Background checks
Publicola opposes them. And some thoughts from Joe.
While I’m inclined to agree, that battle has been fought and lost. Time to move on to other things, I think.
14 Responses to “Background checks”
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January 12th, 2015 at 6:52 pm
Eh, we can still morph the check into something else.
January 12th, 2015 at 6:57 pm
Publicola ain’t the only one.
If we let “universal background checks” pass nationally, meaning all gun transfers must go through a government agency and even touching another person’s gun is a crime, then we have for all intents and purposes lost the right to keep and bear arms, and are the moral equivalent of England.
January 12th, 2015 at 7:02 pm
I absolutely oppose universal checks.
January 12th, 2015 at 7:58 pm
The root problem with resisting background check is that a very large majority if your fellow citizens disagree with you. Until that changes, they are here to stay. If we are very lucky, the damage Bloomberg can inflict through the ballot will be minimal.
January 12th, 2015 at 9:52 pm
One thing that I haven’t heard brought up – why not voluntary (and free) background checks? If I wish to sell something, I might like the option of saying that the buyer has to pass a check – but strictly at my own discretion, not as a mandated requirement. Any licensed dealer would have to do the check as a public service. Would this be a middle ground that might be workable?
My feeling is that if I did want to sell something, I do want to be sure that the buyer is legit. There’s two reasons for this – one is that I have no desire to see something get out to a person who shouldn’t have a gun, the other is that I would like to protect myself from liability in case someone did buy from me in bad faith. I’d rather not have a lawyer knock on my door sometime with a multi-million dollar wrongful death suit because a guy lied to me when he bought something from me.
January 12th, 2015 at 11:08 pm
It does beg the question: A background check law was passed – if it stopped 2.1 million people, why were almost none of them put in jail?
Because when laws and government programs fail, the response is “Do it again, ONLY HARDER! Now we need “universal” background checks. And when that doesn’t work, the “next step” is building a database – de facto gun registration, because you can’t know who’s selling what to whom if you don’t already know who owns what.
And the next step (there’s always a “next step,”) is confiscation.
Hey, Neon Madman, how about this: Everybody has to have a state-issued ID. Driver’s license, whatever. When you get it, you get a background check. If you’re a prohibited person, your ID has a red gun inside the international symbol for “NO.” If you have a restraining order placed against you, you get convicted of a disqualifying crime, whatever, your standard ID MUST be handed in, and you get issued a new one with the “no guns” symbol.
You want to sell a gun to someone, ask for their ID. If it’s marked, don’t sell them the gun. If they don’t show ID, don’t sell them the gun. No background check required – it’s already been run.
January 12th, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Oh, and won’t that freak out the “No ID to vote” crowd? Getting an ID is too difficult to ask of people, except if they want to get a gun from a licensed dealer. No ID, they don’t sell you a gun NOW.
January 13th, 2015 at 12:01 am
Kevin:
Your suggestion (national ID aka “your papers”) would work, of course, but there ain’t no way in hell I’m going down that road.
I’m hoping that you’re not taking offense at my suggestion. What I’m talking about is whether or not it would be feasible to have some simple tool that I could use to protect myself at my option. If I post a couple of my pistols on the board at the range or have a table at a show, I’d like to have a way to make at least a basic (and ideally, on the spot) check that the buyer is not prohibited. Otherwise, I’m never going to sell any of my guns except to a family member or someone personally known to me. I’m not going to take the chance.
Realistically, there are people who are prohibited from buying guns, and there is a basic responsibility on the part of the seller to make sure that they don’t sell to such a person. I’d like to think that falls under the definition of responsible gun owner.
I do oppose MANDATORY and universal background checks. My point is that I might like the voluntary OPTION of the same type instant check that is available to dealers.
January 13th, 2015 at 3:32 am
What ever happened to punishing a crime that HAS been committed vs trying in vain to prevent one that HASN’T?
My background is my business, not yours, certainly not the .gov’s. Now, I didn’t object when I had to pass a background check to drive a school bus; I had a child in the system myself, and understood the concern. Driving a school bus is not an enumerated right, though. I do have an objection to having to pass one for a “privilege” to protect myself from death or grievous bodily harm. I have the right to life, liberty and property, and that implies self defense. Sleep well, liberals, knowing that my right to self defense works to your advantage as well.
January 13th, 2015 at 11:11 am
Unc,
Battles. Plural. & they were lost, but they were never fought. In 34, 38, 68, 94 & 96 we just capitulated. Sometimes we were told they were inevitable & we had to support them to keep something worse from happening, other times we were told they were good laws to support. But we never actually fought. I’m arguing that we should fight,. I just don’t see how we can fight an expansion & not fight all background checks, which means we have to get rid of the prohibited persons list.
Sebastian,
The root problem is the Chamberlain mindset that counsels we should go ahead & capitulate now so we can negotiate something less bad. It’s true that public opinion isn’t with us on this, but public opinion can be changed if we stop preemptively surrendering. We might lose, but I’m not worried about any damage Bloomie the hut can cause us – it’s the damage we’ll do to ourselves if we keep acting like the Scottish nobles from Braveheart.
Neon Madman,
You can do background checks now. There are plenty of services that run background checks for a fee. Curious though, do you fear lawsuits from selling someone a car & he gets drunk & plows into a bus full of nuns? & how do you determine who “shouldn’t have” a gun- the feds prohibited persons list? Last I heard, the feds had no crystal ball that let them delve into hearts & minds to determine who is good & who is evil. You’re much better off using your own judgement than relying on any sort of background check with federal criteria. As for an obligation to keep folks that are prohibited from having guns – did you even read that post of mine uncle linked? You think it’s a duty to keep folks who snuck into movie theaters, or wrote $300 bad checks, or who slapped their punk-ass boyfriends from having the means to protect themselves?
Kevin,
The drivers license idea still uses the prohibited persons list. Background checks are the symptom. The ailment is in the government claiming authority to make such a list. True, your method would give the anti’s fits, but it’d still leave them a foothold that they’d use later. I’m not in the mood to give them anything they can use later to screw with my Rights.
January 13th, 2015 at 3:38 pm
Yes. We lost the battle with the Brady Act back in ’93. But my approach is to fight any further advancement of background checks. We can easily demonstrate they are pointless. If we can stop the advance on this front then at some future time when higher priority issues such as getting most of NFA repealed (MGs are a lost case for now too), all the stupid import bans removed, etc. we can work on the Brady Act and machine gun bans. Perhaps through the courts or perhaps via the legislature.
It could take a decade or more but we can lay the groundwork now.
January 14th, 2015 at 4:54 pm
I agree you have to change minds, but we are where we are on background checks because public opinion is against us. No one in the gun rights movement really wanted the Brady Bill, but when the votes start to line up against you, what do you do? You can tell them to fuck off and just oppose, oppose, oppose. Maybe that’ll make everyone feel better, but it doesn’t accomplish anything when you can take action to avoid losing quite so decisively.
January 14th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Sebastian,
We’re where we are because we didn’t start trying to change minds when this bs first started.
Public opinion was against us on “assault weapons” if you recall, and we’ve done a decent job of changing that because we tried to change that. Getting rid of the prohibited persons list? Not so much. Now some in our movement, even some in pretty high places, want background checks & licenses & permit systems because they think it’s a good idea. Others think it’s politically expedient to support or not oppose those things. Both motivations result in the same thing – us losing.
I never said if we all stand up with once voice & bitch really loud that all prior restraint will melt away. But if we don’t start trying to change minds now, if we sit around & smugly say we were being politically clever by “making bad bills less worse” when we compromised then in the long run we’ll lose much more decisively than we can recover from.
January 18th, 2015 at 10:33 am
For a lot of the enemy ‘background checks’ are ONLY a step for registration. Remember, Coburn offered Schumer & Co. a bill that would allow someone to go to the PD or SO and do a NICS check(“This is what you want”) with NO records being kept(“This would make a big difference in getting gun owners to not oppose this.”) Schumer & Co. flatly turned it down, insisting there HAD to be records kept.
They don’t give a rats ass about public safety, they want a list. And we know what they want to do with it.