 1994 it was passed narrowly and as an experiment which also came with a sunset provision. We studied it and saw it was an abject failure. What we need to do is keep pushing for more rights, bottom line. We can do this several ways. Mine is the ballot box and (at the very worst) the tinder box. But we fight at the ballot box first.