That is why laws prohibiting transfers are a staple of most of the gun owner control packages we’ve seen this year; they want us to stop spreading our values and way of life. A culture is much harder to eradicate if it’s continually growing ya know.
I think this is absolutely right. There are ways to write a background check expansion that would be difficult to argue against, but that’s not what we’ve been seeing. We’ve been seeing sweeping prohibitions on even temporary and supervised transfers, where just handing a gun to someone else in the wrong circumstances would be prohibited. This reminds me of when they were targeting the “gun show loophole,” which you haven’t heard as much now because they decided “universal background checks,” was better rhetoric. Back then their bills allegedly were just meant to require background checks at gun shows, but contained onerous nonsense like requiring promoters (who just sell tables, not guns) to be licensed, for people entering gun shows be logged and reported, or other such nonsense which had nothing to do with background checks.
“Kill the Gun Culture” is an old game, and also, I think, one increasingly played by mostly old people. The real fear is if we free New York, Chicago, California and New Jersey, it’ll all be over for them. Heller and McDonald were just the beginning, and though we may not know where this road ultimately leads, the possibilities scare the snot out of people like Bloomberg.
“…increasingly played by mostly old people”
Well, that’s good news for the long-term.
“There are ways to write a background check expansion that would be difficult to argue against, but that’s not what we’ve been seeing.”
But why not?
I suspect it’s cause we aren’t at the table offering them. We could, but the time to isn’t right. When we do, we win this issue, and kill it for some time.
However, we are gonna win this anyway. The politics simply aren’t there to pass Schumer – or another gun control bill – at this point.
And until we need to, there is simply no point or need to concede anything to these bigots yet.
Thing is, I don’t think increased background checks are even a good idea. They’d be more burden, more paperwork, more chances of committing a felony that you have to prove your innocence, and they’d have ZERO chance of preventing any crime, anywhere, anytime.
So we SHOULDN’T be offering ANYTHING. Let them make their offers, their “common sense” ideas that turn out to be “how to turn a third of the country into felons” bills.
They aren’t zero chance, but they do seem to be ineffective. Nonetheless, being proactive on these measures instead of reactive makes us look responsible. There are ways to do this that are pretty easy: for example, make any transfer done through the national background check system create a barrier to lawsuits for subsequent damages done by a person with such a gun.
Is there any liability under existing law? If so, could I be liable for selling a car to someone who gets drunk and runs a school bus off the road?
I recall Sen. Coburn offering it. They weren’t interested in simple background checks.
Oh great jumpin Vishnu no – we better not be offering them anything. Hell, we best not be near that damned table.
This ain’t your grandpa’s gun control game. They’re going for eradication – of the culture, not the people so much (I guess they think we can be assimilated), Hence “transfers”, not just sales. & because of what they’re doing & the way they’re doing it, we really can’t give an inch, or compromise one damn bit, not even to “make a bad bill better”. When that starts to happen then the politics is over & there ain’t nothing to do but wait til your neighborhood 3% cell gets called into play. & don’t none of us want that.
No, any capitulation or cooperation at this point is a loser for us. Unless we want them to start an actual civil war. We don’t want that do we?
Sebastian, methinks they don’t fear us freeing new york, methinks they fear us converting new yorkers, like the young lady in that vid, & them freeing themselves. They don’t want them to become part of the gun culture. Hence “transfers” are bad.
If we free new york, they can lay low & try to gain back ground, but if new york frees itself, then they’re just unemployed (there’s just so few openings for petty, self-important, dictator wanna-be’s – hell here in Colorado there’s a waiting list for those kinda jobs…)
“we better not be offering them anything.”
Absolutely.
When I wrote my most recent letters to our senators (and threw in our rep., to boot — same letter) I needed only two sentences. The first said I opposed all expansions of background checks. The second asked what they were going to do to roll back or eliminate the existing checks.
Yeah, I can see the staffers’ eyes rolling from here, but I didn’t want to suggest I was allowing any wiggle-room for “reasonable.”
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting we offer them anything. If they can’t come up with the votes, they can’t come up with the vote. That’s just a win.
Yep, I think that’s exactly right. They want to criminalize the sharing of guns that happens as a way of destroying the gun culture.
I could accept background checks based on LTCF (or state equivalent) eligibility under the following conditions:
– No record keeping besides name and address on LTCF
– No additional process/fee beyond the established LTCF (or state equivalent) check
– Nationwide reciprocity of LTCF (or state equivalent)
– Elimination of non-registry “registry”
– Eligibilty of all firearms including NFA listed items which would mean…
– Elimination of the “Hughes Amendment”
This would have the added benefit of more LTCF holders exerting influence on any right-to-carry laws. We would have real “background checks” for all items (as in ALL… Including current manufactured full auto guns).
Hey, give them a list why don’t you :) The other side lurks here.
If we’re giving the the other side ideas…
How’bout your “Two America’s” list from earlier. http://www.pagunblog.com/2013/04/04/we-can-no-longer-tolerate-two-americas/
Plus, deletion of all “sporting, sporting use, sporting purpose, etc.” language from the US Code, repeal of the Hughes Amendment and language clearly indicating to courts that “strict scrutiny” must be used when deciding 2nd Amendment cases.
Plus, Senator Cruz’s idea of a 2/3rd super majority vote for any/all additional gun control laws in the future.
See, I’m willing to meet in the middle. ;)
Does anyone remember when a couple years ago, the RKBA community in PA held its annual spring “gun rights rally” Dog and Pony Show in the rotunda of the capitol in Harrisburg, and all the usual suspects from the General Assembly came out to campaign, pontificating in the process, then went back into session that afternoon where they voted unanimously to apply yet more severe penalties to the possession of a firearm with an “obscured” serial number?
Do you think that had anything to do with this “transfer” business? I get confused, because all the Real Gunnies from that rally seemed to think it was just wonderful — which I guess it must have been, because The Best Pro-Gun Legislators in the State voted for it.
Unanimously.
You’ve beaten that pony before.
Trust me to continue beating it. It is emblematic of what’s been wrong with the gun rights movement in PA for a long time.
I am hoping the pendulum of “gun control” has swung as far left as it can, and will soon swing right, hard, fast and far!
I really think our crime problem could be solved by arming every honest citizen. If criminals can’t chose to make an honest living out of respect, perhaps they will out of fear.
Fear that their next victim may be the one who punches his tag and retires him from crime, permanently.
Because gun control is about control. These bills essentially give the government the ability to control the firearms market through the background check system.
Other things I’ve seen that will now mean jail time …
I had a friend going through a messy divorce. Because of the high emotions some friends and I talked him into letting us take charge of his gun for a few weeks until it was done and he agreed that was a good idea. Couldn’t do it if this law passes without a background check. Would he have given them up as easily for $80 a gun ($40 to give them up and $40 to get them back). Would that make anyone safer?
I had a friend take an extended vacation and house sitting for him was a friend of the family he didn’t want guns around. So I took care of the guns while he was away. Another illegal transfer.
For the Garand shoots here in Colorado I took possession of 4 “club” Garands so I could take them to matches and loan them to those without. Might get away with loaning them to people for a match but how could I take charge of the guns for a whole summer?
There’s just an absurdity about a law that takes something one person can own and that another person can own, but makes handing it from one to the other without a gun store doing a background check a crime.
The anti-gunners must be proud about how their pushing through this terrible piece of legislation that will so seriously hurt the gun community if it passes.
Since they know they’re unlikely to get gun bans or mag restrictions, any gun culture killing they do on the will have to be accomplished with the UBC bill. They’re going to fight hard for vile provisions in such a bill because they know its their best chance.
But by pushing so hard for this BS in a UBC law, they’re making it very hard for Senators from pro-gun states to get behind it. And that kind of overreaching has been their biggest mistake since Sandy Hook. They wasted a lot of time, money, and political capital on laws they were never going to get.
I am ok with offering counters as a way of exposing the other side. We give them what they say they want and watch them recoil. We know that they are not after background checks, but most people don’t. Honestly, we’ve been losing the “frame the debate†part of this fight, and part of that is because the NRA doesn’t want to seem like they are quasi-supporting the sales portion by focusing too much on the temporary transfer criminalization. So we should offer the creation of a voluntary private NICS check procedure. No new crimes, just a way for a buyer to show the seller that they passed a NICS check. And I phrased it as the buyer running the check on themself and proving it to the seller as a way of addressing privacy concerns. Also, it would not be attached to a particular sale- just proof that the buyer passed and is good for X period of time whether they buy 20 guns or zero guns. The beauty of a voluntary system is that it would throw those Bloomberg polls back in their faces. “Why is a voluntary system unacceptable to you? You have been telling us for years that 90% of gun owners want a way of verifying non-prohibited status, so… build it and they will come.â€
That is of course completely unacceptable to them. There would be as much chance of them agreeing to that as to the NRA agreeing to a nationwide handgun ban- but it would expose where their motives are. They can’t agree to it because it would kill their “background check†leverage forever, which they have been relying on to get more government control over the gun culture. They’d rather have things remain as they are than allow the creation of a cheap and easy way for private parties to make a NICS approved sale privately. If they call the bluff, the worst case is that we have a system that we can use for peace of mind on for sales to strangers, but has no negative affect on activities between circles of friends. With that system in place, there would of course be the risk from the inevitable push by them to attach crimes to it, and there would be a monetary cost (which we should ask Bloomberg to pay for) so it is not completely win-win.
This same train of thought exposes the lie of “90% of gun owners want thisâ€. I talked about a system that can be used privately, but a check through an FFL is already an in-place voluntary system. FFLs around the country already perform 4473s for interstate parties. There is nothing stopping two buyers in the same state from going to the FFL and asking them to run a NICS check for their own peace of mind. But effectively no one does this. But they are telling us that 90% of us want to be forced to do this under threat of federal felony???
When I was watching the tube the other night they were running the usual pro & con talking heads. The problem was one of the “heads” was from the NRA & his closing shot was they would support universal background checks as long as it wasn’t turned into gun owner registration. What’s up with that!
At a gun show recently I sat at my dad’s table and talked with some of his table-neighbors. One (older) gent likened this all to the Indians – he said the government’s trying to kill our culture and they’re coming after gun shows, which is like the buffalo were to the Indians – they kill the buffalo, they kill our culture.