So, Obama bypassed congress and issues some petty executive orders mostly to be an asshole to law-abiding gun owners
Here’s the White House press office piece. Short version is that there will be no more re-importing of weapons that the US government gave to foreign countries. And for a trust or corporation to purchase an NFA item, individuals associated with the entity would have to undergo a background check. You know, because of all those times NFA weapons and imported collectible firearms are used in crime. Oh, wait. That hardly ever happens. I can think of two weapons that involved NFA crimes, one was a doctor who shot the woman he was having an affair with with his MAC-10 and the other involved a stolen suppressor. These happen so infrequently that when they do, they’re a big deal on blogs. And on the trust issue, it’s already illegal for a prohibited person to possess a weapon. And ATF doesn’t prosecute for attempted illegal purchases anyway, so the background checks are mostly useless.
Mostly, these actions target law-abiding folks who don’t commit gun crimes. So, there will be no reduction in gun violence.
What others are saying (or, rather, what I’m paraphrasing they are saying):
These orders apply only to a small subset of firearms.
It’s just a petty, cry baby slap at those bitter clingers.
These are not real, actual problems. Well, yes.
But this was all the gun control lobby could get for $7M.
August 29th, 2013 at 11:40 pm
yeah um the addition of the “mostly” is putting it mildly, unless you think of the importation restrictions as bary being an asshole to firearms industry.
August 29th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
I guess they quailify as both
August 30th, 2013 at 1:01 am
I think it’s the president thumbing his nose at the taxpayers once again. The production of every one of those firearms that was exported was paid for by taxpayer funds. If they were sold rather than given away as part of an aid package, I doubt we recouped 100% of that cost. He’s not saying we don’t want the guns back, he’s telling the taxpayers they don’t have a right to their own property.
August 30th, 2013 at 2:04 am
When will this take effect? Specifically, the trust order reuiring backgrounds?
August 30th, 2013 at 2:07 am
I have to say that I think our relationship with Korea as a trade partner was worth every penny; not to mention the fact that many saw duty in ww2 before arming the militaries of trade partners like japan, Korea and Taiwan. it’s not an issue of recouping a military investment it’s an issue of our right to bring them home and own them, if Korea wanted to keep them for historical reasons that would be fine; but NO, Obama has to do his little bit to prevent the spread of gun ownership, while symbolically showing his true feelings about semi-auto’s. This shit has a lot to do with why his sudden disappearance from political office would benefit the United States as his replacement (Biden) would never be able to enforce policy and congress would take over control of what they are constitutionally supposed to control, also president Biden would inevitably say stupid shit relating to the 2016 elections resulting in the failure of the democratic bid to take control of all houses of government and in two more years the loss of the presidency, check and fuckin mate.
August 30th, 2013 at 3:43 am
Anarcho-Tyranny in the death of 1000 cuts.
Wonder how John “Keating 5” McCain feels about all this.
No, actually, I don’t.
August 30th, 2013 at 8:18 am
It’s interesting that the most tightly regulated section of firearms (NFA items) are hardly ever used in crimes here. Is it possible argue that the regulation is what keeps them from being used in crimes?
Before somebody decides to flame me for saying this, I’m a hard core gun guy. USPSA range officer, etc, etc, etc.
It’s a real question about a real subject.
August 30th, 2013 at 8:34 am
“Is it possible argue that the regulation is what keeps them from being used in crimes?”
NFA items were rarely used in crimes even before they were regulated. It was theater from the beginning, the Democratic Party just needed a boogeyman to “ban,” and they knew well enough to pick products most people didn’t own in the first place.
Cough…AWB…cough.
August 30th, 2013 at 10:19 am
Brice:
I’ve thought of that before. What it boils down to is scarcity and punishment.
Legal NFA items are scarce. I think there are maybe 120,000 transferable machineguns in this country, not including your local SWAT armament. Contrast that with the, what, 300 million non-NFA arms and you get an idea of how rare these things really are. My numbers may be off, or even way off, but you get the idea.
So what you wind up with here is that most “crime guns” are stolen hand guns, not NFA items specifically or long guns generally. Merely having an NFA item that’s not registered to you is not only a serious crime, but it’s a serious crime that they’ll actually prosecute for (unlike a felon in possession of a handgun, which gets pled down to like a weekend in jail or whatever).
Now, the anti’s will say “SEE!!! We had you guys register all those scary guns, and crime with those is nonexistent! If we just register ALL guns in the same way, then gun crime will cease to exist!”
And that would be a non-crazy thing to say, if we didn’t have other countries or even places here in the US (Chicago!) that did exactly that. But we do have those places, and what do we see?
Faced with the same punishment for being caught with a handgun and caught with what here would be an NFA regulated weapon….they choose the machine guns, short barreled shotguns, and GRENADES.
Just google “Grenade attack” and look at the places that pop up. It happens in London for chrissakes!
Criminals will get what they can. If you make it equally as hard for criminals to get lower-lethality arms as more effective arms, with the same punishment, they’ll go for the bigger stuff.
Antis think they’ll just go get jobs instead.
August 30th, 2013 at 11:25 am
So the prices of AR-15s are back down, but mil surps are going to go through the roof.