Chris has a good post on the subject. I’m not prepared to offer any compromises over the current bills, because at this point it’s not clear whether they have legs or not. One important rule in this kind of struggle is never to let your opponent know what you’d be willing to trade. Compromise is something you do when you’re going to get something rammed down your throat, and you offer to make it a sour apple rather than a cow patty.
Right now we need to be resolved to ensure that no new gun control laws come out of this tragedy, and that our opponents walk away with nothing. Otherwise we spend the next decade trying to undo the damage, if we can ever undo the damage.
I just thought of a compromise that I might be willing to take.
How about this:
-Every seller at a gun show is required to have a current, valid FFL.
– The requirements for obtaining a FFL are returned to what they were in the 1980s, i.e., no storefront requirement, no zoning issues, no Reno era garbage. If you’re not a prohibited person and want a FFL, you can get it.
This would be a lot cleaner than opening up NICS to everyone, or eliminating private sales altogether. It avoids criminalizing family members who buy guns for each other as gifts, and makes FFLs more readily available to people who want them with minimal downside.
I’m surprised that this hasn’t already been proposed.
I’m pretty much done compromising.
I asked a gun controller what they would be willing to give us in return for a closure of the “private sale” loophole. His response was that it was incredulous of me to ask, and how could I be against this issue.
That is going to be the last time I try to reason with them.
@rkh – What is unclean, or less clean about “opening up NICS to everyone?”
I’ve spoken about the issue before, in terms of ways we could deal with the background check concern, but only in the context of a massive restructuring of gun laws in our favor.
@hank– If anybody could call in a NICS check, I think you’d start seeing abuse very quickly. Like people running NICS checks on their romantic partners, employees and others for reasons totally unrelated to firearms transfers.
NICS is barely adequate for the volume of calls it presently receives. If it became a general purpose public background check service, it would quickly become bogged down under the volume of calls and would become ineffective for its intended purpose.
I have to agree with Wes: No more “compromise”.
In fact, it’s never been actual compromise – they just keep asking for more and more ground. They have repeatedly convinced us to give them an inch, and then taken a mile – again and again, and without actually giving anything in return. The most they have done is take less in a single bite than they asked for, and that is not compromise, it’s just moving slower than they desire.
No more “compromise.” Instead, it’s time to take back what we gave up in exchange for nothing.
NICS is a really poor implementation, technologically. If we were going to even have a discussion about expanding background checks, it would have to address the problems with NICS. But the other side does not want to talk about that, because their agenda is not to compromise, but to take.
If NICS is barely adequate, then make it adequate. It’s just theater anyhow.
Criminals aren’t getting their guns from clueless Bubba. They’re getting them from theft, purchasing them from others who have stolen them and straw purchases. Closing the “private sale loophole” will have no impact.
I like the idea of everyone and their brother calling NICS – it will make the .gov think firearms ownership is much more widespread than it really is. When they begin confiscation they will get a lot of “false positives.”
I like the idea of criminalizing subversion of the Second Amendment. I used to think that merely allowing lawsuits against those who would infringe my right to keep and bear arms would suffice. Not any more. If they cannot be civil and respect our rights, then off to the slammer with them. If they still do not learn to respect the rights of others, then lock them up for a long time.
A free society does not mean allowing people constantly to attack the rights of others. If these rude, radical, Marxist wannabe’s cannot behave themselves then jail them and fine them.
Top of the list should be organized subversion, since that is the most dangerous. Brady Center, VPC, MAIG, Ceasefire, etc. – any organization that advocates against our gun rights should be shut down as a criminal enterprise.
These relentless, leftist, guerrilla attacks against our fundamental freedom have no place in a civilized society, and especially no place in American society, where we value freedom itself, not the freedom to destroy freedom.
The First Amendment must not be used to destroy the Second Amendment.
All the incivility in the gun rights debate has come from the left, with their incessant demands against our freedom. They have infringed on our right to keep and bear arms innumerable times and in innumerable ways, and yet they always come back to demand more.
Yes, let us do have a civil society, and let us do it by using law to protect freedom, and not by ignoring the relentless assault on freedom and hoping it will just go away. It will not. We have to make it go away by making it illegal.
The bottom line to the gun rights haters should be this: Behave yourselves, and treat the rights of others with respect, or you will be fined and jailed.
I am fed up with anti-rights people getting up in the morning and musing over their lattes how they might be inclined to attack us today. It is time to stop the Marxist, leftist, communist, socialist, call them whatever you want, guerrilla war on freedom. The left won in Vietnam, and they have continued their running ambuscade against everything American ever since. It is time to stop letting them use their freedom to destroy our freedom.
It is time to shut down the “incivility” of their “overheated” “hate speech” attacks before these “irresponsible” “incendiary” “firebrands” burn our Second Amendment rights down.
If they want to talk gun control, I want to talk fines and imprisonment for subverting the Second Amendment. That is where I draw my “lineâ€. That is my “compromise”.
Redacted a comment of mine here. I’m going to make this the topic of a post.