US gun law reforms

[Bartholomew Roberts]

The "constructive purpose" (and instructive as well I might add) would be to create a record of what firearms a background checked person like yourself might own.

The actual case is actually worse than what you described. Schumer-Toomey-Manchin exempted qualifying CHL holders from the NICS check; but it still required they do all transfers through an FFL. So you would not undergo another background check, the law already recognizes that you have been background checked and are exempt - it just insists you go to an FFL anyway and fill out a Form 4473 despite the fact that everyone knows you are not a prohibited person.

Ironic that a guy from Australia wouldn't understand why Americans don't like registration.

[TimSr]

I think most people are missing the real intent of background checks. They are not to reduce crimes or keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and nobody believes they have ever been effective at doing either. Most licenses and permits issued by government are for one purpose only. The purpose is to charge a fee, and take in revenue. In the case of guns, its also one more incremental step in making them unaffordable to all but the elite. Today is $20, tomorrow its $50, and next week your background check is $200.

The antigunners have failed from every angle, and the one angle they are still driving at is making them too costly for the average citizen. Look at all the proposals about gun taxes, ammo taxes, etc. If a background check is mandated, they can charge whatever the government want for one, and if its based on costs for the program, no one is more talented than the government for making costs ridiculous.

Does anyone truly believe skyrocketing ammo prices and shortages are not orchestrated by govt purchases? Watch for the demonization of "big ammo" profits as they are also masters of blaming others for what they purposely do, to an ignorant public willing to trust them.

[hogdogs]

Timsr, most feel rising prices and ammo shortages are thanks to hoarders and gougers on the consumer level. Only the easily mislead feel the government hoarding conspiracy could badly limit all the other sizes being affected.
Brent

[Evan Thomas]

Hogdogs forgot to put this in quotes: "government hoarding conspiracy." The point is that there isn't one...

[doofus47]

Aguila Blanca

And what constructive purpose would be served by extending that requirement such that even a member of my own family couldn't sell OR GIVE me a firearm without running a background check on me?

I try to take this argument over UBC into the 4th Amendment analogy department. Sure, it seems to make sense to check every single private transfer of firearms because there might be a crazy/criminal person on the receiving end, even in my family. Yep.
Ok,
How about we check every single email and email attachment that you send to or receive from family/friends because, hey, there are child pornographers out there who send this stuff? We need to catch them. Every child is precious; we need to do our best.

Registration? How about we register your home computer and Ipad and tablets and all their saved data with the gov't because child pornographers use this sort of equipment everyday.

No one seems to think that these are good ideas to solving the other crimes against children. Until someone can explain to me in yet smaller words how one right is more absolute than another, I will resist 2nd amendment infringement.


Then there is the somewhat simpler question of "why would anyone support passage of a UBC law when the writers of that law admit that having that law on the books wouldn't have stopped the crime that everyone is worked up about (sandy hook)". That cognitive dissonance deserves either a treatise the size of "War and Peace" or a simple no vote. That's just bad governance.

edit: actually my examples involve the 4th more than the 1st Amendment. New rule: no more posting after 11pm at night.

[TimSr]

Like I said, its easy for the governmnet to throw the blame on "big ammo", and people are far more likley to believe known habitual serial liars than their local "greedy" business man.

Yes, most of the shortages are caused by panic buying. What caused the panic? "Conspiracy"? A bit strong. "Political tactic" to purposely cause a panic? In case you didn't notice, there was a huge hurry to get gan restrictions passed right after Sandyhook, and a conscious effort to keep public panic ginned up. "Conspiracy"? I don't know. Political tactic? Is is still not obvious?

[TimSr]

And what constructive purpose would be served by extending that requirement such that even a member of my own family couldn't sell OR GIVE me a firearm without running a background check on me?

Its not about constructive purpose. Its about adding a transfer tax to discourage ownership.

[Tom Servo]

"Political tactic" to purposely cause a panic?

So, you're saying that the political response to Sandy Hook was a tactic to cause an ammo shortage? I'd call that a conspiracy theory.

I work with the general public. I can tell you, the shortage was driven by consumer greed and ignorance. If one wants to attribute it to anything intentional, he should provide some proof.

[NWPilgrim]

Glen's sarcastic comment about the gun grabbers wanting to leave us with nothing more than shotguns and birdshot is spot on. Just look at other countries who kept "compromising" with ever more "reasonable" gun laws. If they are left with any firearms it us exactly that. Don't blame Glenn for the idiocy of gun grabbers. We know they don't make sense.

It is refreshing to see so many clearheaded gun owners with common sense on thus forum. Not typical of the general population unfortunately.

[Revolver1]

Hey Plumb Nuts, background checks, or any other non sensical legislation WILL NOT safeguard against human psyche or behavior! I could flip out at any point AFTER I pass a background check! Then what?

[Plumbnut]

Hey Plumb Nuts, background checks, or any other non sensical legislation WILL NOT safeguard against human psyche or behavior! I could flip out at any point AFTER I pass a background check! Then what?

You could go to jail or you might get stopped by a good guy with a gun.

Whats good about a cancer screening when you could get cancer later?

[Al Norris]

Straw Man.

Cancer screening is not mandated.

[Plumbnut]

That was an example.....I know cancer screening is not mandated and its not a comstitutional ammendment either but its an example that you just dont do things because once you do it theres no chance of anthing going wrong in the future.

Is that hard to understand?

[Evan Thomas]

I know cancer screening is not mandated and its not a comstitutional ammendment either but its an example that you just dont do things because once you do it theres no chance of anthing going wrong in the future.

Is that hard to understand?

Actually, yes, it is. I have no idea what the above sentence means.

[Aguila Blanca]

Originally Posted by TimSr

Its not about constructive purpose. Its about adding a transfer tax to discourage ownership.

What transfer tax?

I don't think it's about adding a tax at all. I think it's about creating a universal registry. And I worry about that more than I do about a possible tax.

[Plumbnut]

I know.....if anyone supports background checks all of a sudden nothing the say makes sense.. and their always wrong.

[Evan Thomas]

Not at all. I just don't understand the connection you're making between cancer screening and background checks, because you haven't explained it clearly. I have no way to know if you have a valid point if it's not expressed coherently.

"....you just dont do things because once you do it theres no chance of anthing going wrong in the future."

Taken at face value, this seems to mean that one shouldn't do something, because if one does it, future harm will be prevented. That makes no sense, so I'm assuming you expressed yourself badly, and I'm asking for clarification.

[tyme]

The overarching problem with more gun laws, including universal background checks, is that nobody on either side of the issue will ever be able to prove to the other side that gun laws were/are responsible for decreasing (or increasing) the crime rate, even the gun crime rate. Sociology is not a simple formula where you can plug in gun laws to get predictions of changes in gun violence. Correlation is not causation. Culture drives crime and gun crime more than gun laws do. Etc.

Since there's no rational statistical argument that background checks impede criminals, and since you can't make a retrospective statistical argument about gun laws affecting crime rates, all that's left is the emotional tact: gun crime is bad, we have to do something, and universal background checks are one available option, and anyone who's legal shouldn't have a problem with it because they'll pass (eventually... though they might get delayed or even rejected until they call up NICS and get it sorted out).

Universal background checks amount to no provable effect on gun availability to criminals. They impose a burden on everyone who wants to transfer guns privately. They impose scheduling and transportation costs to meet at an FFL. They amount to more FFL paperwork, more gun ownership records for the ATF to illegally collect and archive, more NICS check data for the FBI to illegally archive, and more costly "private" firearms transfers, because FFL transfers are not free, even if NICS checks are.

If you want to reduce injury and death, get involved supporting vehicle/traffic safety improvements (real safety, not revenue generation), or improved cost/benefit preventive medical technology. Those kinds of efforts have far more likelihood of benefiting people.

If you want to reduce the risk of getting killed by someone with a firearm, consider carefully the kinds of people you associate with, and the kinds of people they associate with, because that has vastly more impact on your safety. Compare that to the chance that some crackhead or revolving-door ex-con who wants to hold up a store you happen to be shopping in, or picks your home for a hot burglary, is going to be deterred in his plan: because of universal background checks, he couldn't get a gun transfered through a FFL, so he gave up, and now you're facing a robber or a home invader with a knife or pepper spray instead of a gun. I don't think so, but that's me.

[Plumbnut]

I could flip out at any point AFTER I pass a background check! Then what?

This guy claims he could flip out after a background check. Well thats very true but just because you could possibly have a problem in the future doesn't mean you shouldn't have a background check today.

Just like back ground checks cant stop ALL crime in the future which I totaly agree but thats no reason not to have a background check.

Cancer screening cant prevent cancer in the future but it can catch cancer that you have right then.....just like a background check could catch ciminal trying to buy a gun right then.

Understand now?

[Evan Thomas]

OK. But here are a couple of counter-arguments.

The only person who may benefit from cancer screening is the one being screened. He/she may benefit from early detection if a cancer is detected; if no cancer is detected, that's nice to know.

In the case of background checks, the supposed benefit is to society as a whole, in the form of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. There is no benefit to the average, law-abiding gun buyer; in fact, he/she is harmed by the process, as it increases the cost of the transaction, inconveniences private sellers, and may cause unwarranted delays to people who need a gun immediately for protection form a known threat.

Screening for various cancers is more or less subject to error: sometimes a cancer may be missed, and sometimes the test may return a false positive. Additionally, early treatment of some cancers, in some people, isn't always beneficial; the treatment itself often does both short- and long-term harm. Prostate cancer is a good example of this.

And that's where your analogy breaks down completely: medical science puts a lot of effort into collecting data on the costs and benefits of both screening and treatment, and protocols for both are changed as new information about what is effective becomes available. If a particular kind of screening or treatment turns out to be harmful for some people, it's either stopped or limited.

As tyme has pointed out, there are no data that answer the same questions about gun control laws in general -- and certainly not for background checks.

There's no evidence that they do any good, in terms of reducing crime, and the social costs, which I mentioned above, are quite high: many people would be harmed by universal background checks, and there's no demonstrable benefit. So they amount to nothing more than magical thinking -- superstition, if you will.

[Plumbnut]

I was using cancer screening as an example in the context that just because a screening cant prevent cancer in the future isn't a reason not to be screened.

I didn't state what type of cancer. Sure there are exceptions because all cancer is not the same.

The point being just because background checks cant stop a person from committing a crime in the future isn't just cause not to do background checks.

That was the context.

How many times did not being the legal drinking age stop you from drinking if you realy really wanted some alcohol? Sure didn't stop me but it sure didn't make it as easy. It limited me where I could get it and it made it more difficult.

My bckground check took under 4 minutes and I assure you that my Kimber wouldn't have cost one red cent less if checks were not required.

Background checks are not as effective as they could be because they are not required for all sales.....only ones from a dealer.

Thats like putting a lock on the front door and not having a backdoor at all

[Frank Ettin]

Excellent analysis, Vanya.

Another point is that a cancer screening protocol isn't even adopted and put into routine use until both its safety and efficacy have been thoroughly tested.

[Plumbnut]

Having background checks on only new guns or guns from dealers and not a private sell is like doing an oral cancer screening only on the upper part of your mouth and then claiming oral cancer screening is not effective.

You guys say you dont want that march on D.C. to happen because it "makes us gun owners look bad"

What do you think that criminals and nut jobs buying guns without background checks do?

Making it harder for a criminal to get a gun is worth 4 minutes of my time when I buy a gun.

[Plumbnut]

Are background checks unconstitutional?

If the 2nd ammendment cant be regulated (background checks) then how can the 1st ammendment be regulated?

I cant yell fire in a movie theater to cause a stampede can I? That free speech is not protected is it?

If I'm in court I cant get up and cuss the judge out can I? That speech is not protected.

I cant make a verbal threat.....that speech is not protected is it?

So if the 1st ammendment can be reulated then why cant the 2nd?

You guys are always asking me to PROVE it......state your sources. Well I'm going to flip the script on you.

You prove that the 2nd ammendment cant be regulated.

My proof is that its the law of the land right now and Frank if your such a good lawyer then why haven't you had it repealed yet if its so cut and dry?

[Al Norris]

Making it harder for a criminal to get a gun is worth 4 minutes of my time when I buy a gun.

The point Plumbnut, is that background checks do not make it any harder for a criminal to get a firearm, if they are determined to get one. No one, can show that it makes it harder.