Does ‘Gun Show Loophole’ Actually Result in Gun Crime?
A recurring demand of the gun-control movement is the abolition of what they call the “gun show loophole”; they insist that all private party firearms transfers should be subject to a background check just like the background check that licensed dealers must perform. Of course, this is not a loophole specific to gun shows — it is an issue with all private party firearms transfers, including newspaper ads, garage sales, and transfers between friends and family members.
In the abstract, I don’t have a problem with the idea of requiring private party firearms transfers to go through a background check. There is one category of private party sale where a national background check requirement could be of some real value: that is when the purchaser is mentally ill, but has moments of lucidity during which he can find someone willing to sell him a gun.
I suspect that most of the time a person who is obviously mentally ill attempts to buy a gun, the seller declines to do so — and not because he is public-spirited, but out of fear that the person might use the gun on him. Those times of lucidity represent a real danger to the general public, but when you start looking at how to implement such a law, the argument for such a law rapidly declines.
There is another difficulty with a national background check system: in every scheme that I can imagine, an inevitable result will be some sort of firearm registration. To enforce the law against unchecked private party sales requires tracking down the last owner of a firearm found in a prohibited person’s possession — this requires keeping records of a serial number and the lawful owner. Many Americans are concerned that firearms registration will inevitably lead to some future confiscation, and you don’t need to be paranoid to think that: the second director of Handgun Control Inc. (the organization that today is the Brady Campaign) said explicitly in a 1976 New Yorker interview that registration was one of the steps towards the long-term goal of confiscation. More recently, gun-control advocates speaking in favor of confiscation of existing, legally owned firearms demonstrate that this is not paranoia but reasonable concern.
Another problem with the idea of requiring private parties to go to the national background check system is that it is not immediately clear how widespread this problem really is. Logic suggests that it should be a serious problem; but some curious incidents make you wonder.
In September of 2007, there was a gunfight in Miami in which four police officers were shot; one died. The first reports identified a Kevin Wehner as the suspect in these killings, described by one newspaper as “a Jacksonville resident with no criminal record.” But Kevin Wehner went to the police immediately after seeing himself identified as the killer, and explained what had happened. A man named Shawn Labeet had stolen Wehner’s identity, and had a driver’s license with Kevin Wehner’s name. Labeet was registering cars in Wehner’s name, and more: “Between December 2005 and March 2006, Labeet bought nine guns, six assault rifles and three pistols” using Wehner’s identity. The reason was simple: Labeet had a criminal record and could not purchase guns using his own identity.
Hmm: I thought it was really easy for criminals to buy guns through the “gun show loophole.” Why bother stealing someone’s identity to buy guns? Is this loophole less useful than it appears?
Dr. Keith Ablow explained on Fox News recently that gun control is about empowerment: Gun control empowers the government and disempowers individuals. Gun ownership empowers individuals and tends to disempower the state, which does not have a monopoly on the use of force.
Obama and his liberal allies look for any excuse to increase the power of government and decrease individual rights. This is their agenda in gun control, health care and virtually every other issue.
“Closing the gun show loophole” appears to a means of promoting universal firearm registration. Before the government can take the guns, they have to know where they are. History is replete with examples of mass murders by overly powerful governments. We should be more fearful of those examples than of the aberrant instances of shootings by deranged individuals.
If existing laws are enforced to the fullest extent, defendants will be overwhelminly black. That would be racist to prosecute those that actually commit crimes.
Exactly
Liberals have painted themselves into a corner with “crime” for over the last 50 years.
The ideological straightjacket they’ve put themself in creates a lot of ‘Internal Stress” because they cant EVER admit the Emperor sas no clothes.
So when a mass shooting of CHILDREN by a WHITE guy happens, its an orgasmic explosion of relief for them. They can finally speak passionately and forcefuly about “GUN crime”, in stead of the usual weak, duplicious, and accomodating criminal coddling they most often “have” to say and do to stay elected in their urban hell-hole districts and the “guilty white liberal” suburbs that surround them.
Once again this Communist administration is closely following the Soviet Communist playbook in using its national media to spread its propaganda and demonize its opponents (especially the NRA).
A classic example of Soviet-style disinformation is calling every semi-automatic rifle a “deadly high-powered assault weapon”, and using its media hacks to demonize anyone who opposes banning these so-called assault weapons – which the media claims only soldiers need. This statement is typically Communist in that it contains a little true information along with massive disinformation. Lenin perfected this propaganda method of combining both information and disinformation in the same message even before he led the bloody and murderous “Great October” Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Yes, it is true that only soldiers really, really, NEED an “assault weapon”, but it is not true that all those scary-looking rifles you see at a gun store are assault weapons. Not one of those rifles is capable of firing fully-automatic – unless that specific dealer has a Class-3 FFL. Then the buyer must be willing to jump through all the hoops, undergo a real background investigaion, and pay a large Federal tax (and be fingerprinted, etc) in order to buy a Class-3 weapon – meaning a weapon capable of full-automatic fire. Yes, it is possible for a person to buy a rifle that is capable of full-automatic fire if he is willing to undergo all this, but then the full-automatic weapon he buys is horribly expensive – many times the cost of an identical-looking rifle that does NOT have a selector switch making it capable of fully-automatic fire.
An old retired police officer friend told me that these days the most common source of full-automatic weapons for criminals is stealing them from police cars which are frequently not secured properly. Obviously the cops deny this, and carefully hide accounts of their real assault weapons being stolen.
I must point out once again that by definition, a semi-automatic rifle is NOT an assault weapon, because all true assault weapons MUST BE capable of full-automatic fire in order for soldiers to “assault” an enemy position, and all true assault weapons MUST USE only smaller lower-powered cartridges so that the weapon can be controllable while being fired on full automatic (meaning the recoil must be low enough so that the weapon can be reasonably held on target).
However the Communist-dominated US Media has thoroughly implanted in the minds of ignorant citizens that an “assault weapon” is just any sort of scary-looking rifle, usually black in color, and especially scary if it has a really nasty appendage such as a pistol grip, or a flash-hider, or a tiny metal tab under the barrel called a “bayonet-stud”.
Another typically Communist piece of disinformation is the term “gunshow loophole”. This term makes ignorant people think that anyone can buy a gun at any gun show without a background check. However for the last 30 years of so, every gun buyer at a gun show who bought a gun from a legitimate FFL dealer there, had to pass the standard call-in verification check. But here is where the “loophole” came in. If a private person took his old gun to a gun show and sold or traded it to another private person either inside or outside the show arena, that was always considered by the ATF to be a private sale and not subject to any sort of background check. The true reason for Communists wanting to call this private sale a “gunshow loophole” was so they could define ANY gun sale between private individuals to be a “gun show”, even if the sale did not take place at a gun show.
Thus if I decided to sell my old deer rifle to my next-door neighbor, and he and I exchanged gun and money over our back fence, our yards would be automatically defined by the ATF as a “gun show” and the sale would be subject to Federal background checks – under full penalty of law if we did not regester the sale with the Federal authorities – along with paying a hefty “transfer fee” to a local FFL dealer to register the sale. And as we all know, registration is the first step to confiscation.
Let’s stop playing by Obama’s rules. We keep talking about sale of guns. The real wording will be “sale or TRANSFER of a firearm”. I have a .22 rifle my father gave me for Christmas 32 years ago. Under this law, if I take my rifle to the range and a cop demands to see my proof of ownership (a bill of sale in my name) I would say my father gave it to me and will be arrested for illegal posession of a weapon. We will be reduced to carrying our proof of purchase with us anywhere we take our gun (Show us your papers). Possession of a weapon without proper proof of ownership will result in arrest and confiscation of ALL your weapons.
Don’t waste your breath talking about how ineffective this measure would be in fighting crime. They don’t want to reduce crime. Their goal is to INCREASE crime as much as possible. That will be their means to justify total confiscation. Their biggest concern these past 20 years has been the massive growth of concealed carry by citizens. Crime has been significantly reduced, guns are acceptable to far more citizens, rather than being stygmitized. All of that translates into the population becoming LESS dependant on government for their own safety and protection. That is a NIGHTMARE to the left!
Yet another conervative article on gun control which uses the left’s position as a starting point.
Shall Not Be Infringed.
No government permits, licensing, checks, taxes or any other controls.
Start there.
Otherwise, you’ve already accepted your chains and have openly admitted that you need government to tell you what you can and cannot do.
When you let the other guy set the rules, you lose. Period.
Keep in mind that the left thinks that you’re all mentally ill, to begin with, and that they have ‘scientific’ proof that you’re nuts. So, go ahead and start with the left’s proposition for more controls on the mentally ill. Join them in their lobby for more controls on mentally ill folks. …’cause you’ll be forging your own chains, once again.
Demonstrating their claims are not factual is the first step towards persuading the majority of Americans who don’t think ideologically.
Do you really think there are enough mental hospitals for 40% of the population?
If the opposition begins with the premise that you’re nuts, there is nothing you can say that will appeal to their ‘better’ nature. There are no facts, no proofs, no evidences that you can submit that will be accepted or acceptable.
You’re nuts, you see. Anything you say is crazy talk.
You seem to have missed my point: defining someone is crazy because they own a gun isn’t going to be very successful as a strategy when 40% of the population owns guns.
Exactly Warren.
Shall Not Be Infringed. Period. End of discussion.
Look, every Politician KNOWS this.
Leon Panetta KNOWS this.
So does Obama, Bloomberg, Cumo and everyone in the NY State Legislature as well as every Supreme Court Justice living and dead.
Ginsburg, Stomayor, all of them.
They KNOW this is what the Second Amendment MEANS, what its intended to DO…
And they DESPISE IT WITH A PASSION because it gets in their WAY.
These people are EVIL, not stupid.
And its long past time we just said it, and moved on.
Let THEM do the “catching up” for a change.
ALL of the guns are OURS.
None of the guns are YOURS, capice’
You want them?
Come and GET THEM.
Cause we’re DONE talking about it.
You are giving the left credit for intelligence that just isn’t deserved.
And you sir, to our disservice,
make plausible their “good but misguided” intentions that simply do not exist.
You are a “capitulationist”… believing they could agree with SOME PORTION of our principal,
when no such place exists in their hearts.
They know what the’re doing.
The Constitution is just 6 pages.
You dont become a “Constitutional Scholar” investing so much time at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard,
unless you’re looking for ways AROUND IT.
And their roadblock has always been three words.
Forbidden words to yet pass willfully through their mouths,
OR admit require erasure, for any of their theories to stand.
“shall not be”
They can be adhered to, or ignored.
Followed or violated.
But there is no possible COMPROMISE, that can allow them to still “be”.
And they know this.
What they seek then, is to ignore and violate without CONSEQUENCE.
And to do so, they depend on others buying into their supposed “honest ignorance”,
as the means to achieve it BLAMELESLY, for the sake of their Ego.
Have you listened to President “Austrian” Obama speak? Why would you assume that he was intelligent or well-educated?
I am not a capitulationist. I am trying to demolish their argument based on facts. Trying to argue abstract concepts like right and wrong or constitutionality with most Americans is a waste of time. Few believe in right or wrong, and fewer still have any conception of the Constitution as a contract between the generations. (My U.S. History students, of course, understand that contract concept, but how many students actually learn about that these days?)
Clayton — Without intentionally demeaning anybodys intelligence of any political party, I think ‘activists’ across the board on this subject, fail to make two central and common mistakes and realization.
1. The whole issue of ‘States” malitia’s has long been settled as has the constitutionality of USC Title 18, Section 115.
2. The Second Amendment simply says, and ‘frames’ quite clearly: “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” What it does NOT say is the right to bear any types or even military arms. Thats just a fact whether liked or not by some.
Without long discourse, NOBODY has ever infringed on the right of the people to keep and bear arms nor are they going to. The matters of ‘regulating’ arms, not banning arms, held by private citizens has long been constitutionally upheld and is a moot issue. As such, regulating is a matter of the will of the people if an when, such a freedom to own certain types of weapons, is abused to a point of inflaming the conscience of enough people. The most recent court renderings still preserves Second Amendment gun ownership for lawful purpose(s) and further defines those purposes. This is the reality of it all — is it not?
Since you say you’re only about presenting the facts, do you disagree?
You got it!
Warren,
Are you familiar with Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”?
The reasons for starting on the opposition’s position can be summed up in Rules 4, 5, and 13: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”, and “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” (respectively).
Rule 4 in application (for example): if their rules say that anyone who wants a gun must be crazy, then they must be crazy for wanting police/military to keep theirs, and the police/military must also be crazy for being willing to go along with this. This, of course, is laughable, so enter Rule 5: call them on it, show the laughable logic, and make it ridiculously obvious that they have zero credibility.
Rule 13 works nicely with the “universal background checks”. If ALL transfers must undergo a NICS check, then two neighbors who’ve known each other for years can’t buy each others’ guns. But that’s not how you say it. Personalize it: “YOUR neighbors, the ones YOU’d trust to watch YOUR kids, can’t buy/sell/trade their PERSONAL property without the government stepping in,” or “A grandparent can’t will his/her property to his/her adult grandchildren.” Also ridiculous, so apply another dose of Rule 5.
Regardless of the correctness of your position, starting off there just makes you sound obstinate and stubborn, like you won’t even listen to the other side; you sound unreasonable (which plays right into their “bitter clinger” views). Starting with the opposition’s position, and picking apart their arguments logically, makes you sound like you’ve heard them, understand them, and reject them on their face for a variety of well-thought-out reasons; you sound intelligent and reasonable. People who are on the fence with these issues are more likely to listen to the latter, and the bottom line is that – like it or not – we NEED those people on our side.
Choose Your Own Crime Stats
An interesting look at Crime Stats in the United States using data from the FBI that doesn’t seem to be getting much discussion from either the press or politicians. There has been a 50% reduction in the violent crime rate in the last twenty years and neither political party is taking credit for this? I thought politicians always wanted to take credit for good things? Perhaps they don’t want to draw attention to the fact that higher crime rates seem to correspond with inner cities? The great thing about living in the United States is you’re Free To Choose, at least for now, so feel free to Choose Your Own Crime Stats if you don’t like these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0&feature=player_embedded
Speaking of crime statistics, a UN report for 2010 found that most European nations have a higher rate of violent crime that the United States. The UK was the worst of the lot with a rate of violent crime against their citizens five times that of America.
Will point out in passing that the UK instituted draconian gun control several years ago, with a complete ban on all handguns and strict restrictions on ownership of limited types of rifles and shotguns. Purely a coincidence I’m sure.
Purely a coincidence I’m sure as well! Glad to find someone else who researches rather than follows the two party tyrannical talking points. Peace!
Wel1, since Private Citizens encounter and DEFEAT WITH ARMS, more criminals than than all the Police departments combined….
How come we never hear about THAT on the news?
More “Sucessful Self Defense” episodes with a than Murders, by several Orders of Magnitude, and (my favorite!) never a wild 50-75 shot debacle against some poor schlub who turns out to be UNARMED when the (police!) smoke clears.
Its all bullsh*t any more…the media, the politicians, they know whats going on, they’re not STUPID
They’re EVIL.
Co-conspirators to take away our rights and make themselves God-Kings.
Its time to just ignore them.
You want the guns?
Come and GET THEM
Not a coincidence, but the one didn’t cause the other. People in England didn’t carry guns in the modern era, and their ownership rates have been low for decades prior to the bans. Much if not most of the violent crime increase is drunken yob street crime. What really changed is the liberals got in and reduced sentencing and don’t punish criminals. Police don’t enforce and courts don’t imprison. Their gun bans have little or nothing to do with it.
The mistake we on the pro-gun side make is claiming guns have magical general “safety” powers in response to the anti-gunners saying they are magically “dangerous.”
First, we have the right to them regardless of if they are dangerous. But as Clayton says, we still need to persuade the undecided middle who are not ideological, those people want some utilitarian data. “it’s my right.” will not get them on our side and we have to have their votes, or at least their neutrality.
By saying “More Guns = Less Crime” we set ourselves up for “gotcha” responses when the anti’s can convince people that is debateable or false.
Our rights-based argument is as follows – it is the burden of the person who wants to -restrict- freedom to show the restriction will make things -better-. It is not our burden to show exercising freedom makes it better, it is enough that it doesn’t make it worse. Undecided people can wrap their head around that and the anti’s have zero data to counter it. They can’t bring up Lott’s Mary Rosh or say it’s fake research, as even the NIJ/CDC studies showed no negative effect from more gun rights and no positive effects from gun restrictions.
Shape the argument in our favor and make calm claims that can’t be disputed and the anti’s will respond with their emotional bluster which turns off rational undecideds. Net win for us.
You are correct that gun availability is a pretty minor factor in violent crime rates. It is zero, but until you get out at the extremes (house to house searches for firearms at one end, handgun vending machines at the other), it is trivial compared to other social factors.
Colin Greenwood’s book about British gun control, Firearms Control makes the case that the Firearms Act (1920) which regulated pistols and rifles made no measurable difference in crime rates, while the shotgun restrictions passed as part of the 1967 criminal code revision caused a statistically significant increase in violent crime. This is not terribly surprising, because shotguns were the last firearm that ordinary Britons could expect to own without enormous hassle.
Obviously, I meant to say “It is not zero”
Actually, you WERE right the first time.
“the burden of proof is on the person who wants to restrict freedom (sic)”
This is a key concept that should form the first line of defense against Progressives. Whether for gun control, cap and trade, EPA regulations . . . literally anything that big government and activist busybodies want to do.
In a perfect world:
The standard of proof that we need to restrict freedoms or take things form citizens must be very high – not just someone’s Excel spreadsheet that says if we shut down the cement plant in Riverside today, 4 polar bears in Alaska will eat better next winter.
If the problem doesn’t involve a “clear and present danger” then sweeping controversal changes should never be allowed. Perhaps the majority party can have a little “sand box” money to try some things on a temporary basis.
An honest cost/benefit analysis must be done and independently validated before any major expenditure or restriction on freedom is even considered by any branch of government.
A 51% majority should never be sufficient to create restrictions on freedom, tax increases, controversial regulations of any kind. Even a 2/3 majority is a little scary. When we really need government to do something, the problem or opportunity will be achingly obvious to almost everyone. If not, just wait and trust free people doing what they do in a free society under a set of well-enforced basic laws to solve problems and adapt over time.
Violent Crime in the UK is out of control not simply because the public has lost its right to bear arms. As a practical matter, self-defense is illegal. Under British law you can only use “proportional force” when defending yourself. For example if a 5’4″/120lb woman is face by a 6′/200lb man bent on raping her who is unarmed, a gun, knive or even a club is off the table. If she has martial arts training that too may be off the table. The only response to his fist is her fist. So she gets raped. This has created a culture of compliance and criminals get away with what ever they want.
People have become conditioned to swallow and digest ‘percentages’ rather than raw numbers. Lets say that there were 32M felony crimes committed in a year and next year it was down by 3% or even 25% over ten years. Now, add to the data how many of those felony crimes ‘involved’ a gun. You can work the numbers yourself and determine if we have a crime problem with guns involved, using raw numbers. Not included in such data, which is generally accumulated from only 18,000 ‘selected’ cities and institutions, are gun incidents of suicide, accidential injury and deaths by guns, Indian reservations crimes with guns and a large number of ‘immigrations’ related crimes with guns.
Limiting a discussion to only homicides with guns only represents a very small piece of real estate of the total picture.
Do you need a federal background check to exercise your rights to free speech or practicing religion? Those have been used to kill a lot more people than owning a gun.
You may want to re-think the whole subject. Perhaps the Bill of Rights is absolute, not a well-sort-of-when-we-find-it-convenient thing.
A nice idea, but not one held by the vast majority of Americans. We need to persuade them.
So the Bill of Rights applies only when you have positive poll results? The Constitution is subject to a popularity poll? There is a decided difference between the Rule of Law and the alternative. I think you fail to discern it.
I understand the difference; most Americans do not. You can be as right as you want but you have to persuade a majority to agree with you.
To quote Jacob Stein:
Libraries are dangerous places. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in the library of the British Museum.
With Cash and Commandos, U.S. Escalates Its Battle Against the Mexican Cartels BY ROBERT BECKHUSEN 01.17.13
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/01/commandos/
New Poll: 65 Percent See Second Amendment as Protection From Tyranny Katie Pavlich News Editor, Townhall Jan 18, 2013
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/01/18/new-poll-65-percent-see-second-amendment-as-protection-from-tyranny-n1492346
Only 65%?
Frightening that its not higher if you ask me.
But then again, they did their best to skew the poll for the Commie left I’m sure, so maybe its a GOOD sign they released this “Politically Incorrect” data at all
Considering the amount of pro-gun control stuff that most Americans watch, that’s actually pretty decent.
Almost all gun control proposals are a bait & switch designed to sound reasonable to the uneducated while actually pursuing a decidedly UNreasonable policy. This usually takes the form of them inventing terminology out of whole cloth. Some examples:
The “gun show loophole”. Why shouldn’t every sale of a gun involve a background check? Who could object to that? The problem is it’s not sales of guns that the “loophole” covers… it’s TRANSFERS of them by any method. You’re getting old and want to make sure your son gets your favorite rifle when you pass? You want to surprise your wife with a Glock for Christmas? You want to swap guns with your neighbor? Sorry, universal background check means you’re doing none of those things without involving the Feds.
Everything having to do with “assault weapons”. They want to ban them because they what they call assault weapons are mechanically identical to every other semi-auto firearm. So by banning the scary black ones you now have in place the means to ban everything except for pump & bolt actions.
But not so fast… bolt action rifles are “sniper rifles”. They’re hyper-accurate and only designed for one thing, that’s killing people from far away. No civilian needs that, so let’s ban them. Of course, doing so now leaves us down to just pump actions and handguns.
Many handguns cost less than $1000 and are small enough to conceal in your pants, as you know. Well, those small, cheap guns are “Saturday Night Specials” and the only thing those are good for is robbing liquor stores. So we have to ban them. But larger pistols that can’t be concealed are practically assault weapons based on the definition we’re using, so we have to ban them too.
See, according to the gun control enthusiasts every gun either sprays bullets or is too accurate; it’s either too weak to use deer hunting or so powerful it’s armor piercing. It’s either too small and concealable or too big and deadly. There simply isn’t any “goldilocks gun” that they think is just right and ok for a civilian to own.
They don’t argue in good faith and they’re not interested in good policy. They want guns to be flat out banned and every law they propose is a step down that path.
EXCELLENT break down.
Several of the recent mass shootings have been carried out by people who have had some form of mental illness. It seems to me that some regulation of gun sales to individuals who are mentally ill is essential. During my yearsa of teaching I learned that the families of such individuals are very protective of them and will lie about the person’s mental problems. At that time (25 years ago) parents had to agree to examination by even a school psychologist. There has to be some way around situations such as this.
Apparently the mother of the young man who killed the little children in Connecticut had not been told about possible danger to herself and others. It was foolhardy to keep guns where the young man could get them.
I can understand the local gun sales but, perhaps if the possible participants understood that they might be held legally responsible they might change their ways. I can just imagine the gossip and problems arising from such restriction.
The mother was trying to get her son hospitalized in Newtown. Most of us with mentally ill relatives are well aware of the danger, but the law is the problem. See my book My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill (2012).
“It was foolhardy to keep guns where the young man could get them”
If what I hear/read is true it was worse than that, because she TAUGHT him how to shoot.
I’ve been a Firearms Instructor “on and off” or 35 years, its mega-stupid-criminal to teach someone with KNOWN mental/emotion issues(so serious he needed prescription medicine?) to handle firearms.
Dont teach him HOW to load magazines, and HOW they function inside the gun, and HOW to re-load them, etc. etc….God forbid he got one anyway, let him fumble and “learn on the fly”, maybe less kids would have died. Never TEACH someone like him HOW to shoot, ever.
Put it this way…if he was 14, not 20, and used her car to run down a half dozen at the crosswalk, what would you think when it was revealed THEY LET HIM DRIVE THAT CAR SINCE HE WAS 12?
But politics being what they are, in that case we would be talking about Tire Sizes on “all wheel drive” SUV’s (seriously, how OFTEN does it snow? who NEEDS a vehicle like that) or “turbo-sedans” (who NEEDS that much horesepower?)
Would we?
Three or four years ago, Mrs. Lanza was probably trying to give her son a wholesome hobby. Three or four years ago, he probably was not thinking of mass murder.
Three or four years ago, his mother was just as stupid as the day he shot her.
Firearms and the mentally challenged do not mix.
Ever.
Even when its your own kid. ESPECIALLY when its your own kid.
The “wholesome hobby” of firearm usage is a BY PRODUCT of the serious and sober RESPONSIBILITY one must have regarding them, FIRST.
You don’t use firearms to “bond” with your child.
You expose your child to firearms because you already HAVE an un-breakable bond with them.
When your kid has clear and present emotional issues for which you’ve been SEEKING TREATMENT most of his life, the decision to teach him firearms handling because it’s “fun” or “wholesome” is beyond stupid.
Take the Retards bowling.
Not shooting, OK?
Expect a flurry of innocents getting swatted….
It’s already occurring…….
Reviewing crime statistics is an interesting exercise for some but, the truth be known, they have absolutely nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment. In the “old days”, courts looked to the original intent of the Founders when trying to decide what exactly, a Constitutional Right, such as the 2nd Amendment, meant. They would refer to the writings of those involved in creating the Bill of Rights and thus know what those people were actually thinking and talking about.
Finding what the Founders intended relating to the 2nd Amendment is simple using Google for instance. When one does, there are quotes from the following persons: Geo. Washington, Thos Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thos Paine, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry, Geo. Mason, Noah Webster, Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee, Ben Franklin and Daniel Webster. Not all were “founders” but I would say that each enjoyed a superior intellect when compared to the so-call “leaders” we have today.
Criminals very rarely buy guns from dealers or honest citizens. They steal and sell or buy from other criminals. Registering or backround checks will make no difference what so ever.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
If you can smuggle people and bricks of cocaine, you can smuggle guns.
Plenty of them in (gun ban) Mexico from all over the world.
Leave the local gun shops alone.
Criminals dont PAY retail, they BUY wholesale…
I expect smugglers to hide guns inside bales of marijuana. How would Customs find them?
More importantly: guns right now are more valuable per pound than something like marijuana; a high quality handgun sells for about $300 per pound. Imagine the price if they were illegal? You might see drug smugglers changing from one commodity to another.
Or get them from relatives. Again not of any benefit from Registration or background checks.
Some of you are talking about the gun ban in the UK. This is nothing new, guns have been heavily regulated in the UK well before the outright ban. When World War II started over there one of the first things they did was beg American Gun Owners for firearms to arm their fabled Home Guard. Most all of them were armed with Winchester lever actions or bolt action hunting rifles donated to them by us. When the UK gun owners lost their fight against the gun ban a large percentage of their firearms ended up here in the States being held for them so that they could have them when they vacationed here.
Also, as others have pointed out, the UK started out with registration, permission from the local law enforcement, (which was next to impossible to get)and special taxes on gun ownership. Once the gun ban was passed, it was very simple to check off the firearms law abiding citizens turned in to the list they had already compiled and knew exactly who had not turned their guns over. From there came a knock on the door and demands to account for the missing firearms. Collectors were not exempt and neither were arms brought back by UK soldiers as souvenirs from WW-I and WW-II or even older. Many former gun owners cried when they saw pictures in their news showing guns by the thousands being turned into scrap metal.
i’ve been to many gun shows and the people attending are average ordinary people who just enjoy guns. the entire atmosphere is friendly and jovial and everyone’s having a good time. i don’t think too many criminals are flocking to gun shows to get their weapons. these criminals don’t buy things, they steal them.i’ve never heard of any crimes being committed at a gun show. the media and obama’s hype about gun shows is a falsehood and utterly ridiculous.
There is no “Gun Show Loophole”. This was a term coined by people who want to see all gun shows closed down. Any person wishing to purchase a firearm at a gun show from a booth operated by a federally licensed firearm dealer (FFL) is subjected to a FBI check.
The actual target of the people who want to close the “gun show loophole” is the private transfer of a firearm whether at a gun show, or at a location or circumstance not even remotely connected to a gun show.
The gun control advocates want to require even private transfers of private property to be subjected to an FBI check. Private transfers would include sales, trades, barters, gifts, bequeathments, or any other transfer of ownership. This could create an extreme hardship.
Presently, the only people authorized by the feds to run an FBI check are FFLs. Private citizens do not have access to the system. The owner of the gun and the potential receiver would have to meet at an FFL with the firearm, fill out paperwork, and pay a fee to cover the FFL’s time and ATF forms. For folks who live in remote areas, the only available FFL may very well be located over 100 miles away. The owner of the gun to be transferred will be required to provide documented proof that he owns the firearm. That will most assuredly cause problems for folks who own firearms that have been passed down from generation to generation or who purchased a gun prior to the enactment of the Brady Bill. Any gun owner who cannot provide “acceptable” documentation of ownership will run the risk of having his firearm confiscated and possibly face arrest. And, all this hoop jumping by citizens who have no criminal intent will make somebody sleep better while people who do constitute a danger ignore and bypass all the regulations?
[W3]
With thoughtful consideration, consider each executive order, plus the gun show loophole, banning things and so on. For each item, ask self, “How many more government employees are needed to do this?” Have we stumbled on the prime directive? If all is done, will the unemployment level vanish?
That Leon Panetta person is confused. He does not realize that the Assault Rifle, and hand-held machine-gun, has been banned since the 1933 law. He is confusing it with the Assault Rifle which fires a weak cartridge that makes it illegal for hunting deer in many states and that loads itself after firing. If you wear cowboy clothes, you are not a cowboy.
Consider each executive order, the Assault Rifle ban, and the other things advocated. For each item, ask self, “How many more government employees would this measure require?” Have we discovered the prime directive?
Mr. Panetta is confused. He does not realize the Assault Rifle has been illegal since the 1933 law. He has it mixed up with the Assault Rifle which fires a weak cartridge, making it illegal to use for deer hunting in many states, and which loads itself after firing each shot. If one put on cowboy garb, that does not make one a cowboy. Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Feinstein have confused appearance with innards. Both have been converted by Hollywood representations of Assault Rifles behaving like death rays.
“Perhaps instead of creating more “crimes” and more opportunities to punish people, we should put our focus on the core problem: people already prohibited from possessing firearms who refuse to follow those laws.”
That’s like, you know, work. Why would anyone actually labor to improve the world in real ways when it’s so much easier to posture and preen and get credit for same? The entire leftist vision is based on a double fake-out; pretend to care so you can gain power, and pretend to be hyper-ethical until you gain power. Every romanticist from anarchist to Zapatista can talk the talk, but when walking time comes the petty tyrant inevitably claws its way out.
I go to to about 4 or 5 gun shows a year. Whether or not there is a specific “gun show loophole” and whether or not it has a direct connection to crimes, I’ve seen a few deals going on that are legal but maybe ought not be.
Do tell, otherwise I call BS.
Are there people engaged in questionable transfers of firearms out there? I have no doubt at all. Shortly after California prohibited private party transfers, I had a discussion with the local gun store about this. They were not entirely upset about the new law because for more than a year there was a guy who came in every week and bought a new handgun. At the time, purchasing more than one handgun in a five day period required a dealer to notify BATF, so this guy was never the subject of one of those notifications. Yes, perhaps this guy was very rich and just like buying handguns, and never resold them. But I don’t think that’s very likely.
At one point in the 1990s, the California Department of Justice looked into this question about people who were buying firearms to resell in violation of the private party transfer law. the reason was that the California legislature was considering a one handgun a month law. The California DOJ found a relatively small number of Californians were buying a fairly astonishing number of handguns: hundreds were buying more than a dozen handguns a year. At the time, I found myself wondering why the California DOJ did not simply go out to the homes of these people were buying dozens of handguns here and say: where are they? You can’t legally resell them without going through the background check system. but that would’ve been too logical.
““Of course, this is not a loophole specific to gun shows — it is an issue with all private party firearms transfers”.
It is not a ‘loop hole” in any sense of the word. To use those words is to pander to the ‘Brady Bunch”. If one were to accept that there needs to be a ‘background check’ for any one variety of private property transfers then you are willing to accept that any and all private property exchange is subject to government purview.
This is not a ‘loop hole’ in any sense of a thinking person. The use of the term loop-hole is a misdirection against those who meet the letter of the law which lead’s to ‘politically incorrect’ outcome’s. Pandering to the term is even worse. The ‘Gun Show Loop-Hole’ is a Brady Bunch term – those who pander to it should be considered suspect.
You can do better than this Clayton . . .
Articles like this are not aimed at people like you; they’re aimed at people who do not have a strong opinion one way or the other end of heard the continual propaganda asserting that private party sales are a major source of criminal guns. You have to use terminology that people in the middle understand.
If the present Marxist regime ever succeeds in shutting down legal sales in firearms, I’m going to make a mint selling mine illegally. Put me down for an outlaw. I’m already an outlaw in the eyes of our illegal, unconstitutional, and outlaw central federal government.
does not apply to ” fast and furious “