As had been previously announced, Gropin’ Joe Xiden has signed another executive order“on Reducing Gun Violence and Making Our Communities Safer.”. I may be a little late to the game, but I was waiting for the actual order, to see the details.
There’s plenty of objectionable material in there — using the Federal Trade Commission to finds loopholes in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arm Act to sue firearm industry, using the DOD’s buying power to pressure the industry, more and harder “red flag” laws, and more — but I’m going to focus on this part.
clarify the definition of who is engaged in the business of dealing in firearms, and thus required to become Federal firearms licensees (FFLs), in order to increase compliance with the Federal background check requirement for firearm sales, including by considering a rulemaking, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law;
On the one hand, you might welcome the ATF finally formalizing one single definition, as opposed to the current method of a dealer is whoever we say it is this time, until we change our minds to screw someone else.
On the other hand, you should take a look at the motivation behind this. Xiden is redefining “dealer”…
with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales, moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.
They can’t pass universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks legislatively, so the Groper-In-Chief is once again arrogating the powers of Congress unto himself, and implementing universal PPYI through executive fiat.
On the bright side, when this goes through proposed rule-making, I’ll be able to copy and paste my arguments on that arrogation from TZP’s comments on the redefinition of “firearm.” It’ll save some time.
Since universal rights violation is the goal, who will that make a “dealer”? I expect the answer can be found in failed universal check legislation. Typically, such bills require background checks on virtually all firearm transfers, but exempt exchanges between certain specific family members and temporary loans when the owner is still present (hunting and range time, typically).
If you sell any firearm — just one — to someone who isn’t one of those typical exceptions, I think the ATF is going to call you a dealer. And unless you get your FFL before you make that transfer, they’ll nail you on a felony 18 U.S. Code § 922 (a)(1)(A) violation.
Alternatively, millions of gun owners could apply for FFLs to cover out butts, generating lots of revenue for the feds. But at least we’d overwhelm and likely crash their systems.
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Liberal media’s bouffant coxcomb chattering class bemoans the fact most women elected to Congress are Democrats thereby suggesting Republicans are the party of sexist misogynists as claimed by bitter harridan Hillary Clinton. It is true most women in Congress are Democrats1 but what the princes of pompous pontification ignore is Republican women often lose to Democrat males in general elections. It’s not Republicans voting against them. Genitalia plays no part in my voting. I’d climb over a pile of limp celery stick Republican males like Kit Bond, John McCain, Jeff Flake, John Kasich, Mitt Romney, and Pot-Peddler John Boehner any day to vote for a Phyllis Schlafly.2 Female Republican candidates are likely to be conservative, a serious enough offense, but worse, some commit the unpardonable sin according to Leftist Holy Writ; they are Christians. Against this horrific threat, the Democrat Party Machine swings into action deploying its myrmidons; Hollywood’s Big Donors, spokesboob actors and actresses, radical environmentalists (Crypto-Marxists), feminists (Crypto-Marxists), radicalized college youth (Crypto-Marxists), liberal media, and union and race voters. Blacks and Hispanics in large urban areas typically vote against one of their own if she is a Republican. And who are the misogynists?
Liberals have accused conservative males debating liberal females of “picking on thegirl” if they “come on too strong”. Just ask Rick Lazio who lost to Hillary Clinton in their New York Senate race (2000).3 Conservative males now face an additional quandary. Do they “go easy” on liberal males in political debates? After all, with liberals, you never know when ‘he’ might come out a ‘she’. Lest anyone consider this an attack against Democrats on behalf of Republicans, read on.
Conservative radio talk show host Joe Pags recently interviewed Texas Republican Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick (23 September, 2019) about the latter’s support for universal background checks. Patrick proclaimed fidelity to the Second Amendment with a ‘but’…an affirmation followed by an equivocation is a negation…as was the case. Sure enough, Patrick argued in favor of total, 100%, universal background checks (UBC’s). His rationale was, since 90% of guns purchased already involve a background check, what’s the harm in extending it to the remaining 10%? In support of his proposal, Patrick claimed the people now avoiding background checks, presumably his 10%, do so because they cannot legally buy firearms. He said UBC’s would end this practice.4
Next Patrick asserted “gun-merchants” are getting rich selling firearms to persons who cannot legally buy them charging $4000 dollars for a $2000 dollar gun. Because of their ineligible status, “customers” have no choice but to pay huge markups. Patrick said UBC’s would shut these gun merchants down. In addition, he declared UBC’s would also stop and end public mass shootings because they would prevent the mentally ill from buying guns. Patrick believes suspects in recent mass shootings were legally able to buy guns even though health officials had adjudicated them to be mentally unfit. When Joe Pags (Pagliarulo) observed Second Amendment “hard-liners” might object to Patrick’s proposal, the Lieutenant Governor said the Second Amendment guarantees people the right to “bear” not “sell” their guns.5 Wow. Where to start? Trying to follow Patrick’s “logic” is like untangling twine after an explosion in a string factory.
If an unknown number of people are not subject to background checks, how does Patrick know what percentage are, let alone 90%? What is 90% of an unknown number? Is this the “new math?” He didn’t say. Private transfers between family members, friends, and acquaintances are not subject to background checks and hence not recorded. Again, how can Patrick quantify an unknown quantity? This is an important question because he grounds support for UBC’s on the claim since so many people are already subject to background checks, no one would notice if extended to the rest. Sort of like being covered with poison ivy and getting one more bump. Even if Patrick’s numbers are correct, when has the “everyone else is doing it” ever been a compelling argument? Would it be valid to argue, because government has suppressed 90% of American’s First Amendment rights, what is the harm in surrendering the rest? At the risk of being crass, would a rescuer tell the victim of a shark attack; “Well, he got most of your leg so, you might as well let him have the rest”? Imagine its pre-W.W. II Berlin. Jacob hears a harsh banging on his door. He opens it to find goons standing there dressed in black uniforms trimmed in ominous silver runes.
“Your guns, give them to us now!” barks one of the goons.
“But why, gun ownership is legal” responds Jacob.
“Ninety percent of the other Jews have handed theirs over. What could be the harm if you do too?” says the goon.
If the people surrender any portion of a right to the government, will government ever cede it back? Would not any rationale for the government to seize a portion of a right also be equally compelling with respect to it taking the rest? Ten percent of a bad idea is still a bad idea let alone ninety percent.
I wish Pags had asked Patrick how UBC’s would force ineligible persons to submit to background checks. If a person is ineligible, they are ineligible. Most criminals obtain firearms through the black and secondary markets. This includes theft and straw purchases wherein eligible individuals buy firearms on behalf of those who are not. Who are Patrick’s “gun-merchants”? If he knows, why doesn’t he alert the Texas Department of Public Safety? Those willing to break the law selling contraband, be it untaxed cigarettes, bootleg music CDs, drugs, guns, and so forth, have and always will regardless of prohibitions and legal sanctions. Experience, history, and the facts contradict Patrick’s arguments. How could the number two man in the Texas Republican Party make such an ill-conceived and dangerous argument?
Contrary to what Patrick believes, the law already prohibits individuals from buying or possessing firearms if the Courts and or mental health officials have determined them to be mentally “defective”. In addition, the law requires officials to report such adjudications to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Anyone purchasing a firearm through an FFL is required to fill out form 4473. This an affidavit swearing they do not fit in any prohibited class listed on the form (felons, domestic abusers, illegal aliens, drug users, mentally unfit, etc.). Lying on this form is a felony. The FFL then calls the FBI’s NICS who determine if the customer is eligible to purchase the firearm. How does Texas’ Lieutenant Governor not know this? If individuals, barred by law from buying firearms, resort to the black market already operating outside the law, how would they be stopped by universal background checks?
I like Joe Pags but have to ask; what is a Second Amendment “hardliner?” Are they people who believe in an individual right to keep and bear arms, that the Second Amendment means what it says, and that one cannot compromise rights endowed by G-d? ? I’m a homicide hardliner. I reject exceptions to laws prohibiting anyone from illegally taking my life. Am I extreme? Liberals use “hardliner” to cast opponents as unreasonable in order to soften up the rest of gun owners to accept compromises. With all gun laws, each compromise leads to a diminution of rights.
According to Patrick, although the Second Amendment guarantees a right to keep and bear arms, those arms are not your private property. If one does not have the right to sell his or her property, then someone else does. Who is that? Government? If the latter, your arms must belong to them. The Declaration states people have a right to life and it is a gift from G-D, not one created by man or his laws. Inherent in this right is also a right to the means to protect it. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments recognizes the individual’s absolute right to own private property and dispose of it as they see fit. Firearms are private property. Crypto-Confiscationists argue, however, because firearms possess an intrinsic potential for lethality, exceptions to Second Amendment and property rights are valid. Baseball bats, knives, ice picks, meat cleavers, hammers, hatchets, axes, arrows, staves, and so forth also possess intrinsic lethal potential. This is no facetious comparison. The FBI reports that murderers kill more people with knives, hammers, clubs, and feet each year than rifles. In 2018, 297 people were killed with rifles, 1,515 were killed by murderers using a knife, 443 were murdered by killers using hammers, clubs, and blunt objects, and 672 were killed with “fists, feet and other ‘personal weapons”.6 The law can impose harsh consequences for irresponsible behavior but government cannot abridge an individual’s 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendment rights based on potential lethality of property owned. More importantly, American government, constituted as “federal”, cannot pass “national” laws.7
James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” writing in Federalist #39 noted a national government has authority over the “individual citizens” along with “an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things.” Under this system, “supremacy is completely vested in the national legislature” that has total control over city, county, and state governments as well as all commercial and other activities within the states. However, the United States has a “federal” not a “national” government. Its jurisdiction extends only to powers delegated to it, and enumerated, by the states.8 In Federalist #45, Madison wrote; “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects such as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which the last, the power of taxation, will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concerns the lives, liberties, and properties of the people”9 [emphasis mine]. Oops, the “federal” government has no Constitutional authority to establish any form of “national” background check law in the first place! It is sad those calling themselves Republicans and conservatives know so little about the Constitution.10
Lieutenant Governor Patrick predicates his failure-doomed proposal on two false notions near and dear to liberals; 1) the mere existence of firearms “causes” violent crime and 2) Individuals engaging in “hate” or “hate-speech” are dangerous to others, mentally ill, and the ones who commit public mass shootings. In the first case, the solution is simple; eliminate firearms thus ending violent crime, so they say. In the second, “red-flag” and stop mentally unstable persons from possessing arms or have police seize those they possess.
First, there is no correlation between the degree of access to firearms and the degree of evil in a person’s heart. Intent to inflict pain, great bodily injury, and murder germinate from within the individual not from proximity to implements of harm. In addition, access to firearms, including by teenagers under 18, was relatively unregulated before the 1960s. People could purchase firearms through the mail. “Federal” (sic) background checks did not exist, yet public mass shootings, were rare. Each decade of the twentieth century, until the 1970s, “had fewer than 10 mass public shootings with one in the 1950s. The rise began in the 1960s with six, followed by 13 in the 1970s. This upsurge spiked in the 1980s with 32 public mass shootings jumping to an unimaginable 42 in the 1990s even though access to firearms was increasingly regulated and controlled by the government following the Gun Control Act of 1968.10 What changed?
It began in 1947 with Everson versus Board of Education (330, 1, 18, 1947) in which the Supreme Court illegally amended the Constitution inventing the doctrine of “separation of church and state”. Through the Court’s tortured interpretation, it granted Liberal Humanism the means to drive G-d, its greatest foe, from the public square.
In the 1960s, moral relativism, the notion that all values are “relative”, that there is no good and evil or right and wrong, or moral absolutes became the dominant philosophy in America. Books like, I’m Okay, You’re Okay and The Pathology of Normalcy became wildly popular along with the philosophy of “do your own thing”. Simon and Garfunkel’s prophets wrote, “G-d is Dead” on subway walls. The humanist left, the equivalent of cultural acid, declared concepts of right and wrong to be judgements and those holding to them to be judgmental. If notions of morality are relative, “who are you to impose your values on me” became the battle cry of those destroying Judeo-Christian based Western Society. In order to force cultural and moral relativism on everyone, liberal humanists worked through “modern” left teachers and the Courts to drive G-d and Judeo-Christian based values from schools. For decades, Public Dis-Education has taught notions of morality and even truth are merely social constructs. How then could the consequences surprise anyone? Religion’s decline in the role of people’s lives, disintegration of the family, loss of respect for law and order and spike in violent crime, massive drug use, wild promiscuity, murdering unborn babies, normalizing sexual perversion, school and public mass shootings, and a rise in suicides. And all this would be solved by more background checks?
Patrick’s claim that all public mass killers were/are known to have been mentally unstable and dangerous is problematic. Most recent mass killers, with exceptions, did not exhibit a “specific profile” that would have identified them as potential murderers. An FBI Study (2013) revealed only 25% of mass murderers had previously been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. However, many of the others had displayed behavior considered hostile and anti-social.11 Laws designed to prevent violent crime before it happens by nature must be anticipatory. They rely on “red-flags” triggering a response from the courts and police. Who and on what basis determines what constitutes a red flag resulting in the police seizing a person’s arms? Therein lies the rub. Short of actions requiring incarceration in the Puzzle Factory, what constitutes behavior triggering these responses? According to the “Left”, hate speech should be a “Red-Flag” because it is de facto “proof” of mental instability and potential for violence. But what is hate speech? The Left defines it as anyone holding to Biblical morality, opposition to the invasion of the US by illegal aliens, belief in limited government, and a demand government follow the original intent of the Constitution. In short, opposition to any part of the left’s agenda.
Criminals and the mentally unstable are already prohibited from buying and possessing firearms. Universal background checks will do nothing to stop the ineligible from obtaining them. Nor will they stop criminals from buying guns on the black market. UBCs serve two purposes. First, a misguided attempt to buy off Confiscationists through compromise. Second, when UBC’s fail in their intended goal, Liberals will argue it’s because gun laws didn’t go far enough and what is needed is total gun registration. This too will fail and again the Left will say it’s because “We didn’t go far enough”. Guess what they’ll call for next. Support no sell-outs regardless of political party.
22 Phyllis Schlafly was a giant in the conservative movement. She led the battle against “me-too” males in the Republican Party, fought the radical feminist and homosexual movement, and worked to expose leftwing bias in schools. The Left, in conjunction were their useful idiots in the liberal media, pop-culture, and public diss-education,have done all in their power to flush her down Orwell’s Memory Hole.
77 Teaching Government for years, I never encountered a student who knew the difference between a federal and national government or why it even mattered. Using primary sources, I addressed this ignorance for which I was summarily punished by Administration and colleagues in the SocialIST Studies Department.
88 Clinton Rossiter, Editor, The Federalist Papers (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book from the New American Library, 1961), 244-245.
1010 I explained the difference and significance between a “national” and “federal” government to self-avowed conservatives for years. All listened, few cared. To one in particular stocking up on supplies because Constitutional abandonment will lead to collapse, I supplied primary source and scholarly articles. He refused to read them and called me, and those like me, “deranged a**holes.”
The news today is full of the latest poll alleging massive support for an “assault weapon” ban, universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks, and more human/civil rights violations. The numbers claimed were so outrageous I was sure it would prove to be another Quinnipiac poll.
But not this this time; it was conducted by Langer Research Associates, an outfit of whom I’ve never heard before.
I had some time to kill, so I took a look at the poll data. This was a “nationwide” telephone survey of 1,003 people, supposedly randomly dialed. There is no further information on methodology. But given the questions they asked, no methodology was going to save them.
16. Would you support or oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?
They failed to define “assault weapon,” a term with different meanings in a few jurisdictions and none in most. Therefore the question has zero meaning, or a wildly variable meaning in the mind of each individual respondent.
Did they mean an “assault weapon” as defined by the 1994 federal law? A Massachusetts assault weapon whose definition was based on the ’94 federal law until it was bureaucratically expanded? The NY definition which encompasses both more and less? The CA definition which covers even more, while missing things covered by the others? Respondents were left to their own imagination.
17. Would you support or oppose [ITEM]?
a. requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers, including private sales and gun shows
All retail sales require background checks already. It’s already unlawful to knowingly transfer a firearm to a prohibited person. The question should mention costs, too. It should note that nearly all firearms used in crimes are obtained unlawfully, bypassing any required checks.
b. a nationwide ban on high capacity ammunition clips, meaning those containing more than 10 bullets
“Clips” are devices used to load magazines, and hold cartridges, not just bullets. The most common clips already hold 10 or fewer cartridges.
c. a law allowing the police to take guns away from people who have been found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others
Such laws already exist. Their summary refers to “red flag” laws, so for the question to have meaning, they must specify that the order would be ex parte and the subject would not have the chance to speak in his defense and that the accuser need provide no evidence (if there were evidence, a regular arrest warrant could be issued).
d. a mandatory buy back program in which the federal government would require assault weapon owners to turn in those weapons in exchange for payment
Again, “assault weapon” must be defined, and the payment specified. For instance, New Zealand’s new ban specifies a maximum payment below market value, which may be part of why compliance is running below 10% (and dropping with each “buyback” event).
18. Who do you trust more to handle gun laws in this country – (Trump) or (the Democrats in Congress)?
That question is so biased that, if I had been polled, I would have hung up on the idiots. It presupposes that more gun laws are desirable. It frames the debate as an individual vs. a Dem majority. (Incidentally, Trump has implemented more new firearm restrictions in this year, than the Democrats have managed in the past twelve years.)
19. How confident are you that [ITEM] would reduce mass shootings in this country – very confident, somewhat confident, not so confident or not confident at all?
You failed to define “mass shooting.” The GVA definition, which includes people not shot? The CRS/FBI definition which excludes gangbangers shooting it out over turf and revenge? Meaningless question.
21. Do you or does anyone in your house own a gun, or not?
I’ve always found that question amusing. Imagine answering your own phone one day and hearing, “Hi! I’m a stranger randomly dialing numbers, so I don’t really know where you live. Will you tell me if you have valuable merchandise that’s easily stolen?”
It gets even better when you toss that question in with the suggestion of confiscation.
All in all, the clowns didn’t find “support” for anything specific. They conducted a verbal Rorschach test of “support” for whatever was in the mind of each individual. They might as well have asked, “Do you support or oppose color?” And left it to each person to guess if they meant color vs. B&W imagery, people of color, or red vs. blue.
I’d like to see more detail on the methodology. Did they ask the questions of whomever answered the phone, or ask for youngest likely voter? Someone else? What regions did they poll, and how did they weight responses? It doesn’t much matter, given the questions, but I’d like to further ridicule them.
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I hate it when FactCheck.org shows up in my news searches. Because this is fairly typical of the lying SOBs.
A False Claim About H.R. 8 and a ‘Firearms Registry’
A viral meme falsely accuses five House Republicans of voting with Democrats to create a “firearms registry.” The bill in question specifically prohibits “the establishment, directly or indirectly, of a national firearms registry.”
The headline is certainly right: Angelo Fichera is making a false claim. A classic strawman argument. I’m not aware of anyone claiming that HR 8 would create a firearms registry. We correctly note that it would enable the creation of such.
For Angelo and his fellow short-bus riders, I’ll explain.
HR 8 would expand preemptively-prove-your-innocence (PPYI) checks to virtually all firearms transactions. It does that by requiring private parties go to a federally licensed dealer (FFL) so that the dealer can process the transaction in exactly the same way that his own transactions are done: boundbook entry, 4473, NICS, fees.
The 4473 is the potential problem, because it’s forever. Even when and if an FFL goes out of business, the stack of 4473s goes to the ATF to be filed.
Fichera knows that, but blows it off, because everyone knows the ATF is forbidden to enter those into a searchable database. Of course, that law got passed specifically because the ATF was caught doing exactly that. And they still do mass photocopying of 4473s during license inspections.
Let’s pretend that HR 8 passes the Senate, too, and Trump signs it. As a result, Trump properly loses the 2020 election to a Democrat who will stab us in the chest, not the back. So at least we can see “them” coming and dodge.
Then they pass another bill repealing the databasing restriction. The ATF issues a Request for Purchase for several thousand document scanners with character recognition, along with thousand of temp hires to hit every FFL in the country for copies of those conveniently collected 4473.
Database.
We had a Dem presidential candidatedesignated gun control stalking horse, whose main campaign promise was to confiscate every semi-auto firearm in civiilan hands. To do that, the government needs to know who has what and where. If they didn’t know that before, they’ve surely learned from New Zealand’s embarrassing ban attempt.
Universal PPYI, with 4473s is the perfect setup. And the government is well aware of it. Since NICS began, pro-rights people have advocated different systems that would allow background checks, while preventing the creation of a permanent record subject to ATF collection. BIDS: Blind Identification Database System is one of the better suggestions (assuming our rights are going to be violated at all). BIDS still has weaknesses, but those can be fixed.
Legislators and bureaucrats have actively resisted all attempts at switching to a recordless system. Go ahead; tell me I’m paranoid for thinking they want those permanent records.
I wonder how Fichera would like his favored right — the First Amendment — regulated in the same way.
Imagine some congresscritter doesn’t like being ridiculed, and files a bill “prevent verbal violence” by requiring everyone who purchases a computer or smart phone to pass a background check. The transaction would be logged on an FCC form 7734, and will include things like purchaser’s race, and the device’s serial number and MAC. Bill makes it into law, because only someone who wants to verbally abuse children could object.
Then someone else insults Rep. Wilson‘s intelligence (properly, the lack thereof). So she files a bill to collate those 7734s into a searchable database; all the better to track down that mean person.
No doubt Mr. Fichera will be just fine with preemptively proving his own innocence before exercising his First Amendment rights online, and being forced to pay for it. Of course, if he smokes marijuana, or has a felony conviction, or even some misdemeanors, he won’t be allowed to buy that phone. And if he has one, someone may “red flag” him because maybe he’ll slander someone or write a article based on his own… li… oh. Wait.
No First Amendment for Fichera.
Of course, once the Dems are on a roll, they could ban high capacity batteries because no one needs to talk for more than half an hour. And there would be an 8 day cooling off period before you could take possession of your phone or computer, lest some hack writer draft an ill-conceived strawman column on the spur of the moment. Writer licensing (that’s been proposed before).
How about safe storage laws for computers and phones so little children can’t get their hands on them and hook up with an Internet predator? And that’s all the more reason to register devices and owners, right? S0 you can use the MAC to track pedophiles… or annoying journalists who insist on covering embarrassing government screwups.
Heck, maybe they’d even ban those fully automated smart phones suitable only for military communications. Or swapping kiddie porn. Do that for the children.
That, FactCheck and Fichera, is why we object to “universal background checks.” It would enable all that.
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How? In this case, how will sheriffs enforce the universal background check law, Balderas?
New Mexico AG says sheriffs must enforce gun control law
New Mexico’s attorney general says law enforcement agencies must enforce a new law expanding background checks to nearly all private gun sales and that they could be liable for damage claims if they don’t.
Short of a deputy witnessing a transfer as it happens, I don’t see how it’s enforceable on law enforcement.
Deputy: “Hey, citizen. I see you have a gun. Did you do a background check before you got it?”
Citizen: “Deputy, you know I’ve had this revolver for eight years.”
Deputy: “Oh. Yeah.”
Or maybe it would go like so:
Deputy: “Is that a new gun? I don’t recognize it. You do your background check?
Citizen: “Screw that. I bought it from Joe Blow on March 7, 2019, before that dumbass law got signed.”
Deputy: “Oh. Yeah.”
For that matter, what’s the probable cause to investigate in the first place? Merely that an officer doesn’t recall seeing a particular person with a specific firearm before?
Deputy: “Nice rifle. Just get it?”
Citizen: “Yep.”
Deputy: “Do a NICS check first?”
Citizen: “Yep.”
Deputy: “Can you prove it?”
Citizen: “Can you prove I didn’t? I went through all four pages of that BS law, and nothin’ says I gotta keep paperwork for ya.”
Deputy: “Who ran NICS for you? I can check the dealer’s records.”
Citizen: Damned if I remember. Nothin’ says I gotta have a perfect memory either.”
Or maybe Joe Citizen bought it from Dad, or his brother. And neither kept anything but a receipt… dated 3/8/2019. Or undated. Or nothing at all; it isn’t required.
Even if a deputy witnessed a private transfer, say… at a gun show, since that’s where victim disarmers think criminal buy their guns…
Deputy: “Hey, you didn’t do a NICS check!”
Citizen: “Don’t gotta. He’s my uncle; ‘immediate family member’ as specified in the constitutional abortion.”
Deputy: “Can you prove that?”
Citizen 2: “Can you prove I’m not? Ain’t like the law requires me to carry around a marriage certificate showing I’m married to his maw’s sister.”
Deputy: “We could subpoena that.”
Citizen 2: “Did I mention that it was a common-law marriage in New Hampshire?”
I suppose if the authorities had doubts, they could confirm the transaction with the seller… who has every reason to verify the buyer’s claim since the law makes both parties criminals if they didn’t conduct the check.
I don’t think Senators Martinez and Wirth thought this through.
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For new arrivals, I’ve been writing to “news” outlets and the writers of published gun-related misinformation. Call it education or calling them out on lies, I’m trying to correct bad reporting. Mostly, I an simply ignored, which indicates they know they’re wrong, and are disseminating BS deliberately. Once it’s clear that the outlet/writer is not interested in allowing facts to run, I’ve been posting my attempts here.
Today’s entry is a little bit different.
A focus on gun safety – not control – leaves 2nd Amendment intact
Our civil rights are under attack, and have been for some time. The freedom to assemble etched out in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is under attack by the Second Amendment — and it shouldn’t be. Jason Aldean’s concert was a peaceful assembly ravaged by a lone gunman who, for all intents and purposes, had the right of gun ownership.
What is it with doctors lying about firearms issues lately? 744 words of misdirection and falsehoods. I sent a proposed guest column of 721 words to rebut. To the Orlando Sentinel’s partial credit, they didn’t ignore me completely, as usually happens.
They told me to pare it down to 250 words or less and they’d consider it for a Letter to the Editor.
I couldn’t do it. There were too many Levy lies for 250 words. I got it down to 444 (remember, even my original column was shorter than Levy’s offering), by leaving out some specific references, and using more abbreviations and… not-so-great grammar.
They turned it down. So here it is.
Disingenuous Doctor
Doctor Marc Levy’s October 27, 2017 column, “A focus on gun safety – not control – leaves 2nd Amendment intact,” is as lacking in candor as the very column title, suggesting that delaying and infringing on rights somehow protects them.
Levy attempts another bit of misdirection in noting that Obamacare has a provision that prevents the collection of information on firearms. I’m sure that a doctor in Florida is well aware that Medicare/Medicaid sidestepped the law by implementing a rule requiring doctors to use Electronic Medical Records software, produced by nongovernmental agencies, which include questions on patient access to firearms in the intake questionnaire. Any doctor with Medicare/Medicaid patients will be asking that, while the CMS innocently proclaims, “WE aren’t requiring it.”
Dr. Levy also appears to be a fan of “universal background checks” (more accurately called preemptively-prove-your-innocence”), so that criminals and other prohibited persons could not obtain guns. He avoids the little problem that most firearm-equipped criminals already obtain their weapons unlawfully, and that the Supreme Court’s HAYNES decision upholds
criminals’ Fifth Amendment rights to not self-incriminate by reporting their unlawful activity; i.e.- criminals cannot be required to undergo background checks.
Levy mentions “assault rifles” as he wonders why we don’t track firearms purchases. Either he is unaware that assault rifles are heavily restricted, regulated, taxed, and registered; or he doesn’t want readers to realize that he’s talking about semiautomatic sporting and defense tools. Perhaps he meant to say “assault weapons,” a term with no legal meaning in Florida or federal law; only a handful of states use the entirely subjective term.
The doctor claims that all “responsible” gun owners approve of his restrictions: registration, taxation, limits on ownership, prior restraint on the exercise of a right, and more. Since I do not, that is demonstrably false, unless Levy has invented his own bizarre definition of “responsible.”
Similar claims that “90% of Americans favor Universal Background Checks” don’t hold water. A few years ago in Washington state, polls alleged that 90% of Washingtonians wanted UBCs; but when it went to an actual vote (Initiative 594), fewer than 60% voted in favor, missing the claim by over thirty points, and more than 40% opposed.
Since recent research shows that background checks do not reduce firearms-related homicide rates (“Do gun laws reduce gun homicide rates?,”), the 40% had a valid point.
Levy sidesteps other questions. Estimates of American gun owners range from a ridiculous fifty-five million to a possibly overly optimistic one hundred-twenty million. Estimates of firearms range from two hundred sixty-five million to a three quarters of a billion. Given the lack of knowledge demonstrated by that remarkable uncertainty, how does Levy propose to determine who has what? How does he propose to pry “extra” firearms out of the homes of those with “too many?” Does he expect dubious owners, who won’t tell a telephone poller what arms he possesses, to self-report to a government intent on registration and confiscation? Or does he advocate searching every single, individual domicile in the country? That’s a lot of doors to kick in, and when the California legislature first proposed mass confiscations of “assault weapons” several years ago, a police union spokesman announced they’d see the largest outbreak of “blue flu” in history if implemented.
Perhaps Dr. Levy and the other estimated one million doctors in America will volunteer to do the door-kicking; they outnumber the FBI’s estimate of fewer than 700,000 law enforcement officers anyway.
Consider those fifty-five to one hundred-twenty million gun owners; then consider the roughly thirteen thousand firearms-related homicides. If each homicide represented an individual shooter and gun, that’s 0.01-0.02% of all firearm owners and 0.001-0.005% of firearms. While personal tragedies, statistically homicides are “black swan” events.
Those tiny fractions of a single percentage point do not point to a gun problem or gun owner problem. There is a criminal problem. Perhaps Dr. Levy should lobby for a gangbanger tax to fund criminal violence research.
Robin Brulé, “Member Of Everytown Survivor Network,” wants universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks. After all…
My mother is gone; others may be saved
My 75-year-old mother, Ruth, and her friend had been shot and killed. My mother had taken a trip to visit her friend who lived in a retirement community. They were drinking coffee and reading the newspaper when strangers robbed them and took their lives in a single instant.
[…]
the glaring loophole in New Mexico state law that allows criminals, domestic abusers and other dangerous people to obtain guns from unlicensed sellers with no background check, no questions asked. SB 48/HB 50 would close this deadly loophole by requiring a criminal background check for all gun sales.
No honest folks really want violent criminals walking around with guns (although one might also wonder what the violent criminals are doing on the loose in the first place, if they’re known). But Brulé fails to explain how universal PPYI checks would have stopped her mother’s murders. After all…
So, Brulé, how would your background checks stop a couple of guys, apparently with no disqualifying convictions, from purchasing a firearm? From anyone, including an FFL who has to go through NICS?
Another question: Given that, in Haynes, the Supreme Court has rulled that felons cannot be forced to self-incriminate on firearms charges, how do victim disarmers propose to force disqualified persons to comply with PPYI? Your police state dream law would only apply to honest people. You know, the ones who aren’t the problem.
Third question: Even if SCOTUS suddenly decided to toss the Fifth Amendment, how do you victim-disarming whackos propose to preemptively stop strawman purchases?
When victim-disarming ban bunnies start suggesting laws that don’t infringe on honest people’s right, and do apply to the real criminal predators, I might stop regarding them as liars or idiots. Or both.
My “safety,” Mr. Carr, is only a “threat” to someone credibly threatening me with death or bodily injury. If you consider me a threat to you, I’d like you to explain why you’re planning to kill me.
The victim disarming rights-violators frequently claim that we need to have a rational discussion about guns, and whine that RKBA proponents won’t listen to them. This is why: their idea of “rational” is a display of a pathological fear of inanimate tools. They fail to realize that universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence backgrounds checks are not going to be conducted by the 70% of criminals who get their firearms through illicit transactions, nor that they cannot even be required to do so.
The victim disarmers cite research that claims to have studied the laws that best correlate with lowered gun deaths, and conclude that firearm identification (whether through ballistic fingerprinting or microstamping) would help lower deaths by 90%, even though only two states have even had ballistic fingerprinting databases, and one of those gave it up after 15 years of it never leading to a single arrest (and no one has microstamping yet). We are expectedly to “rationally” accept a study that literally cannot support the conclusions it drew because the data is nonexistent or directly contradicts the claim.
To the victim disarming blood dancers, it is rational to believe that surveys in Washington state showed that 90% of the people wanted universal PPYI checks, when less than 60% would actually vote for it.
We are to accept as “rational” the idea that a convicted felon on probation, under a restraining order, who obtained his gun via an illegal straw purchase, and killed 3, and injured 14 would have been stopped by universal PPYI checks.
Two blood dancers from Sandy Hook Promise gave statements to the New Hampshire legislature that it would be “rational” to believe that universal PPYI checks would have stopped that school killer, who obtained his weapons by killing his mother in her bed and stealing her guns.
“Rational” discussion would accept that gun deaths are increasing, and are caused by the increasing number of guns, when the rate of gun deaths is at the lowest level in decades (while guns per capita is at a record level).
“Rational” discussion by the gun controllers’ standard means accepting delusion over reality.
Let’s have that rational discussion just as soon as your doctors get your medications balanced.
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
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?
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.
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”~~John Donne
I attended a showing of The Holocaust: Through their eyes at the Jewish Community Center. It is the accounts of local holocaust survivors. Not people who heard about it from their distant cousin or parents, but lived it, survived it.
According to one of the survivors, in 1930 Berlin, hitler’s SS beat to death 8 Jews who were walking down the street. That was the start of the spiral down. The harassment of Jews in public places had already started, the anti-Jewish notices and slogans had started. But these were the first deaths. That act was the start of the holocaust, no matter what other signs there were or were not, THAT was the start, according to this survivor.
Some of the survivors seemed astonished that their non-Jewish friends began to turn against them, people they had known for years, played with, grown up with would no longer associate with them. Not only would they not associate with them, they turned on them. There was a government who’s leader had the opinion that “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” and a very obliging media who was willing to spread the message. I suppose it should be no big surprise that when a population constantly hears a message it eventually wears down resistance & rational thought. The persecution was embedded in laws like the Nuremberg laws, which defined who and who was not a Jew according to the Reich, and based on those definitions what people were allowed to do, and who they were allowed to marry or be with. The discrimination further curtailed privileges such as riding on a bus, going to a public park or sitting on a bench in a park. All decreed by having one Jewish Grandparent. Then it became Jews weren’t allowed to go to school and Gentiles weren’t allowed to go into Jewish homes. Then they were denied the ability to own a radio, or animals. One lady talked about how the family had a pet dog and a bird, they had to get rid of them. My heart just broke for her, you could tell, hers still hurt. With all she had endured, the loss of the pets still hurt. Then the Jews were denied service. The baker, butcher, barber refused to serve Jews. More than one of those interviewed talked about people they had known most of their lives that were turning against them. Labensraum was begun, the German policy of taking land belonging to those that the nazis considered inferior. Because in their deluded minds, taking land from the inferior people to give me superior people “living space” and room to grow food was necessary. The nazis felt this was a fair way to encourage and increase the natural vigor of the superior race.
Then hitler was elected in Austria. Anschluss, March 12, 1938, when the Austrians welcomed the Germans rolling down the streets with cheers and waves. Banners were unfurled out of windows, swastika pins appeared on lapels and in parks signs stating “No dogs and Jews” appeared. Austria was not invaded, the Austrians choose this. And again, the turning away of life long friends, their scorn and derision on open display. The painful realization those people had never been their friends. They had always hated them, it was just that now it was permissible to publicly show the hatred.
Then Kristallnacht, “Night of the broken glass” 9-10 November 1938. A series of pogroms that caused the death of between 1-2 thousand when the total includes those that died in German custody, concentration camps and suicide as a result of what they suffered are included. Over 1 thousand Synagogues were burned and Jewish owned businesses and homes were destroyed.
In September 1939 Germany and Russia invaded Poland.
Then Operation Barbaross, when Germany invaded Russia generated some horrible atrocities.
One lady talked about being a 16 year old girl the night the Germans came to their home at 0400. They told her Father to walk outside. As he was complying they shot him in front of her, six times and left him in the doorway for the family.
On December 7th, the day America’s Pearl Harbor was attacked the first of the Jews were sent to be gassed. The witnesses that spoke of this seemed saddened that so many don’t realize that was the day the gassings started. One witness talked about how the nazis would enter a town, drive the people to the town center square then take them to a building, like a brewery to sort them. Who lives, who dies? As one witness stated matter of fact, if you were old, or very young or sick, you had no chance. Up the chimney you would go, they said. If you were healthy you would be sent to a camp to work. One survivor of the Gross-Rosen camp talked about eating grass and snow to survive. Germans liked starving people to death.
Of one ghetto in a Polish town that had once held 5000 souls only 3 survived. One lady told of enduring 25 lashes for being caught with a pound of butter. Another told of seeing a baby being thrown at a truck, another recounted the brave German soldiers tearing a baby into pieces and throwing it out the window. Remember, these are not stories that were handed down by grandparents, these are the things the witnesses saw themselves.
At camp you got to keep your clothes, and there would be 150-200 people per barrack. You were given a blanket, a bowl and a cup and then maybe some food for the first time in two days. One man said they had to sing. Once a day they were given some noodle or potato soup. On those meager rations you worked from day to night. The prisoners would lay pipe, and shovel coal despite having no shoes, and that was the women. One man painted portraits of the Russian guards for food. One recounted how they became very good at realizing about a week out when someone was going to die within the week.
One addressed the question of why didn’t they fight back? More than one reason it seems. The first was possession of a weapon was a death sentence. And thanks to the German version of Universal Background Checks it was easy to know who had what where, so when Jews were forbidden to own guns it was easy to divest them of their now illegal guns. The other factor he mentioned was how weak, physically, everyone was. He said with the amount of food you got, you were lucky to survive, let alone fight or run. It sounds like it was less than a moochelle obama school lunch. He also pointed out even if you got away, you are wearing a stripped uniform, you are tattooed, gaunt and they have cut your hair into a reverse Mohawk, and go where? Although one lady did have her means of resistance. She passed on Jewish history and knowledge to the children.
In 1943 from 19 April to 16 May the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during WWII, and they held off the Germans longer than the whole country of Poland. But poorly armed with virtually non-existent re-supply they were finally overrun.
One talked about being on the cattle cars the Germans used. They said if the boxcar held 100, they would cram 150 in. The witness talked about little children and old people in those boxcars. They said there was no food or sanitation. They would drive the boxcars back and forth for 11 days. For 11 days the people in those boxcars would starve, vomit, defecate and die. Mothers would be trying, Fathers would be praying and no one was listening and 60% died.
One witness talked about getting to Auschwitz. The guards would yell “Rouse rouse” Come quick. They signaled to go left or right. If you went to the right, you went to the barracks, if you went to the left “You went to the crematory and up the chimney”. If you didn’t move fast enough they hit you, if you still didn’t move fast enough they shot you. Some saw their whole family murdered. More than one talked about the sky high fires.
In 1945 the Allies arrived and the death marches to the next camps started. They weren’t allowed to take a blanket and it was winter. Maybe 10-20 below. There was no food and anything that could be grabbed along the way was, corn, wheat, potatoes, beets anything they saw, they would grab and share with the others. Of the 55,000 that left the camp 12,000 survived to arrive at the next death camp.
In April of 1945 when the Allies found the death camps they initially had no scope of the magnitude of what they were seeing. Then they realized they prisoners were mostly civilians, so weak and with heads like skulls, words mumbled and garbled. They found bodies not fully burned and wagon loads of bodies to be burned. The soldiers were shocked. They had heard about the camps but didn’t realize what they were hearing meant in reality.
Reality? While the dead by category differs according to different researchers it’s basically around 6 million Jews, or 78% of German occupied Europe were murdered. Roma, or Gypsies 130,000 to 1,500,000 depending on which researcher. Handicapped, 200,000 to 250,000 were murdered, POWs around 3.1 million, Ethnic Poles 1.8-1.9 million. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians lost around 13.7 million including 2 million Jews. 10,000-15,000 Homosexuals died in the concentration camps. Around 1,000-2,000 Catholic clergy, 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Freemasons were killed in the camps. The price tag for vulnerability is very, very high.
One lady talked about what to do after liberation. Where do you go? You could stay in the camp, but no one wanted to, and most no longer had a home.
Ok, so the camps are liberated, all is well now, right? Not so much. July 4, 1946The Kielce Pogrom took place.
The soldiers and the policemen then went into the building. Jews were told to surrender their weapons, but not all of the residents obeyed the order. The entry of the policemen and the soldiers into the Jewish house marked the beginning of the pogrom. Excerpts from testimony supplied by people who witnessed the outbreak of the pogrom describe what followed.
Ewa Szuchman, resident of the house on Planty Street, said:After the police took away the weapons, the crowd broke into the Kibutz ( on the second floor) and policemen started shooting at the Jews first. They killed one and wounded several others. Albert Grynbaum, another inhabitant of the Jewish house who was on the first floor, said: The soldiers went up to the second floor. Several minutes later two Jews came to me and told me that the soldiers were killing Jews and looting their property. It was then that I heard shots. After the shooting on the second floor, shots were heard from the street and inside the building.
Apparently by then some of the people had learned when the government starts demanding groups of people hand over their weapons bad things are about to happen. Unfortunately not enough of them were armed to stop what was coming. And this was AFTER the war had ended. One man told of his brother going in to try to get their Mother and his Girlfriend out. The man said his brother was never seen again.
One witness told of coming to America, seeing the Statue of Liberty and looking at the crowds of people waiting to greet loved ones getting off the ship, and he had no one. It’s not just that there wasn’t anyone there to greet him, it’s that he literally had NO ONE.
The witnesses had messages for us. How fragile is liberty and civilization. Life is precious and wonderful. Change the world around yourself. Not my children, not nobody’s children should have to live through what we lived through. I didn’t want to tell people because I’ve never gotten over that my family died. My Mom was 45, my sister 22 and another sister 25, a brother 10 and a little nephew 2 or 3. I tell people what happened so it won’t happen again. I saw it with my own eyes. People helped me rebuild my life. I live in a world that has changed, the holocaust can’t happen again, then I realize it IS happening again in other parts of the world. And their suffering becomes our suffering.
One witness talked about hearing of hilter and eva braun’s deaths after he was liberated from the camp. He said they are dead and we are alive. We have won. That is how I defined victory.
With all due respect, this is NOT how I define victory. I would define victory as when the nazi’s tried to enact their Nuremberg laws and used their universal background checks to begin gun confiscation people would have seen the writing on the wall and stopped it right then. Yes, I do think the Christians would have needed to stand with their Jewish neighbors and realized that the only hope any of them had was to stand together. Had it happened? Millions of people would not have died. We can not compromise to “common sense gun laws”. We can not compromise to political correctness. We can not compromise to universal background checks. We can not compromise to phony public opinion polls. We can not compromise to phony anti-gun groups funded by anti-gun millionaires with armed security guards. We can cease to support Hollywood anti-gun liberals with armed security guards. We can look critically at the choices of Second Amendment groups and pick the ones that truly fight for our rights. Now we have choices, use them wisely. Resolve to do something each day to regain our liberty. Be resolved, we are. The Zelman Partisans, no compromise, no surrender, ever.
Remember
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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