Universal Background Checks....

[Spats McGee]

win-lose, neither you nor Alabama Shooter are the first to tell me that I'm wrong on the prior restraint notion, and that's fine. It's never been an "exact fit" argument. That's why I use words like "akin to" or related to when I try to articulate it.

I fully agree that we, as gun owners, have a responsibility to do some due diligence in buying and selling. I don't knock anyone for wanting to go to an FFL to have their transfers done. Some folks insist on a bill of sale. As for me, I'd want to see a CCL. That let's me know: (1) that the person is a resident of my state; and (2) has had a background check. I'm pretty unwilling to budge on making NICS checks mandatory for every sale, though.

[Alabama Shooter]

Because you wrote:

I did not write it first.

Yes and no. I took a look at housing, and housing is specifically covered under the CRA. I'll give you that one, but it's legally distinct from the private purchase of firearms from an individual. Private purchases of firearms from individuals are not covered by the CRA, as far as I can tell. Public facilities, like restaurants and gun shops are. That does not mean that the CRA extends a right to purchase a privately-offered firearm from an individual. .

Employment too BTW. If I advertise for a maid to clean up my place and then say I don't hire Muslims that is also covered.

In the example about declining to sell a gun, where was the force involved? For that matter, where is "purchasing a firearm from a private individual" listed as one of the six types of federally protected activities?

It is not in there. Should it be?

Is it a civil right or not?

Because right now you seem to be arguing against.

[lcpiper]

Alabama Shooter, we didn't go through customs. Perhaps it's because we arrived at and left from an International Terminal, I got no idea. I just know we did not process through customs on this trip.

[MLeake]

So, all that Alabama Shooter has offered as supporting evidence is a drop in the retail sales numbers since 1994, and he attributes that to NICS?

What about such trivial details as the exponential advance in internet sales? ALL brick and mortar retail sales outlets have lost a significant percentage to online sales.

GunBroker, GunsAmerica, Craigslist (for years, anyway)... and many others.

As a non-prohibited buyer, who has bought virtually all my used guns via online sources, and several of my new ones, I would suggest this had much more impact on how guns are sold than did the NICS system.

[MLeake]

With regard to customs, different countries have differing rules about what requires a trip through customs or passport control. For instance, in Canada, if you don't leave the terminal and don't stay longer than 90 minutes, you don't have to do customs/passport. At least, that was how it worked a few years back when I would fly passengers to Montreal, Toronto, and Halifax.

Back on topic...

win-lose, you can intellectually agree with incrementalism. New York just gave a clinic on it. Deval Patrick has submitted proposals to follow suit in Massachusetts. This is not empty speculation; one is fait accompli, and the other has been covered by the MSM as having been proposed.

From a side conversation, here is this thought: Since 1994, EBR shooters (including me) have blasted Bill Ruger, S&W, and Fudds for throwing EBR owners under the bus instead of standing firm. We all railed about divide and conquer tactics.

Well, the administration is obviously trying to court hunters again, but the hunters seem wiser.

OTOH, EBR guys seem to be the primary gunners right now who suggest concessions on background checks - in the hopes of protecting their own toys.

Hypocritical? Certainly. Likely to have positive effect? See 1994; check Feinstein's "If I could have had 51 votes in the Senate" comments from 1995; then make up your own mind.

[lcpiper]

Sorry, I don't know what an EBR guy is?

[2ndsojourn]

^^^ Evil Black Rifle

[MLeake]

Evil Black Rifle, the ironic term we AR owners tend to use to describe how antis (and some Fudds) view them.

[gc70]

Arguing the finer points of whether or not background checks should be required for all firearms sales misses the point.

The background checks our opponents have proposed are not limited to sales; they want to "extend the Brady Law background check procedures to all sales and transfers of firearms."

Our opponents are way beyond worrying about which sales warrant background checks (all, in their opinion) and are firmly in the realm of requiring background checks for simply holding a gun, mere possession, or as they express it, "a temporary transfer of possession without transfer of title."

If we do not defeat background checks for transfers other than sales, it will not be meaningful to discuss the extent of coverage for sales.

[MLeake]

Good point; a "transfer" can be as simple as handing your buddy a pistol to shoot in the adjacent lane.

And, of course, why should I need to have my father-in-law undergo a check if I give him a gun? (Same state, no state requirement for such a check.)

Look, yet again, at New York - where a prospective buyer can't handle a gun to see if it might be a good future acquisition unless they have a purchase permit. Never forget the people pushing this agenda gave us the laws in DC, IL, NY, MA... Do not think for one minute their end goal is not for everybody to have to play by the most restrictive rules they can con people into allowing.

[win-lose]

win-lose, you can intellectually agree with incrementalism. New York just gave a clinic on it. Deval Patrick has submitted proposals to follow suit in Massachusetts. This is not empty speculation; one is fait accompli, and the other has been covered by the MSM as having been proposed.

From a side conversation, here is this thought: Since 1994, EBR shooters (including me) have blasted Bill Ruger, S&W, and Fudds for throwing EBR owners under the bus instead of standing firm. We all railed about divide and conquer tactics.

Well, the administration is obviously trying to court hunters again, but the hunters seem wiser.

OTOH, EBR guys seem to be the primary gunners right now who suggest concessions on background checks - in the hopes of protecting their own toys.

Hypocritical? Certainly. Likely to have positive effect? See 1994; check Feinstein's "If I could have had 51 votes in the Senate" comments from 1995; then make up your own mind.

In the larger context, I agree incrementalism is clearly at play. It is the progression of incrementalism within the universal back-ground check discussion that is the tougher argument.

For the record, I don't own any ebr's.... closest is my m1a socom 16 and my mini 14 & 30.

I still go back to my previous question.

I believe that a person is responsible to do their "due diligence" when transferring a firearm and have consequences if they don't. How would we accomplish this without yielding too much to the anti's-agenda?

[Alabama Shooter]

I believe that a person is responsible to do their "due diligence" when transferring a firearm and have consequences if they don't.

This is a tough one. The caution here is we do not want guns to be classified into any category that will make them onerously more difficult to obtain than they already are for non-prohibited people. Therefore the focus needs to be on the buyer and seller and not the gun itself. This is hard with anti's. They see guns and they want to ban 'em.

I would say there should be no criminal consequences for the seller. Any criminal consequence would have to be upon the buyer, as he is likely the only one with knowledge that he is breaking the law. Since the government faces a difficult battle proving beyond reasonable doubt in regular cases of illegal attempts to obtain it will have the same problem with PPS. In the case of the seller the case would be near impossible to prove unless the seller was actively and knowingly collaborating with the buyer for an illegal purchase.

If the legal standard is made as the background check then once the seller meets that obligation he should be relieved of all responsibility.

Protecting the seller from negligence in a civil case would be more difficult however. This would be a good opportunity to craft that into law as well. I have no idea how that would work.

How would we accomplish this without yielding too much to the anti's-agenda?

The law would have to be very carefully crafted. The give and take of DC politics is endless gaming.

I would say that yielding on background checks and then demanding National Carry Laws that force other states to accept out of state permits would be a good move. Personally I'd like to see carry restrictions lifted on military bases for military and retired military also.

Exemptions for giving to most family members and certain gifts.

Also write it to prohibit any type of back door registration scheme.

Tell them go pound sand on everything else. They still "win" a little and can claim a big victory. Guys in California can get out of state permits to celebrate and DF can have an aneurism.

[win-lose]

win-lose, neither you nor Alabama Shooter are the first to tell me that I'm wrong on the prior restraint notion, and that's fine. It's never been an "exact fit" argument. That's why I use words like "akin to" or related to when I try to articulate it.

I'm not say'n you are wrong... just that I don't agree. For what it is worth, there was an example given in this thread of a poor single mom with no car, no ffl within 2 hours (I may be embellishing here) and who really can't even afford the $200 for the gun (which I'm sure is needed to protect her from her crazy ex... again, embellishing here). That scenario makes a decent case

[MLeake]

win-lose, your embellishments may not be too far off, except for the two hour drive thing.

Check out the Emily Miller series, Emily Gets Her Gun to see the problems posed for a DC resident by the fact there is (or was at the time of publishing) only one licensed FFL in the District. She also provides concrete examples of conflicting legal advice (both wrong) from DC police and bureaucrats.

(Edit: Look, too, at the tactics of Chicago since MacDonald; onerous fees for gun shops; training rewuirements to buy guns, but no permits allowed for training ranges in the city; etc.)

In more rural areas, you might be surprised by distances. The elementary and high schools my son will attend are eight miles away; his high school will be fifteen miles away. Living in Massachusetts can skew concepts of both potential distances, and availability of public transportation. (I have lived in Boston, and my family were from the Lawrence and Worcester areas when I was little, so I am aware of short distances and good public transit infrastructure - but those are not universal throughout the US.)

[Justice06RR]

My only arguement against Universal Background checks is:

Why have it, when we all know criminals won't use it and are not deterred by it anyway? (as they can get firearms from other illegal means i.e. theft, straw purchases, etc)

[BigD_in_FL]

I believe that a person is responsible to do their "due diligence" when transferring a firearm and have consequences if they don't. How would we accomplish this without yielding too much to the anti's-agenda?

What about due diligence selling a car to make sure they aren't drunk drivers or speeders?
What about the old set of kitchen knives sold at a garage sale? Or a bat, or club, or anything else?

Who made YOU the arbiter to decide who is proper and who isn't, and who should receive some punishment? Are you applying for Bloomberg's job?

What two folks do in the privacy of their respective homes is only their business, not some nanny state

[Alabama Shooter]

What about due diligence selling a car to make sure they aren't drunk drivers...

Dram shop laws. Hard to enforce criminally but the civil cases are confounding.

[lcpiper]

I still stand by my convictions that;



One, this is beyond the Federal Government's business.

Two, that this is an issue for our states to handle individually.

Three, that all this will do is boost the crime rate for gun theft. Now if I want to sell a gun I'll have to make the smuck go through a BG check which he will in turn avoid and simply pay my home a visit maybe when my wife and I are gone, maybe when we are not.

And Four, how in the heck can you pull this off without it becoming in all effect gun registration? Dealers must keep very strict records of every gun that they recieve and transfer, I fear the same for the individual owner will be implied in these new laws.

And in the end, where ANY of these latest shooters prohibited possessors before they decided to go super-psycho-mass murderer?

These background checks will do nothing to prevent anything and will only burden lawful citizens with needless buracracy, and strengthen the anti-gun position.

[MLeake]

lcpiper, once again, why would you invite strangers to your home to conduct business? (At least, business of a type that lets them know you have goods they may value.)

If you don't want to use an FFL, and want a face-to-face, there are other places you can go that don't reveal your address to a buyer you don't know.

Other than that, I agree with you.

[win-lose]

Who made YOU the arbiter to decide who is proper and who isn't, and who should receive some punishment? Are you applying for Bloomberg's job?

What two folks do in the privacy of their respective homes is only their business, not some nanny state

BigDinFL, basically you are saying that it is perfectly within your rights to:

A) Sell a gun to an 11 year old, from across town who answered your add because he was being bullied at school and wanted "protection"

b) Sell a gun to ex-con who is loaded with prison tattoos, sporting his gang colors and bragging about the crap he has done and hopes to do.

c) Sell a gun to your neighbor who you KNOW beats his wife and has threatened to kill her.

d) Sell a gun to the neighborhood nut who walks around town having intense arguments with himself and threatens anybody who approaches.

etc....

If a person does any of the above, to my mind there should be consequences. I don't have a good balanced solution to this problem but am participating in this discussion with the hopes of finding such a solution. So for myself, I will continue to transfer through an FFL.

To say I'm in favor of a nanny state is ridiculous. To say that you have the right to do whatever you please is disconcerting, to say the least.

[Spats McGee]

Alabama Shooter, I think where you're getting tripped up is the distinction between civil rights and constitutional rights, and the distinction between whether a man has a right, and whether I, acting as an individual, am capable of violating it. I have not gone back and re-read my previous posts this morning, but I may be partially to blame for that confusion, as I was perhaps not as clear as I could have been. In the interest of not derailing this thread any further, though, I'd like to move on to another topic. I may start another thread to address the other issues.

I had a "lightbulb moment" last night that I thought I'd put out there for everyone's consideration. There's been a lot of talk about universal background checks, mandatory background checks, etc. What if there were a way to encourage background checks without mandating them? Don't get me wrong, I still oppose mandatory, universal background checks. I also do not believe that this proposal that I am about to make would fly with any of the hardcore anti-gunners. Still, I think it's worth consideration.

18 U.S.C. § 922 currently reads:

(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person [is a prohibited person]. 18 U.S.C.A. § 922

As written, one of the key elements is "knowing or having reasonable cause to know" that the transferee is a prohibited person. Note that, under this section, it does not actually matter whether the transferee is a prohibited person. For example, if my ol' fishing buddy Frank Felony has "convicted murderer" tattooed on his forehead, I have reasonable cause to know that he is prohibited, at least arguably. Even if he is not, in fact, a convicted murderer, a US Attorney could make a decent argument that I had "reasonable cause to know" that Frank is prohibited, even if he is not.

What if the following section were added to 18 U.S.C. § 922?

It shall be an absolute bar to prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(d) that, prior to the transfer of any firearm or ammunition, the transferor caused to be conducted a background check with respect to the transferee, which background check complies with 18 U.S.C. § 922(t).[Spats Note: There may be other language that would need to be added to include other applicable law besides 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)]

For those of you in support of universal background checks, would this be palatable? It seems to me that it would provide some concrete incentive for tranferors to use background checks (a bar to prosecution), without mandating them.

[lcpiper]

MLeak I answered that question once before. Did you not understand it? Was it not clear?

Are you so single-minded and fixated on details and specifics that you fail to recognize hyperbole, supposition, or a simple what-if scenario? Look dude, if people can do it, they most likely will do it, even if it isn't smart.

In my particular case, I answered that I have done this before, I knew the guy was an Active Duty Army Officer who was being reassigned to a location and couldn't take his gun. I didn't even want it, plastic pistols are not my style. But he needed to sell it and so I bought it to help him out. He was already getting too cheap out of desperation and I knew I could get his price back out of it.

But my point is that there are people who will do this and this is what is going to happen to them.

No one thought that the guy in Wisconsin who was open-carrying was going to make a target of himself but he did. There was a bad guy who saw him and robbed him of his gun.

Open Carry makes you a target.
Gun Free Zones make you a target.
Forcing individuals to perform a government function restricting personal business is going to make you a target.

The only real question left is who is going to be "you".

[jspappap]

This is just another in a long line of Government attempts to take over our right to individual privacy. They will eventually add a tax to the private sale of guns then continue raising it to further discourage gun ownership. Remember nothing ever given to Government control was ever a success. Drugs are illegal, hows enforcement of that law going? Each year hundreds of thousands are affected by illegal drugs, thousands die from using them, thousands are killed getting and selling them and we spend Billions of dollars treating abusers and victims of drug users and traffickers. Now lets talk about Illegal Immigration. Hows enforcement of that going? Again we spend Billions supporting these lawbreakers and now we want to make them legal citizens. The legal law abiding citizens are the only ones who will follow these laws and "WE" are not the problem "WE"are the solution. AAARRRGGGHHH Nuff said

[Alabama Shooter]

Alabama Shooter, I think where you're getting tripped up is the distinction between civil rights and constitutional rights, and the distinction between whether a man has a right, and whether I, acting as an individual, am capable of violating it. I have not gone back and re-read my previous posts this morning, but I may be partially to blame for that confusion, as I was perhaps not as clear as I could have been. In the interest of not derailing this thread any further, though, I'd like to move on to another topic. I may start another thread to address the other issues.

It is not a derailment. It is essential to the topic. The CRA and it most of it's follow ups were written to ensure that people have the necessaries in life (education, housing, employment, basic services etc) and not are not to be denied them for discriminatory reasons.

I personally believe that the tools for self defense (arms) are also a necessary and should not be denied without just cause. Therefore obtaining them should not be subject to discrimination (of course most of us know the history of arms control in the US has a long, long racial/ cultural background).

I think if you believe that you can discriminate on who you sell you guns to than you would have to accept it is not truly an essential right.

Agree or disagree? No need to get shaky knees and equivocate here. The question is pretty straight forward.

For those of you in support of universal background checks, would this be palatable? It seems to me that it would provide some concrete incentive for tranferors to use background checks (a bar to prosecution), without mandating them.

It shall be an absolute bar to prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(d) that, prior to the transfer of any firearm or ammunition, the transferor caused to be conducted a background check with respect to the transferee, which background check complies with 18 U.S.C. § 922(t).[Spats Note: There may be other language that would need to be added to include other applicable law besides 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)]

It would be enormously helpful. I think that kind of language should be included any proposed legislation.

[MLeake]

lcpiper, those other people who will do this should have learned lessons vicariously from the folks who have already been robbed by strangers who responded to jewelry ads, and were given the sellers' addresses. People who will rob somebody of valuables don't need the excuse of a failed NICS check.

So, I am opposed to mandatory checks, but I think your specific example is silly, and I think silly examples detract from our other points.

I think your other arguments are fine. And yes, I recognize hyperbole, supposition, etc. However, I think you are approaching reductio ad absurdum with your recurring supposition.

win-lose, I think BigDinFL realizes the persons in your examples would not be eligible for a lawful transfer, and doubt he meant he would sell to such people. I suspect he meant that, assuming in his judgement the person would not be a prohibited person, then he would be ok with the law in his state, and that is good enough for him.