Tag Archives: background checks

Their understanding of “compromise”

…is nearly as comprehensive as that of “due process.”

Susan Collins Unveils a Gun-Control Compromise
After the Senate voted down four gun-control bills inspired by the Orlando massacre, the Maine Republican Susan Collins unveiled compromise legislation Tuesday that addresses a bipartisan concern: individuals suspected of terrorist ties being able to purchase guns.
[…]
The New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte emphasized that the legislation protects Americans’ due-process rights, a major concern among Republicans who voted against a Democratic bill restricting sales on Monday.

Collins is the NRA B+ rated fool whose closest approach to being pro-RKBA is that there are only some infringements she’s OK with. Ayotte, you may recall, is one of the turncoats who voted for cloture on the Manchin-Toomey-Gottlieb abomination, allowing it to go to a vote; but then she threw a hissy fit because they wouldn’t let her amend it further to expand mental health prohibitions.

The compromise (PDF) is that both statist parties get the unethical, unworkable, rights-violating additions to the prohibited persons list, and the Republicans can pretend it includes “due process.” The only folks giving anything up are the people they screw over.

“Due process” is not being allowed to beg for reconsideration after you’ve lost a human/civil right by bureaucratic decree by being placed on a secret list that has never resulted in the capture of a terrorist. For pretty much any reason, or none.

To learn what due process actually is, one would have to refer to the Bill of Rights, with which these oathbreakers regard as a to-do list of things to be trashed.

“…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;”

They have to go through the “process” first,to establish the alleged necessity. An ex post facto “hearing” in which you may not be allowed to challenge or even see supposed evidence against you does not count.

This all sounds terribly familiar.

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No-Buy Terrorist Watch Lists: Bugs vs. Features

It appears that all the politicians are jumping on the idea of a no-buy list based on terrorist watch lists. It’s not merely a “bipartisan” enthusiasm for violating your rights, it’s downright nonpartisan.

Obama certainly loves him some no-buy, thinking anyone who disagrees with him must be crazy. Which could conveniently get them added to the standard prohibited person list for a NICS check.

Clinton, of course, has long been committed to the destruction of Second Amendment-protected rights, and sees this as another in a long line of rationalizations for victim disarmament.

Trump is not only embracing the no-process idea, he’s asking the NRA to join and help him. Perhaps he momentarily forgot he’s no longer a Democrat.

At any rate, I’m sure that staunch defender of RKBA, the NRA, will set Mr. Trump straight…

Um. Oh. Wait a minute.

“We are happy to meet with Donald Trump. The NRA’s position on this issue has not changed. The NRA believes that terrorists should not be allowed to purchase or possess firearms, period. Anyone on a terror watchlist who tries to buy a gun should be thoroughly investigated by the FBI and the sale delayed while the investigation is ongoing.”

But we can count on the Libertarian Party to speak up for human/civil rights, can’t we?

Maybe not. LP Presidential nominee Gary Johnson has gone from “No, it is unconstitutional to deny someone’s rights”  to “Gov. Johnson believes Second Amendment rights are too fundamental to be denied without due process, a position he reiterated on Fox News just minutes ago as I type: terrorist watch lists are flawed, include innocent people, and should be fixed before we use them to revoke rights forever. We should be open to a “discussion” of broadening the definition of a prohibited person. The nicest thing I can say about that shifting position is that it’s awfully wishy-washy for the party that holds that “all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.” A more accurate summation is unprintable on this web site.

If all these principled and brilliant people think a no-buy list for terrorist suspects is a good idea, maybe we should look at it more closely. Could those flaws I see actually be features?

That’s going to be tough to say, because a no-buy list of terror suspects doesn’t yet exist. What’s been introduced in Congress will be debated, amended, and marked up in assorted committees. We’ll have to guess, based on what does exist.

The starting point is that persons in the Terrorism Screening Database would be added to the prohibited persons list under 922(t)(1)(B)(ii).

The TSB (“watch list”) consists of…

…pretty much anything someone wants it to be. Including wives found to be troublesome by disgruntled hubbies, not to mention the occasional senator, peace activist nun, lesbians, and Cats, toddlers, and House Representatives. Heck, Nelson Mandela was on the list.

Note that the bill would flag such threatening people in a NICS check. Sale denied.

Scenario 1: Joe Terrorist wonders if they’re on to him. He strolls into his local Black Rifles R Us and tries to buy heat-seekingbullet-piercing-bullet bullet-hose of a weapon of mass destruction. He gets denied. Since he knows he has a clean criminal and mental health record — but also knows he’s a secret terrorist — he figures out the obvious and goes on the lam. So much for that investigation. I’m sure the FBI will be happy.

Hmm. Maybe they’ll amend that to allow the sale, but will immediately notify the FBI so they can go pick him up in a timely manner.

Scenario 2: Omar Asshole buys a gun, and a few days later, before the feds show up, he goes on his rampage. Whoops. I’m sure that’ll be noted in someone’s annual performance evaluation.

Scenario 3: Billy Bob Hunter gets a downcheck on NICS. While he’s scratching his head puzzlement, the feds come and drag him in for questioning. Probably because his name shared too many common letters with a suspected terrorist. Or was a small government advocate, peace activist, senator…

Remember: this is based on the same source used to assemble the no-fly list that has enabled the TSA to capture exactly zero terrorists in nearly fifteen years.

But don’t worry, Billy Bob. If you’ve incorrectly been denied, you can always appeal to correct the record. Someday. Maybe. In the interim, what’s a violation of basic human/civil rights compared to terrorism? That’s what DC congresscritters call “due process.”

Something else to remember: Roughly 95% of NICS denials are false positives. If you believe that adding a known-corrupted list to that broken system will make it work better, you’ve never had to work with a legacy computer system.

But let us pretend it all works.

Scenario 4: Syed Jihad suspects they’re on to him. Following the lead of the majority of firearm-toting criminals, he has someone else buy his gun for him, or gets it on the street. FBI becomes aware of him when turn they on cable news the next morning.

If we take Feinstein et al at their word that this terrorist addendum to the NICS check is to stop terrorists then the best case scenario is that 1) a known terrorist 2) consciously chooses to purchase his weaponry via an FFL, 3) actually gets flagged, and either 4) is then stupid enough to delay his attack long enough for the feds to get off their butts and investigate (this assumes the sale proceeds to avoid tipping off terror-boy), or 5) gets denied and yet doesn’t opt for another technique like mowing down pedestrians with his car on his way home from the gun store.

Feinstein and King would have you believe that their little attack on basic freedoms would have stopped the Orlando Asshole‘s attack…

…even though he had no criminal record, and was not on the watch list, and acted faster than do the feds typically investigate denials.

A buggy system? Only if stopping real terrorists is the purpose. On the other hand, a watch list that allows individual immigration officers to ban their wives from the country with a simple fake data entry is made to order for listing those pesky “Oath Keepers, Other Liberty Groups” and taking away their tools of liberty. Instant prohibited persons. Objecting to a congresscritter who doesn’t properly represent your pro-freedom views in DC might be enough to get listed. So much for those calls to contact your representatives.

Yes; those are features. If your goal is a totalitarian police state with no meaningful constitutional protections for the subjects. It looks like Feinstein has finally found a way to force Mr. and Mrs. America to turn them all in. By nonjudicial, bureaucratic decree. This time with at least the passive backing of the Republican and Libertarian Presidential candidates, and the National Rifle Association, along with the Democrats.

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Goose, meet gander

Oh goody. Background checks for reporters.

Secret Service takes on new credentialing role for conventions
For the first time this year, the Secret Service has a hand in credentialing the media; during previous conventions only the Congressional press galleries were in charge of credentialing the media. Members of the media began hearing more about the Secret Services’ role in the credentialing process as they began to attend walk-throughs at the convention sites in Philadelphia and Cleveland, leading BuzzFeed Washington Bureau Chief John Stanton to issue a strongly worded letter to fellow journalists, urging them to speak up about the new processes. In his letter Stanton cited concerns about the background checks, the lack of a clear appeals process, and the involvement of a third-party subcontractor, urging his fellow journalists to express their concern over the process.

What? Suddenly the lamestream muddia doesn’t like background checks to exercise a Constitutionally-protected right? I can hardly wait for the Journalism License, and bans on hi-cap word processors.

I wish I could be optimistic enough to hope this would give them some perspective on the rest of the Bill of Rights.

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“Hey, Moron”

EJ Montini hates it when people tell him the truth.

He is a moron, at least when he babbles about victim disarmament.

Montini: “Hey, moron, name one ‘common sense’ gun law”
“Hey, moron, name me one ‘common sense’ gun law, let alone a bunch. You can’t, can you? Because all you want to do is confiscate everybody’s weapons. That’s the only ‘common sense’ gun law liberal pissants like you want. Admit it! And by the way, I called you a moron earlier because I thought if I called you a (expletive) – which is what you are – you wouldn’t keep reading.”

Okay then.

Fisking time; let’s see how sensible his proposals are:

  • The one I mention most often is a universal, no loophole, no exception background check on every gun sale.
    That isn’t sensible until he proposes a way to enforce that on criminals who bypass universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks by purchasing stolen guns on the street from other criminals. They don’t comply now. And they don’t have to.
  • It’s been shown in poll after poll that a vast majority of Americans – up to 90 percent – support it.
    Except that when that 90+% claim was put to the test in an Washington [edited to correct state] referendum, only 60% voted for it. In New Hampshire, the claim was 94%, but the surveyors refused to release their raw data to prove it, and the folks there keep electing (and reelecting) folks who vote it down. (Oddly enough, I have never been polled on that subject, except by a couple of painfully obvious push polls in which I refused to participate. I never found anyone — not one, pro or anti — who claimed to have participated in the NH “survey.”)
  • We could ban the sale or possession of armor piercing and hollow-tip bullets, and we could limit magazines to 10 bullets.
    So he doesn’t want rounds that penetrate too much, but he doesn’t want rounds that limit penetration. “Sensible.” As stated, that isn’t going to fly with anyone. Pretty much any rifle round is “armor penetrating” (unless you only count Level 4+), and armor penetrating handgun ammunition is already banned at the federal level and in several states; it doesn’t seem to have had much effect on crime rates. Defenders and hunters want expansion because it’s more effective, generally, than solid rounds.
  • We could codify in law a wider access to mental health records in order to prevent individuals with serious illness from buying weapons.
    Oh, goody. Let’s start by looking at his health records. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear by putting his unredacted files on the Internet. In fact, we already have laws in place to handle the dangerously disturbed. Those who have been adjudicated a danger to self or others are prohibited persons. Or do you just want to do away with the due process part of depriving people of human/civil rights. Did he get a mental health exam before exercising his 1st Amendment right to write that column?
  • We could repeal the idiotic 1996 congressional budget amendment that prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from doing studies on firearms ownership and the effects on public health.
    There is no such research ban to repeal. Wouldn’t it have been “sensible” for MorMontini to figure that out before spouting off?
  • We could expand gun-owning restrictions to more individuals convicted of crimes like domestic violence, stalking and more.
    Those convicted of domestic violence (and any crime punishable by a sentence of more than a year in prison) are already prohibited persons. You know, like the recent Kansas shooter, who was a convicted felon, under a restraining order, who bypassed PPYI checks. “And more…” Maybe we could add “practicing journalism without a license” to that list.
  • We could establish a national waiting period for gun purchases.
    Who could possibly object to that, right? Certainly not Ms. Bowne. Anymore. I wonder what Montini is planning to do, if he needs to be sure his friends and family can’t get a defensive tool quickly.
  • Finally, a law limiting angry impulse responses to news columnists might be helpful. At least to me.
    Well, it’s clear that he wants violations of 1st Amendment free discourse, so I guess he’s cool with the journalist licensing plan.

So long as Montini is determined to sound like an uninformed moron intent on destroying individual human/civil rights (obviously starting with the First and Second Amendments) people are bound to keep thinking he is one.

No.

Your move, Montini.

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Traitorous Bagel-Brains Against Gun Victims

bagel-brain-x-ray

U.S. rabbis’ anti-gun violence group starts in Berkeley
Like many Americans, Creditor reached a boiling point on guns after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 young children and six adults were killed.

If Rabbi Creditor wants to reduce gun violence, it would be a fine thing for him to organize gun safety classes for the young people of his community. He could work to expand economic opportunities so fewer would resort to the illegal drug trade. He could perform direct outreach to at-risk kids. He could exercise the prime responsibilty of a rabbi by teaching these people the difference between aggression and defensive use of force.

But Creditor is a rabbi in name only. He doesn’t want to teach.

“Our vision is to amplify the work that’s being done, knowing that Congress has failed us so far,” Creditor said. “The ability that faith leaders have to marshal civic activism is unrivaled.”

More laws. More violations of the rights of honest people. The kind of laws that those honest people — and even Congress — have rejected.

Because, when violent crime rates are dropping to levels not seen for decades, some crazy minor murdered a woman to steal her guns and take them to a designated gun-free victim disarmament zone to murder more people…

…he wants to inflict more human/civil rights infringements on the people who didn’t do it. Because the gun laws didn’t work there, Rabbi Creditor wants to turn the entire nation into Sandy Hook.

For safety.

Because disarming Jews worked so well there, he wants to turn America into Nazi Germany.

For safety.

I think not. I strongly suspect his motivation is a little more crass.

Creditor also got Eileen Soffer, a Mountain View resident who had worked as the national deputy field director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, to come aboard as the full-time national coordinator.

That is the same Moms Demand Victims that is under the umbrella of Everytown for Gun Safety (along with Mayors Against Illegal Guns), which is chaired — and heavily funded — by billionaire Michael Bloomberg who never saw a gun in civilian hands that he liked (except his own bodyguards). Soffer undoubtedly brought along the promise of financial backing for yet another bloody-handed victim disarmament group.

Perhaps I’m being unfair; maybe he wants something other than restrictions on rights. But since he does want “further expanded background checks, public health research into gun violence, I doubt it. The fact that he runs their F******k page as a closed group implies that they want to hide their agenda from those who appreciate civils rights.

I invite Rabbi Creditor to answer a few questions.

  1. Have you ever read the complete Constitution, to include the Bill of Rights?
  2. Do you comprehend the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy?
  3. Exactly what gun laws do you propose to stop another Sandy Hook scenario (where the perpetrator violated a series of laws just to get the guns)?
  4. How do you propose to protect the rights of those who didn’t do it?
  5. How do you propose to enforce your laws on criminals (bearing in mind that criminals cannot be required to submit to a background check)?
  6. If your agenda includes weapons bans, will you man up and conduct confiscations peronally?
  7. Would any ban/confiscation recompense gun owners for the loss of property? Have you considered how much money that would be?
  8. What will you do when the good guys just say, No”?
  9. What will you do if the good guys say, “All righty, then“?

I await Rabbi Creditor’s response, though not with bated breath.

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Malicious ‘Compliance’

While the Obamas remain on their tax-funded ‘free’ tropical vacation, Internet chatter drones on over what form his reported gun control by imperial diktat will take. Based on unsourced leaks, the most likely initial act will be to redefine those in the business of selling firearms to include darned near everyone. I myself have suggested that ― as the FAA did with toy drones, and the EPA did with CO2 ― he might even redefine some firearms to include them as NFA items. After all, the ATF once did that very thing with a shoelace.

Possibly the best way to deal with such efforts to render more honest people helpless is simple noncompliance: No. Your move.

And there is malicious compliance. These are just some idle thoughts of my own on the best way to ensure you’ve complied with all the possible rules; certainly not official TZP policy (it isn’t as if I’m an officer of the company).

You’re suddenly a ‘dealer’ in the eyes of the law(less)? You’ll need a six month supply of those free 4473s from the ATF. Naturally, all of you anticipate Cabela’s-scale business, right?

You’ll need to phone in your NICS checks, too. 1-877-FBI-NICS (1-877-324-6427) and selecting Menu Option 2, then Option 5, or by fax at (888) 550-6427. Better safe than sorry; you should call it in every time a ‘customer’ wants to handle a gun (you’ll need to know if he’s a felon before he touches it, you know). And call yourself in when he hands it back. And remember, you’re doing Cabela’s-scale business. Constantly. From “8 a.m. and 1 a.m. ET, 7 days a week”. All of you.

If some devices get reclassified as NFA, it might be a good idea for every single gun owner in America (absurdly lowball estimates of 60 million to a hopeful 120 million) to ensure none of their property is affected. Remember that shoestring.

Send letters demanding clarification to the ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch (Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division 244 Needy Road Martinsburg, Suite 1600 West Virginia 25405 USA, E-mail address: fire_tech@atf.gov, Voice: 304-616-4300, Fax number: 304-616-4301). One item per letter; you’ll want separate files should you be inspected, to match paperwork with item. Probably you should check on each of your individual magazines, too. Airguns, blowpipes, bows, your potato cannon. Junior’s Nerf guns. All of them. It would be a shame if you made typos so that you had to send multiple letters per item; just timestamp them so the FTB boys can sort out the most recent version.

Stick to snailmail to ensure a legal paper trail.  Keep copies.

All 60-120 million of you. As an extra benefit, imagine the coituscluster at the Martinsburg Post Office; you’re providing job security for USPS workers.

Registration is another bugaboo that never quite seems to go away; California, New York, Connecticut… And now we have HR 4269 (the new ‘assault weapon’ ban bill). That one grandfathers some weapons. It isn’t hard to imagine a registration mandate being added by amendment. How else can they be sure that AK-15 you have is one of the legal ones?

Register. Register early. Register often. See typos above, danr my clumys fingesr. Possibly you even own 544,000 of those buggers. With standard capacity magazines in proportion. Don’t forget shoestrings.

GIGO.

Of course, you’ll have to give them your address on all those classification (and maybe registration) letters. If you’re like me, you may get mixed up on your home address. This tool can help you with that.

Heck, while you’re at it, go ahead and register a couple million potentially existent drones with the FAA.

No. Your move,” is easier, but compliance might be more fun.

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Precedent

FAA Finally Admits Names And Home Addresses In Drone Registry Will Be Publicly Available
The FAA finally confirmed this afternoon that model aircraft registrants’ names and home addresses will be public. In an email message, the FAA stated: “Until the drone registry system is modified, the FAA will not release names and address. When the drone registry system is modified to permit public searches of registration numbers, names and addresses will be revealed through those searches.”

“Wait, what’s that got to do with RKBA, or Jews, or whatever?” I pretend to hear you mutter.

Let’s take it a step at a time. The Federal Aviation Administration, in response to a few incidents involving RC drones near aircraft — none of which caused deaths, injuries, nor even an aircraft crash — issued a new, retroactive rule requiring a national registration database of nearly all drone owners. [ding]

Lacking new legislation to authorize this, the FAA simply, and arbitrarily, redefined toys to be aircraft requiring registration. [ding ding]

Despite telling prospectively compliant drone owners that their personal data (name, address) would be kept private, in fact, they plan a publicly searchable database. [ding ding ding]

“So what?” you might wonder. Hopefully not though, since I’d expect regular TZP visitors to be ahead of me here.

President Barrycade has stated his intent to issue executive orders to implement gun control, since he lacks legislation to do so.

Reportedly, one element of this will be to — again, lacking new enabling legislation — simply redefine occasional sellers as “dealers”. Bound books, 4473s, NICS checks, ATF inspections, and all. [ding]

Hey, it worked for the FAA, and they don’t even have an executive order. [ding ding]

The ATF already has their searchable FFL database. [ding ding ding]

Since Obama and other blood-dancers have stated publicly that they wish to crack down on private sales, it seems safe to assume this will be in one EO or another. But what if he emulates the FAA a little more closely?

Imagine “redefining” all firearms as NFA items. Just like toys became airplanes. Or how atmospheric plant food became a pollutant.

Or how a shoe string became an NFA machine gun.

Registration. Permission slips. Inspections. And maybe that database would become publicly searchable, too. Oh, well; for once we might be glad of ATF incompetence.

There is precedent for registering undesirables.

Fortunately, there’s an easy answer to any such moves.

No.

Your move.

Backing up those brave words might be a little harder, but let me leave you with two quotes.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
, The Gulag Archipelago

The sheer immorality of victim disarmament aside, one would hope every government thug out there would stop to consider all the possible ramifications of kicking in several million doors because the occupants are well armed.
– Carl Bussjaeger

When the law is twisted by arbitrary, unilateral redefinitions, there is no law to break.

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More Anti-Gun Loonery from the Soccer Mom Cabal

I initially posted this fisk at the Liberty Zone, but I thought that even though a renewed push for gun control is going on in my own state, it’s actually a nationwide problem, so I decided to post it here as well.

My husband got so angry with our local officials, he took his anger out in writing on the top Virginia political conservative blog. Angry Rob is angry. And he has every right to be. These gun-grabbing embarrassments are doing a blood dance on the corpses of innocent victims of violence!

But on top of all that, which would amount to a disgusting display by itself, they are flat out LYING. No, Del. Hope, buying a gun at a gun show is NOT “as easy as buying a pack of bubble gum at the 7-Eleven.” Purchases at a gun show of firearms happen the same way they do outside of gun shows, and Patrick Hope knows this. Dealers are required to perform background checks, private sellers are not. He also knows that the Smith Mountain Lake murderer, a disgruntled former co-worker of the two victims, passed a background check to purchase the gun he used. The fact that he and his cohorts got 30,000 signatures for their petition doesn’t matter, other than to demonstrate how easy it is to prey upon low-information folks to advance a cause.

Rob and I once had a very respectful, decent conversation with Del. Patrick Hope during Virginia Lobby Day. He spewed anti-Second Amendment platitudes, cited faulty information, and listened respectfully when I called him on it and corrected him. He also seemed genuinely interested in the facts I gave him about gun safety, background checks, etc.

Apparently, that was just lip service…

And his “guns are oh-so easy to get” mantra is being echoed by Shannon Watts wannabes in the Old Dominion. It is one of these ignorami that I fisk below.


 

Why is it that no matter how much you correct, inform, reason, and debate with gun grabbers, they continue to contend long-discredited, disingenuous crap in order to promote their odious agenda? It seems there’s a cabal of soccer mommies out there whose sole mission is to become the next Shannon Watts. Frankly, they’re unoriginal and uninformed, and yet some newspapers pick up their spew and run with it as if they’ve discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such is the case with the latest anti-gun mommy in my own backyard, who recently penned a column for The Roanoke Times entitled, “Why should it be easier to own and operate a gun than a car?”

Let’s put aside the obvious stupid of this question, and do a little fisking.

Melynda Dovel Wilcox lives in Alexandria, VA, and she’s the mommy of two high school students. Alexandria is in my backyard, so I take a keen interest in any kind of disinformation being spread “for the children.” She writes:

In no other country is driving and owning a car as quintessential to the culture and lifestyle as it is in the U.S. So it’s no surprise that, for Virginia teenagers, turning 16-plus-three-months is noteworthy because they can get their driver’s license. With two 17-year-olds in my household, I’m well-versed in the steps required for the commonwealth to grant this privilege. It’s an arduous process — rightly so — and as a citizen I’m grateful to the government for implementing these measures to better protect all drivers and pedestrians.

Here Wilcox makes an interesting statement. Driving on public roads is, in fact, a privilege. Many will confuse the right to travel with the right to drive, and that’s just not right. U.S. jurisprudence confirms this fact in Miller v. Reed. There is no right to drive a vehicle on public roads enumerated in the Constitution, and since driving a motor vehicle on public roads is, in fact, a privilege, the government is well within its right to regulate it.

Wilcox then goes through a litany of allegedly “arduous” steps one must take to become a legal driver in Virginia.

Personally, having had two kids go through the process, I don’t think it’s all that onerous, but then again I’m not a spoiled Alexandria mommy, who thinks attending a 90 minute session with her kid (twice)  to cover parental responsibilities of having a teenage driver in my house, is a terrible imposition.

First, all 10th-graders receive 36 hours of classroom driver education in their required health and physical education classes.

Students can apply for their learner’s permit at age 15 ½ and must produce original documents proving their identification and residency. They must also pass a knowledge exam and a vision screening.

Next, provisional drivers must log 45 hours of driving time with an adult passenger and take a behind-the-wheel course consisting of fourteen 50-minute in-car sessions from a commercial driving school. One program in Northern Virginia, I Drive Smart, costs $499 and is taught by current and retired police officers. During the final session, the instructor administers the driving test and issues a temporary license. Not counting time spent on homework for the classroom portion and studying for the Department of Motor Vehicles exam, that’s more than 82 hours of instruction and training.

It’s amazing how first world problems can impact one’s worldview! Eighty-two hours of instruction is a little more than 10 days. Ten days’ training to operate a complex machine made of steel, glass, and plastic, capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour – a machine that was involved in 32,719 deaths in 2013, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Hey, Melynda! Know what it takes to gain the privilege to drive in Germany?

First, you have to pass an onerous theory test, which a full third of test-takers fail. You need a vision and a road test, as well as first aid training. That’s right – first aid – an eight-hour class. An actual license is handed out when the driver turns 18, by the way. None of this 16 and three months garbage. Oh, and by the way – you bitch about a $500 cost to train your precious snowflake to drive? It costs about €1400 in Germany. Still think that’s onerous?  You’ll need a minimum of twelve 90 minute on the road training sessions, four of which have to be on the Autobahn and at speed, and about three of those have to be at night. That’s a minimum By the way, if you take your training in an automatic transmission, you’ll only be licensed to drive that. Driving a manual transmission automobile when you’ve only qualified on an automatic is considered driving without a licence.

These extended driving sessions are followed by the so-called advanced, test-preparation phase, containing further exercises and preparation for the test itself. In all cases, the instructor may only terminate instruction when he is convinced that the learner driver involved has actually acquired the knowledge and skills required to pass the test.

The goal of driving instruction is no longer just to impart knowledge and techniques, but also to put across the social and ethical values, in other words to inculcate behavioral patterns and attitudes which are no less significant in reducing accident risks than the actual driving skills themselves.

[…]

The driving test consists of a theoretical and a practical part. An officially recognized expert or examiner for motor vehicle traffic is responsible for the entire test. If a candidate fails, the test can be repeated. Candidates are only admitted to the practical test when they have passed the theoretical part.

The theoretical test uses multiple-choice questions to establish whether the candidate has the necessary knowledge. A candidate passes the test if he does not exceed the permissible number of errors laid down in the test statutes. The theoretical tests should, in principle, be carried out in German, but the basic material may also be examined in various foreign languages.

The practical test consists of a test drive which includes certain basic driving tasks. The tasks, which are laid down in the test statues for each class of licence, are intended to demonstrate that the candidate is capable of properly operating and controlling the vehicle. The test drive is, above all, intended to demonstrate that even in difficult traffic situations the candidate is capable of safely driving the vehicle and adapting his driving to the situation.

The driving test is also carried out on country roads and motorways. A candidate passes the practical test if the basic driving tasks are accomplished without error and during the test drive he does not commit any grave errors or accumulate an excess of minor errors.

Still want to complain how hard it is, Melynda? Didn’t think so. Moving on.

To own a car in Virginia, you must register the vehicle in both the state and local jurisdictions, and registration must be renewed annually or bi-annually. The owner must carry liability insurance or pay a $500 uninsured motorist fee, and have annual safety inspections performed on the car, and in some areas, periodic emissions inspections.

Wrong. To DRIVE a car in Virginia, you must register it. You don’t need insurance to merely own it, and you don’t need to register it if it’s merely sitting on your property. There’s a difference.

The comparison between car ownership and gun ownership is remarkably apt.

No. It’s not. One is a constitutionally guaranteed right, and the other is a car.

There were about 254 million cars registered in the U.S. in 2012, and varying estimates of 270 million to 310 million guns. In 2012, there were roughly 33,500 traffic fatalities and almost 32,000 people died from gun violence.

How many of these were suicides? Oh, two-thirds? You know what a suicide is? Intentional. Can we say “disingenuous comparison,” boys and girls? I knew you could!

But there are some startling differences: Traffic fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled have been on a downward trend since 1963 due to safer cars, safer roads and better-trained drivers. In some states there are fewer highway deaths now than there were in the 1940s. By contrast, between 2000 and 2013, the number of mass shootings and resulting casualties rose dramatically, according to an FBI study released last fall. (There have been 135 school shootings since Newtown.)

I knew we would eventually get to the lies, obfuscations, and lies. Oh, did I say “lies” twice? Using Everytown’s misleading statistics doesn’t bolster your credibility, Melynda. Neither does quoting an FBI study which the media clubbed to death like a baby seal without actually understanding the misleading verbiage in the study.

And then there’s the vast difference in requirements to own and operate a gun. No permit is required to purchase or possess a rifle, shotgun or handgun in Virginia. No registration is required either, except for machine guns.

Guess what, Melynda! No permit is required to purchase a car either. You need a permit and a license to DRIVE a motor vehicle on a public road, but if I want to keep a vehicle in my garage, or drive it on my private property, I can! You obviously don’t know the difference between “drive” and “own.” Perhaps an English lesson is in order?

Gun sales at licensed gun dealers require a criminal background check, but private sales or sales at gun shows by private individuals do not, despite repeated efforts in the state legislature to change that law.

The law at gun shows is the same as the law anywhere else in Virginia, Melynda. Differentiating private sales at gun shows from anywhere else shows how ineptly you manipulate words.

In short, the Commonwealth of Virginia has no information about whether gun owners know how to safely store a gun and ammo, for example, how many guns they own, or whether they have committed a violent misdemeanor or have a history of domestic violence.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has no business knowing how many guns one owns – or how many knives – or how many cars, for that matter. As we said previously, no one needs to register a car if they don’t plan to drive it on public roads. The state also doesn’t know how many motor vehicle accidents any given driver has had, UNLESS they were reported to police and the DMV. Care to guess how many Virginians commit hit and runs, or merely settle the cost of repairs among themselves?

One wonders how many mass shootings and other gun deaths could be prevented if prospective gun buyers were required to have just eight hours of training from police officers—one-tenth of that required for drivers;

Police officers such as this?

https://youtu.be/9ABCiPJRCyA

Hate to tell you this, Cupcake, but you quite obviously don’t know most gun owners. Most gun owners train much more than just 8 hours with professionals much more skilled than the “professional enough” DEA agent giving a presentation on gun safety in that video. We shoot consistently. We practice, because shooting and handling firearms is a skill – a perishable one. Additionally, if you think a lack of training is responsible for mass shootings, you may want to check your facts.

Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Isla Vista… you know what they had in common? Mental health issues. If you think registering firearms will somehow prevent violent acts by crazies, I have this bridge…

if they were required to register their guns each year (with a new background check performed each time); and if they were required to carry liability insurance, with insurance proceeds used to compensate victims of gun violence and their families.

You know how many are killed by accidental shootings? About 600 per year, according to the CDC. That’s what liability insurance covers. Since about 21,000 of the firearm fatalities are suicides, I doubt most insurance companies will cover that.

None of this would pose a significant burden on hunters or other recreational gun owners.

No? An average pistol costs several hundred dollars. Add to it registration fees, training fees, and insurance premiums, and you’ve just made a tool of self defense cost prohibitive for the people who need it most. People in not so nice neighborhoods that you and your shielded cohorts in Alexandria only tremble at the thought of entering. Those poor people, who want to protect their families, may not be able to afford to do so, because Melynda thinks that the right to keep and bear arms only pertains to hunters and recreational shooters.

As much as the DMV is loathed and derided, certainly almost no one decides against buying a car because the registration process is too onerous. It’s likewise absurd to allow people to own and operate a gun without any safeguards in place to protect ordinary citizens and innocent children.

You don’t allow me to exercise my rights, you pernicious, misinformed fascist! I protect my innocent children with that tool of self defense you think you and your petty tyrannical pals think you have the authority to allow me to keep.

Every year, legions of teenagers happily give up 82 hours of free time in exchange for the privilege of driving. It’s the price that our society has deemed appropriate and acceptable to advance the common good. Isn’t it time that we make the same trade-offs for guns as we do for cars?

I’ll make you a deal, Melinda. Let’s regulate cars the way we regulate guns, OK?

Your precious teenagers won’t be able to purchase a car until they are 18. Sorry, Punkins! You’ll have to wait. They will have to pass a criminal background check, and if they committed a crime, got caught with some dope, or aren’t able to prove their residency, they will not be able to make said purchase. They want to buy an extra fast sports car? They don’t need that, but they will have to get a special license to own one, and they will have to be 21 years of age to purchase one. Every time they purchase a vehicle, they will have to undergo a background check, fingerprints in some states, and fill out a form that will be kept on file with the auto dealership for the duration of that business’ existence. And if the State Police come back with an inconclusive check, or they have a record, or mental health issues, no-go on that car boys and girls! Oh, and in some jurisdictions, you’ll have to wait three days before purchasing said car.

Subject of an active misdemeanor or felony arrest warrant from any state? Sorry. Can’t buy that car.

Are you 28 years old or younger, have ever been adjudicated delinquent as a juvenile 14 years of age or older at the time of offense of a delinquent act, which would be a felony if committed by an adult? Sorry. Can’t buy that car.

Were you adjudicated as a juvenile 14 years of age or older at the time of the offense of murder in violation of § 18.2-31 or 18.2-32, kidnapping in violation of § 18.2-47, robbery by the threat or presentation of firearms in violation of § 18.2-58, or rape in violation of § 18.2-61? (If adjudicated as a delinquent for these offenses, you must answer yes. You are ineligible regardless of your current age and prohibited for life unless allowed by restoration of rights by the Governor of Virginia and order of the circuit court in the jurisdiction in which you reside.) Sorry, you can’t buy that car.

Have you been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime punishable by more than 2 years even if the maximum punishment was not received? Sorry, can’t buy that car.

Is there an outstanding protective or restraining order against you from any court that involves your spouse, a former spouse, an individual with whom you share a child in common, or someone you cohabited with as an intimate partner? Sorry, you aren’t purchasing that car.

Is there an outstanding protective or restraining order against you from any court that involves stalking, sexual battery, alleged abuse or acts of violence against a family or household member? No car for you!

So will you call for closing that car loophole that permits private individuals to sell motor vehicles to others without a background check?

I didn’t think so.

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FBI: Oooops! Background check FAIL! Must be a “loophole”

Unlike many Zelman Partisans, my writing tends to be sarcastic, caustic, and somewhat snarky. While my beautiful colleagues write about Israel and Jewishness,  and principles, I tend to speak on subjects that either ruffle my feathers, or are so absurd, one is left shaking one’s head in disbelief at the FAIL.

Such is the FBI’s admission last week that the slaughter at a traditionally black church in South Carolina by a racist, psychotic piece of sub-human detritus (I refuse to use his name and give him publicity). It’s snortworthy for two reasons:

  1. The scumbag shouldn’t have been able to purchase a gun in the first place, but thanks to a lapse in the FBI’s background checks system, he had no problem legally buying one.
  2. The gun grabbers are calling the problem a “loophole.”

Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that no background check would have stopped the cretinous racist from buying a weapon. If he was denied a purchase due to a failed background check, there are numerous black market ways for this schmuck to score a firearm. Even the government admits that the vast majority of guns used in crimes are purchased on the black market/from a street dealer, stolen, or “borrowed” from friends and family. Anyone who claims otherwise needs a quick lesson in economics and history.

Let’s also ignore the fact that forcing an individual to undergo a background check for a constitutionally-protected purchase is a slap in the face to freedom.

Let’s focus on the fact that the liars at Everytown for Gun Safety Confiscation immediately sprang into action by claiming that an  NRA-backed loophole was responsible for the trash being able to get his paws on a firearm – a claim directly contradicted by the FBI and reported in that bastion of objective journalism the Washington Post.

The breakdown was a result of errors not only by the FBI but also apparently by local law enforcement, and Comey said he has ordered a 30-day review to examine the procedures that led to the failure and to see if the process can be tightened. The errors came to light as investigators examined a gun purchase Roof made two months before the shooting.

Ooops! Government error? The hell, you say!

government-incompetence-at-work

Of course, facts never stop gun-grabbing liars from promoting their odious agenda. Facts are merely inconvenient little nits to be slapped down and manipulated…

…for the children, of course!

Because, really… how would it look if the gun grabbers’ response to mistakes made by a bumbling bureaucracy that allowed a violent offender to massacre innocent people was to demand… more bumbling bureaucracy?

So in an effort to protect the narrative, “government error” became “NRA-supported loophole,” in which case I demand that the “loophole” which allowed a loon to climb the White House fence and make it all the way to the door while the Secret Service stood idly by and did nothing be immediately closed! Also the “loophole” that allowed the Chinese access to millions of files containing private information of both military and civilian government employees. Yeah… I’ll need that closed too.

KTHXBAI

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Rights are not up for grabs or votes

Now that Election 2014 has come and gone, and Bloomberg’s Everytown initiative suffered losses in nearly every arena, forcing him to waste $50 million  on an effort Americans obviously oppose, it’s time to ask some questions about our rights.

Among the sea of rejection for the gun control mission, however, there were tiny spots of stupid that gave small victories to the gun grabbers.

Washington state (as if you hadn’t heard Gunsense drones crowing about it) has passed Initiative Measure 594 – a gun control measure that would require every person wishing to purchase a firearm – even those doing so via private sales – to get government permission to do so.

This, in essence, has banned private sales. When you insert a government transaction, done through an FFL, into a private transaction, said sale ceases to be private.

Was the initiative about safety? Anyone who has been following the gun rights debate for any length of time knows that safety has nothing to do with it.  Criminals, for the most part, do not get guns through legal channels.

Guns purchase

Basic economics indicate that as long as there is a demand, there will be a supply, and when you close off legal supply channels, the black market flourishes.

So it’s not about safety. So why is it that Washingtonians were so eager to cede their basic rights to government infringement, even though this measure has no hope of stopping crime?

Why hand over your rights so easily?

Make no mistake, these are rights.

The right to keep and bear arms is a natural right that stems from the right to life and the right to defend your life. Why allow petty elected tyrants to control what tool you use to do it?

What about the right to property? Why would you allow the government to intrude on your right to dispose of your property as you see fit? If it rightfully belongs to you, why would you allow any government to control to whom you sell it?

And lastly, why would Washingtonians subject their natural rights to a vote in the first place?

Less than 50 percent of Washington residents voted in this election, and yet, they decided the fate of the natural rights of their fellow citizens – the right to dispose of their property, and the right to purchase it without government intrusion.

They decided this despite the fact that no loud, screeching, uninformed majority should ever be allowed to decide the fate of our natural rights with a push of a button.

That is not a decision any majority should be allowed to make.  And yet Washingtonians not only allowed the right to keep and bear arms and the right to property to be limited by their fellow state residents, but also allowed those rights to be put on the chopping block in the first place.

Rights exist. They are not and should not be up for discussion, debate, or a vote.

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