From Xavier comes today's lesson - a little film of our lords and masters pining away for closure of the "gun show loophole".
Now, any gun person can see what they are doing - most folks know nothing about purchasing firearms, thus it is easy to conflate the vast majority of legal, regulated, background checked, show purchases with the tiny minority of private transfers that happen, so non gun people are given the idea gun shows are vast arms bazaars where gangsters congregate to purchase under-the-table machine guns.
And gunnies, figuring the Bloombergs of the world are making an underhanded play to close gun shows, always patiently explain the truth about this particular dodge. We explain it to anyone who asks, we explain it endlessly, we explain it in letters to the editor and website comment sections. It seems we are endlessly explaining to anyone who will listen that every buyer of every gun sold by every dealer at every gun show gets run through the same background check as if the purchase were happening at a brick and mortar store, and the words "non-existent" should always be silently inserted before the words "gun show loophole".
Forgive me if I am pointing out the obvious, but I don't think his dishonor, the Mayor of New York and his ilk, give a rat's patoot about closing gun shows loopholed or otherwise. Don't get me wrong, they'd love to make owning a gun impossible for everyone but their personal security details, but shutting down gun shows isn't going to do that. Making private sales illegal however, would be a good start in that direction.
It goes like this: It is now the law that the purchaser of any firearm sold anywhere by any means must undergo a background check. "To heck with that." I say, "My brother wants to buy my hunting rifle, and I'm going to sell it to him, and no dumb law is going to keep me from doing that."
Later, while my brother is in deer country, the local cops stop him, and noticing the rifle, become suspicious.
"That your rifle?" asks our mythical policeman.
"Sure is." answers my brother.
"How is it I may be certain you underwent a rigorous background check before being allowed to purchase this high powered sniper weapon which fires bullets that can cut clean through a bullet-proof vest?"
"Guess you'll have to take my word for it."
And there it will have to stand. They may make it unlawful to privately sell a gun at a gun show, but there are always parking lots, garages, and my brother's basement, and unless there is some way to permanently record who owns what guns, they will never be able to prove you didn't always own this or that particular gun.
I don't see a calculating little twerp like Bloomberg letting it go at that. After the ban on private sales, the next step is providing the means of verification that the law is being followed. It will have to be registration, and it will be done for the children of course, or to stop gun traffickers, or for any one of a dozen other reasons, but it will be done. They will assure us the lists will be kept private, and no confiscation is intended, and if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about.
Whatever excuses and assurances are given, there will have a list and you will be on it, and when it is time to come get your guns the authorities will know where to go.
You may choose to believe a policy founded on lies and implemented by liars won't be used against you; I'll bet a lot of people in a lot of places believed things like that... right up till the end.
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...a confederacy of the mind. In God we trust, everybody else keep your hands where I can see them.
4 comments:
Without fail.... every gun registration, no matter where in the world in was/is, has at some time been used to confiscate weapons from law abiding citizens.
We have the choice of living within laws that are wrong, or living outside them.
To those who would say 'It's DA LAW!' and must be obeyed in an orderly society, I'd like to point out this fun little fact:
It was once 'Da LAW' in this great nation for one man to own another as a slave, and beat him to death at will.
That is... it was the law of the land till a Republican president took a stand against it.
Carteach0, thanks for stopping by. Some might think I'm being paranoid, but after a certain age, you stop thinking of scoundrels as being amusing, and start thinking of them like individual virus cells - designed to multiply, and out to wreak havoc.
Don't forget, in California we have no "gun show loophole" because EVERY firearms transfer must go through an FFL. Yet folks are dealing with it and have done so for years. It's all too easy to imagine it happening elsewhere. We're fighting to reverse it here, but it's a lot harder to do than stopping it in the first place.
Verification word (what to say if Scalia's writing a plurality instead of a majority opinion): ophqieq
They're pushing to make private sales illegal in Illinois. Its been stopped for a while, but every year they come closer.
The big caveat is the following:
Say you buy a new handgun. That serial # gets recorded.
You sell that handgun to your buddy "Bob" in, say, California.
Now say Bob shoots a burglar a few months later with that handgun...
The million dollar questions is who else gets a free ride down to the police station for questioning?
If you answered, "myself", give yourself a pat on the back...
You can see how this neuters what the handgun is actually designed to do: protect in that circumstance - Bob can't use it to save his skin without jeopardizing you.
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