(I have a hard time responding directly to posts on this "... The Porch ..." blog, but it's a serious gunblogger site and deserves serious discussion: this is the best way I could find to initiate a dialogue.)View From The Porch: Cooldown Period.:
As far as Universal Background Checks, here's the correct and constitutional way to implement those: Since the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right, the default setting is that everyone has it. If someone becomes a felon or is otherwise debarred from arms, then make a NO GUNS ALLOWED black mark on their DL/ID/passport/whatever. Show me an ID without that disclaimer, and you'd be good to go, no background check necessary. And you'd be good to go in all 50 states, at that. I'd trade that for moving suppressors to Title I, repealing the Hughes Amendment, and interstate handgun sales. Hell, I might throw in a 3-day wait on sales from FFL dealers for that package deal.But that's not what the other side means by "compromise".
I may not go quite so far in an attempt to establish a quid pro quo ... but most of the issues you cited are already haunting us, so it's not as if you're being so obdurate that Brady will be able to say:
"The Right Is Not Willing To Negotiate!"
But this negotiation needs to include one single, and essential, change:
Background Checks are supposedly established to determine that the purchaser of a firearm is not a "forbidden person". (Felon, convicted felon, drug user, madman, alien, etc.) The intent is all about the purchaser, right? The manner in which this "PERMISSION" is established, is important, but not critical.
But I do have one question:
... why does the form to vet the purchaser require the details of the firearm in question? Including the make, model, caliber and SERIAL NUMBER?
The ATF does not NEED this information to confirm the validity of the exchange. The firearm is blameless; it has no past, no future, and it has never (intentionally) brought harm to any living creature.
The only reason for requiring the (unique) serial number, and the rest of the details about the firearm, is to establish a tracking mechanism as that firearm is exchanged, from one owner to the next.
And that AFT has a record of every single transaction; firearm, seller, buyer and date.
In a word: REGISTRATION!
I've often said: "Love your Country; Fear your Government".
This is exactly the reason I say that.
Using the thin cover of vetting the buyer of a "used" gun, the Feds have established a method by which every honest firearms owner (past and present) has self-established a trail of ownership.
The only people who aren't in "The System" are criminals, who acquire their firearms by theft or 'black market' transactions (often supplied by theft).
The thing is, eventually every firearm which has been legally sold will be in "The System", and if a couple of steps are missing ... that only serves to provide evidence to a prosecutor that the 'last seller'
Not ... necessarily; he may be a person who has held onto the firearm since before this egregious new set of laws were enacted. Even so, he's still in Deep Doo-Doo because he may not be able to provide a 'chain of ownership to prove that he is the legal owner,.
(Do NOT make the mistake of assuming that just because he's innocent of any wrong-doing, he doesn't need to find a lawyer who asks more for one day of litigation than an entire month of house payments ... and probably car payments, too!)
1 comment:
The federal government has unbridled power to do pretty much whatever it wants to do. Unless, there is a republican president in office, and then the deep state and federal courts will try to hinder him in every respect.
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