[Alabama Shooter]

So I am not prognosticating, I am going by the past words and actions of the people who are currently pushing for universal background checks.

If you don't see the distinction, you are either not as smart as you had seemed, or you are a mole.

Really? A mole? You don't like my argument so now you want to cast aspersions? This thread was going really well with such civil discourse and no personal attacks too. So much for that. Clearly I don't tote whatever the main line is here but that does not make a "mole". Sad really I thought you were better than that.

The people who are pushing for background checks are not the same people who are pushing for confiscations. Background checks are supported by the vast majority of Americans. Confiscations are not.

The confiscators are pushing for every measure possible but their goal is confiscation. By trying to lump all the people who want background checks into the confiscation camp you all you are doing is creating a long list of opponents who would otherwise not be opposed.

The "if you are not for me you are against me" idea is a bad one. You only see enemies that way.

There's a First Amendment doctrine called the prior restraint. I have likened the universal background check to a prior restraint in that you don't really have the right until you get gov't approval. Rights are something you have until the government can prove sufficient grounds to take them away. Privileges are what you get after you've jumped through the hoops to show the government that you are deserving of the privilege. If you don't believe that having to ask for government permission to exercise a right is any restriction at all, then you don't understand the term.

Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart

"A prior restraint, by contrast and by definition, has an immediate and irreversible sanction."

Maybe you can explain it a little further how it meets that definition?

Private sales without background checks have been OK for about the last 237 years. It's the exercise of a right, rather than being given special permission by the gov't. It's not a special privilege. It's the power to deal with one's own private property without undue governmental meddling.

It is a right only because you say it is. It says "to keep and bear" not "unrestrained right to trade as you see fit".

Given the admission that "some people will be willing to break the law" and sell to prohibited persons anyways, please tell me what benefits you see to mandating that every private sale have a background check to go with it.

I would feel better knowing that it was unlikely that the gun I had sold was not to a prohibited person. For me that is enough.

I keep bothering because, in part, it's MY MONEY that you're proposing to spend. The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy. -- John Marshall. The other reason that I keep bothering the argument that "oh, it's only 5 dollars" puts us on a slippery slope. First, it's $5, then we adjust for inflation, then just a little more. Pretty soon, that background check will cost $100, and at some point before that happens, it starts preventing some lower-income folks from being able to exercise their RKBA at all.

We have had NICS for nearly 20 years. Cost to the dealer was and is still $0.00.

And your solution is to go ahead and let the anti-2A folks have the first move? Instituting universal checks will be a much larger inconvenience than it will be for felons.

A big part of the problem in this thread is a very mistaken assumption from some that everyone who wants background checks is an anti.