Why Universal Background Checks Are Bad for Gun Owners

[jerkface11]

You're trying to get our side to support gun control. Maybe you should stop.

 

[Deanimator]

You're trying to get our side to support gun control. Maybe you should stop.

Those fifth column efforts have been going on for decades... with spectacularly little to show for them. The funny thing is that some of them actually believe their own propaganda and really think that gun owners want to STOP being gun owners on the installment plan.

 

[Deanimator]

That kind of rhetoric is not productive and often damaging in convincing the undecided to support our cause. Please stop.

The only thing it "damages" is the fifth column attempts to dupe gun owners into supporting the effort to ensure that they're not longer gun owners. I've been exposing the TRUE motivations of gun control advocates... and their Quislings in AHSA and the NFA before it for the better part of twenty years. And I've been highly effective at it.

THAT is what you want me to stop. The answer, as always, is "NO, I REFUSE."

 

[Nom de Forum]

You're attempting to convince us to go along with "universal" background checks. That hardly helps our cause.

That is very much an inaccurate, distorted, over-simplification of what I have posted in this thread and the other thread.

This thread is rapidly turning into a merry-go-round with Nazi references and distortions increasingly serving as some of the horses.

 

[SuperNaut]

I don't compromise on many things that aren't an inborn natural right, why would I compromise on the RKBA?

To be nice?

 

[jerkface11]

That is very much an inaccurate, distorted, over-simplification of what I have posted in this thread and the other thread.

You keep trying to convince us that caving on this is somehow good for us. I know you sugar coat it but that's still what you're doing. So don't act like I'm distorting anything.

 

[Nom de Forum]

You keep trying to convince us that caving on this is somehow good for us. I know you sugar coat it but that's still what you're doing. So don't act like I'm distorting anything.

Already had that argument in the other thread. I am not going to have it again. Like I posted, this thread has become a merry-go-round. It has far more static that signal, unlike the previous thread. Whether intentional or unintentional the creation of this thread has served to promote that static. I am getting off the merry-go-round.

 

[jerkface11]

How is what you're doing not trying to convince us to give in on this??

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

10 point critique snipped for brevity

I'm unclear as to the purpose of your post. Was that intended to be a helpful critique or was there something you did not understand or fundamentally disagreed with that you were meaning to address? Your critiques seem to focus on small elements that miss my overall theme and add nothing to understanding my general point - while I am trying to be informative, this wasn't meant to be a dissertation; but an Internet post in a gun forum. Also, you do realize that the underlined text indicates a link that provides further elaboration right?

Having said that, let me address your criticisms on the off chance that there is some misunderstanding I can help clarify.

1. I called it the "Nazi Firearms Law" because that was what Stephen Halbrook called it in his article "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of German Jews. The law remained basically the same as enacted during the Weimar Republic, enforcement however, aided by suspension of other legal guarantees, changed dramatically. I figure if it was good enough for Halbrook, it was an acceptable and easy to understand reference for a gun board. Second, I said "rumored" because as the JPFO link I linked to shows, that has been widely rumored among firearms enthusiasts for decades; but to my knowledge had never been definitively proven (JPFOs claims to the contrary notwithstanding). I'd say "rumored" is exactly the right word in that situation.

2. Yes, I meant NICS - I assumed that was obvious and you appear to have correctly inferred my intent well enough to understand me on this point.

3. The other percentages are available in the link to the report I provided. You are correct that I did not type in that entire table from the BJS report. I'm not sure why you consider it relevant.

4. I have nothing to add to your grammatical suggestions here. If there is some way that was unclear to you, please let me know and I'll do my best to clarify it.

5. Again, covered in the report that was linked.

6. If the main point of a background check is just to deny a firearm with no further action being taken, then the Form 4473 is superfluous - which is kind of the point I was making.

7. Yes, that's a rhetorical device. Prosecuting 62 cases isn't absolutely nothing. Given that the numbers are actually in the same paragraph, I wasn't expecting to be taken quite so literally. Are you somewhere on the spectrum by chance?

8. See above.

9. After many years on the planet, I've developed a remarkable ability to know the future. I can tell you the temperature within plus or minus 20 degrees Farenheit for any summer day in the DFW area. I can tell you when it is going to rain 10 to 15 minutes before it happens. I can tell you what part of the compass the sun will rise from in the morning. I can even tell you when thunder is coming just by seeing lightning in the distance. All these remarkable feats of foresight require essentially the same skills and talent as the predictions made in this thread.

10. See above.

In the event you were just trying to be a helpful editor, the post - such as it was - has already been published. Thank you for your suggestions. I will give them due consideration should I decide to formally publish the piece.

 

[pintler]

Here's my modest proposal: when you reach the age of majority, you get some endorsements on your drivers license - G for Guns, A for Alcohol, V for Voting, etc. Those would be removed after any appropriate convictions.

If you transfer a gun to someone who doesn't have the G for gun endorsement, you're in trouble. And that's the only transfer requirement. If I want to mail a pistol to my out of state brother, no problem. For relatives and friends, you could decide whether you want to actually see the license, or if you trust them enough to take their word for it. For strangers, the buyer and seller could decide whether a photocopy is needed - or alternatively, allow a phone in verification.

People who don't like guns, or don't trust themselves with one, could ask that their endorsement be removed. This would mean that the lack of the endorsement doesn't necessarily imply a felony record (I personally don't see the need to keep felony records private, but this should satisfy people who do want that).

But I think Bart is right on the record keeping. Keeping guns away from prohibited people doesn't require writing down serial numbers.

(I also think that any of this would have only a negligible effect on the supply of guns for crooks; they would get them the same illicit ways they do now. It's like thinking that requiring background checks for meth would reduce the availability of meth. I don't have a clue where to buy meth, but the people who want it figure out where to buy it. Likewise, I wouldn't know where to go to buy an illicit gun, but the crooks sure do.)

 

[danez71]

But I think Bart is right on the record keeping. Keeping guns away from prohibited people doesn't require writing down serial numbers.

Bart is absolutely right about that.... I just don't think that's ever going away. I hope I'm wrong.

I may have not expressed myself well enough in regard to that.

Which brings me to this.....

Posts from Bartholomew Roberts, Nom de Forum, myself, and a few others may differ in opinion but are thoughtful and thought inspiring.

It's those types of posts that will further an intelligent discussion which will lead to something productive.


Those that nit pick, flame, misconstrue, and not debate on the merits of their position are the types of arguement/debate that will undoubtedly achieve UBC's in the worst way.

We are defining ourselves for others to either to buy-into or be afraid of.

 

[gbran]

Like it or not, the feds set the criteria for who is a prohibited person and during one of the so-called background checks, they might deny a buyer, but when law enforcement finds a prohibited person with a firearm, too often they get off lightly. BTW, why do they need the firearm SN# during the so-called background check?

 

[JSH1]

Like it or not, the feds set the criteria for who is a prohibited person and during one of the so-called background checks, they might deny a buyer, but when law enforcement finds a prohibited person with a firearm, too often they get off lightly. BTW, why do they need the firearm SN# during the so-called background check?

So when they find that prohibited person with a firearm they have a better chance of knowing who sold it to him.

 

[Deanimator]

Already had that argument in the other thread.

I expect you lost it there too.

These monotonously repetitious attempts to deceive the gullible are an indication of both the level of contempt which anti-gunners and their fellow travelers have for gun owners, and just how out of touch they are.

Nobody's buying the snake oil anymore.

 

[DeepSouth]

while I am trying to be informative, this wasn't meant to be a dissertation; but an Internet post in a gun forum

Informative it is, I know several gun owners, that are just good Ol' Boy type people that need to read what you put together there. You have more knowledge than me on the issue and laid it out quiet well, so with your permission I'd like to essentially copy your OP, editing out the names on the quotes, and email it to few friends.
BTW: if you'll write the dissertation ill read that to.


Also, could you elaborate on Mr. Gottlieb's position. I well remember him being against the Toomey-Manchin bill, then being for it and making a pitiful speech at a press conference, and if memory serves he turned against it again in last few hours before the vote.

I haven't heard a word about his position since, I have inquired when the SAF has call wanting a donation but they avoid the subject like the plague. I have the feeling he would disagree with your statements about his position, but like I said, since the vote there's been silence to my knowledge.

 

[Partizanai]

Nothing new really....

While I am a very new member here, I am not new at supporting our
gun rights, states rights and our true American value system. Every single
gun control law/variant is simply a part of the "Fed's" slowly attempting
to completely disarm us.
Why is this so hard to see? Does anyone think that they have the same
value set as most who are on this site? I know that they do not....
So many attempts (on their part) to improve safety are in reality yet another
opening to attack our freedoms.
"FEAR THE GOVERNMENT THAT FEARS YOUR GUNS!"
Love America enough to defend her......
P

 

[buck460XVR]

These monotonously repetitious attempts to deceive the gullible are an indication of both the level of contempt which anti-gunners and their fellow travelers have for gun owners, and just how out of touch they are.

Nobody's buying the snake oil anymore.

In reality, the percentage of hard core anti's that want to take away all our guns is probably about the same as those folks that take the 2nd Amendment literally and believe every citizen should have access to hand grenades and bazookas. The majority of folks in this country are much more moderate. A good percentage really don't care one way or the other. Proof of this is there are 200,000 members here with almost 7000 of them active. Still when these types of threads come up, there are only about a dozen or so posters making all the posts. As I said in the other thread, there are more gun owners out there that support some form of UBCs than some here want to admit. They are not anti gun in any way, and may be more active in the shooting sports(such as hunting) as many of the most outspoken here. They are legitimately just trying to find a way to curb gun violence and not seeking total gun confiscation. I just spent two days training in the local school district on how to react and protect others in the building in different scenarios of an active shooter in the building. Folks are concerned about gun violence and the safety of their children. Sometimes the ideas they come up with are not the best, nor are they viable. Happens when you are grasping for straws.

 

[DoubleMag]

ahh! soooooo, you can't delete a post. well,....

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

DeepSouth, please feel free to share that with anyone if it will help support the right to keep and bear arms.

Also, could you elaborate on Mr. Gottlieb's position. I well remember him being against the Toomey-Manchin bill, then being for it and making a pitiful speech at a press conference, and if memory serves he turned against it again in last few hours before the vote.

Gottlieb opposed the initial background check bill filed by Schumer as a placeholder (which was truly awful and would have criminalized a husband allowing his wife unsupervised access to his firearm without going through an FFL first.) According to Gottlieb's initial statements, several of his organizations (I think CCRKBA primarily) worked with the Senators who drafted Schumer-Toomey-Manchin and Gottlieb made a vocal defense of why it was a great deal for gun owners that caught him a great deal of criticism. In particular, Dave Kopel wrote a piece explaining several problems he saw with the legislation (http://volokh.com/2013/04/15/the-pr...omey-are-actually-a-bonanza-of-gun-control/)- Gottlieb did respond to those criticisms, calling them false - which prompted a more in-depth article by Kopel in National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/345845/problems-toomey-manchin-david-b-kopel). I don't believe I ever saw a response from Gottlieb to that and he withdrew support that same day IIRC.

Shortly before the vote, Gottlieb recanted his support for Schumer-Toomey-Manchin, though I don't recall on what grounds. Several months later he made a video addressing the question that I felt indicated he still thought he made the correct move in that case. (See: http://www.guns.com/2014/05/01/gott...o-lead-not-follow-on-background-checks-video/)

Though, I guess from Gottlieb's more local point of view he was right as Washington state was forced to accept a worse alternative.

 

[Deanimator]

In reality, the percentage of hard core anti's that want to take away all our guns is probably about the same as those folks that take the 2nd Amendment literally and believe every citizen should have access to hand grenades and bazookas.

And those are EXACTLY the people driving the anti side of the debate.

As I said, they operate through duplicity, deception and disinformation. Their targets are the uninformed and the gullible.

The "moderates" may want a "compromise" but they're NEVER going to get it. What they're going to get, IF we capitulate, is an incremental destruction of the right to keep and bear arms, with each excision of a right characterized as "common sense".

There is no more chance of a "compromise" between me and Chuck Schumer on gun control, than there is between me and David Duke on civil rights. Both of them have maximalist goals, profoundly destructive of my rights and interests.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, the leadership of the other side are LIARS. I never miss an opportunity to point that out (with examples) to the uninformed.

Have you noticed that I've REPEATEDLY asked how Chicago enforced it's handgun BAN, yet not a SINGLE "reasonable" compromiser has had the fortitude to answer? Obama's from Chicago. The way he ignores immigration and healthcare law, what FOOL thinks he can't or won't follow Chicago's example with gun control law?

Some of us can't be fooled anymore. NO, I REFUSE.

 

[DeepSouth]

Bartholomew Roberts, Thank you so much for addressing Gottlieb's stance. I will follow those links later when I have more time to read. I have wondered just how all that unfolded but didn't know where to look.

But I sincerely appreciate the effort and time you took to provide them.
Thank you again

 

[Spats McGee]

First of all, my thanks to Bartholomew Roberts for a very informative OP.

I've turned the UBC issue over and over in my head, and more than a few times. I do not see any way that it can be good for gun owners. I don't have time to address everything I'd like to in this post, but I would like to share a few of my thoughts on the issue.

1. Compromise -- In my lifetime, nothing in the gun control arena has ever been a compromise. A compromise is a situation in which every side to the transaction gives up something, and nobody gets what they really want. I have two sub-points on this: (a) The "compromises" pushed by the antigun side have always been something of the "give us this or we'll take more" variety. There's a business model that runs that way. It's called extortion. (b) I see no reason to compromise when it comes to my rights. I'm not one of the guys that thinks that every Tom, Dick and Harry should have access to bazookas, but by the time I was born, lots of rights that I would have had 50 years prior had already been bargained away.

2. Coming to the table -- Someone posted something to the effect of "we don't know what we can get unless we come to the table." So? The only things that the antis have to offer are rights that they already took from us. (a) Why should I have to give up something to get my stuff (rights) back? See extortion, above. (b) The antis have shown themselves to be dishonest, and done so repeatedly. I don't bargain with liars and cheats.

3. Registration -- I couldn't have put it any better than Bart did:

There are about 300 million firearms in the United States that have not been tracked past the point of first sale. Prosecuting someone for selling one of those without a UBC would be extremely difficult unless prosecutors can prove the transaction happened AFTER UBCs became law.

A defendant charged with failing to comply with a UBC law is perfectly within his rights to tell a prosecutor, "Prove it." There is no UBC law in Arkansas, and virtually every gun owner I've ever met has bought and sold guns with no background check. In the absence of registration, how exactly will a prosecutor show that any firearm I purchase in a private transaction was purchased after the effective date of a UBC law? Is it impossible? No. It's very unlikely, though.

4. Current NICS checks -- I see no reason for the make, model, serial number, etc. to be on the 4473, either. Yes, it helps LE track down a firearm to the first buyer. That might occasionally prove helpful. I see no benefit beyond that, though.

5. Before I open this can o' worms, I have to confess some ignorance as to the various types of FFLs and the inner workings thereof:

The only "compromise" I'd even think about would be to turn the FFL-03 C&R (with the same requirements) into a "non-business" FFL-01 and re-open the NFA registry with LEO must sign provision (or remove LEO signature requirement altogether) with suppressors removed form the NFA.

Other needed detail's would be no check requirements between dealer to dealer transfers and allowing the non-business FFL-01 to conduct background checks to increase completion and keep costs down. I think the currently typical $20-25 transfer fees are way too high as it is.

Getting this would get us something tangible in return as long as we don't cave to allowing a centralized database to being developed. Basically for about the current cost of one transfer fee every three years any gun owner could be a non-business FFL-01 and buy, sell, and trade among themselves unimpeded. The C&R record keeping requirements are not burdensome and don't facilitate developing a centralized database.

I'm not liking the sounds of this. To my (perhaps uneducated) ear, this sounds like the "non-business FFL-01" essentially becomes a Federal Firearm Owner's Identification. Everyone who gets this NB-FFL01 can buy, sell, trade amongst themselves without a UBC. Everyone else has to have a UBC. Do I have that right? No, thank you. Unless I buy from an FFL, I can already buy, sell, and trade all I want without a UBC. Why would I give that up, pay for the privilege of doing so, and then have some recordkeeping requirements piled on top of that? No matter how easy the recordkeeping requirements may seem, it's more than I have to do now.

5. Image -- I'm well aware of the image problem that gun owners suffer. I do my best not to make them worse. I'm unwilling to give up my rights in the (utterly vain, IMHO) hope that if our image improves, someone will throw us a bone later on. The antis have repeatedly shown that they won't throw a bone to us. They'll throw it at us. For the hardcore antigunners, simply owning a gun is the image problem. For the moderates and fence-riders, all I can do is try to be clear, (somewhat) eloquent, and civil. I'm not going to pretend that this is a negotiation, though. It's not.

6. Enforceability -- Laws that cannot or will not be enforced are worse than useless: (a) they're useless; (b) they're expensive (as attorneys research them, officers and prosecutors look for ways to enforce them, defendants have to make bail, etc.); and (c) lack of enforcement of laws engenders a lack of respect for laws and the legal system (IMNSHO). I recently got into a debate with an anti-gun friend of mine & his friends on Facebook. (Yeah, I know.) One comment made by an antigunner was "if gun owners don't come up with a solution, everyone else will, and gun owners won't like it." I don't want to get too far off the THR track here, but to paraphrase my own response: "If you support gun control, you must support enforcement. At some point, enforcement butts up against noncompliance and must result in forcible arrests. With that in mind, and given recent events and non-compliance rates in CT and NY (following Sandy Hook), consider the following: (1) The most reliable estimates I've seen put the number of gun owners in the USA somewhere around 100 million. (2) There are roughly 700 thousand police officers. (3) 2013 estimates put the US military, collectively, at about 1.4 million. To make the math easy, let's call police + military combined 2.5 million. If there's even a 10% noncompliance rate among gun owners, and you can get 100% of the military home and participating in gun control efforts, we'll still outnumber them by about 4 to 1."

 

[JSH1]

And those are EXACTLY the people driving the anti side of the debate.

As I said, they operate through duplicity, deception and disinformation. Their targets are the uninformed and the gullible.

The extremes are driving the discussion on both sides of the issue and the tactics are the same. That is why nothing has happened at the Federal level in years; neither side has the numbers to push through their agenda. Even when one party has controlled all branches of the Federal government nothing has happened because guns aren't a big enough issue for the people that hold power. (Republicans controlled all branches from 2003 - 2007 and Democrats from 2009 -2011)

The "moderates" may want a "compromise" but they're NEVER going to get it. What they're going to get, IF we capitulate, is an incremental destruction of the right to keep and bear arms, with each excision of a right characterized as "common sense".

If the moderates from boths sides took control from the extremes something could get done. (On this and a lot of other issues)

 

[jerkface11]

Then let's hope they never get control.

 

[Deanimator]

The extremes are driving the discussion on both sides of the issue and the tactics are the same.

No they aren't. The extremists on the anti-gun side are driving the debate, and are doing it with lies and disinformation. There's NO equivalence with the pro-gun side. It's like trying to equate the Institute for Historical Review with the Wiesenthal Center. Not only won't that dog hunt, it's a DEAD dog.

That is why nothing has happened at the Federal level in years

No, nothing has happened at the Federal level because the pro-gun side has stopped buying the LIE of "compromise". NOTHING has been proposed which wasn't either an outright attack on the 2nd Amendment or a stalking horse for an outright attack on the 2nd Amendment.

Again, this nonsense isn't about "compromise". It's about lies, deceit and deception. Sorry, I can't be deceived by AHSA any more than I can be deceived by the Institute for Historical Review.