“…Background checks continue to be pushed because they represent another way to control law-abiding gun owners. Giffords was supposed to stand with Democrats and push for their passage as one whose ideas could not be criticized, mush (sic) less assailed. Here’s the problem — background checks don’t work, and Giffords’ attacker is living proof of that.” – A.W.R Hawkins in Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield [at breitbart.com]
Not a human shield. A meat puppet.
Precisely.
I love this meme for their poster children, “human shields.” Next step; “collateral damage” to describe their diminishing effectiveness.
Background checks only reveal what you have done, not what you will do.
Show me an investor that only buys stocks based on past performance and I will show you a broke man.
“Background checks only reveal what you have done, not what you will do.” This is quite correct. It is also irrelevant politically. In fact, politically, it is counter-productive.
If we BC someone who will become (future) a violent criminal he will come up clean; he gets his gun. Best we might be able to do is catch him in his first crime, try and convict him and put him in prison. (Also try to confiscate his guns). Then, when he is released, we can ban him for life (with a possibility of restoring his 2A rights).
Once he has been released, we can – at least – bar him from direct access to the legitimate market for guns (FFLs). You may not like this; but, you aren’t going to advance the cause by telling uncommitted voters that you want to roll-back BCs at FFLs. The most you will succeed in doing is turning-off those voters who today are uncommitted and tomorrow MIGHT just become somewhat supportive of the 2A.
We are free to disparage the BC system at FFLs and we should certainly criticize UBCs. We should certainly say that no BC is going to stop a criminal or crazy from wanting to get a gun. While these things are true, that doesn’t mean that we should turn-off possible friends by saying we want to get rid of FFL BCs. That will gain us as many friends as saying we want alcohol and tobacco dealers to sell to minors.
We ought to be making the arguments that SERVE our cause. I.e., criminal-control not law-abiding-citizen-control. We ought to be making the case that depriving criminals access to guns is a pretty ineffective strategy. Society would be better off looking for ways to discourage criminals from using guns; essentially, by incarcerating violent criminals especially those who use guns.
FFL BGCs won’t stop “prohibited persons” from getting a firearm. By contrast, checking ID for age will prevent minors from purchasing alcohol and tobacco.
FFL BGCs have zero impact on criminals, are anywhere from a nuisance to a hindrance to an outright infringement (false positive) for the law-abiding, and serve zero public good. They constitute a de facto gun registration, raise the price of lawful firearm sales, and do absolutely nothing to prevent crime. In the rare cases where they actually do return a valid no-go, the feds only prosecute about 2% of those cases.
Why should we not be in favor of getting rid of them?
that is a dangerous statement to make. it could lead to the retort that “you are right, they don’t work so there is no real way to tell a bad guy from a good guy until he starts shooting, therefore all guns need to be banned.” they know they can not come out and say it like that but that could help brainwash others into thinking the same way.
Brainwash all the braindead. That’s why we are a Republic and not a Democracy. We have a Constitution and we have guns to defend against tyranny.
That’s the game they play. Look at history.
One of the basic canons of pro-government people is that “this government idea/program didn’t work, so we need MORE OF IT.”
It applies to money, with regard to educating children. “Our schools have failed, so we need to dump more money into failing schools to fix them.”
It applies to government violence, when applied to the war on some people who use some drugs (a.k.a. the “war on drugs”). “We haven’t stopped drugs, so we need no-knock raids and militarized SWAT teams.”
And it applies to gun control. They will push as hard as they can to get background checks, and claim that they will help solve the problem of “gun violence.” If they ever get “universal background checks” passed, when those inevitably fail to stop violent crime, they will say that they need MORE controls on firearms. So they will push for different types of regulations/prohibitions on guns. When those fail, they’ll push for more.
It never ends. Because their solutions simply won’t work. But THEY WON’T STOP. Look at the anti-knife campaigns in the UK. Their gun control “solutions” failed, so they’re going after knives.
The way we must counter is by pointing out that their solutions won’t work. To put it bluntly, their ideas are dumb. They will never solve the REAL problems that actually exist (suicide, gang violence, domestic violence, etc.).
We can’t let them pass the laws they want, period. And we can’t compromise with them. They see any push towards more gun control as a victory – and they are correct in that regard from their point of view.
Agreed. No individual or business can even begin to operate like the government does and hope to survive. When was the last time you maxed out your credit card and then got your creditor to give you more money? When was the last time you took over something someone else created because you told them you knew how to control it better?
We don’t do these things because they are immensely irresponsible and illegal, whether it’s on the individual level or on a massive scale. But the government does it every day and gets away with it red handed no less.
Preston,
“… there is no real way to tell a bad guy from a good guy until he starts shooting, therefore all guns need to be banned.”
Gun grabbers are already saying this openly in many venues.
Our response is simple:
(1) Eliminate guns and anyone could go on a rampage with a knife, sword, or club to the same effect.
(2) We will never be able to predict who/what/when/where/why/how of a rampage. All the more reason for good people to be armed so that we can stop a rampage sooner rather than later.
Prior restraint is already explicitly unconstitutional, so let them try to make that claim. We live in a free society; not knowing what free people will do before they act is one of the risks of that freedom.
Actually, if you have seen their remarks on social media, they have said EXACTLY that. They love to take the “good guy with a gun” quote and distort it by asking the question “How do I know it’s a good guy with a gun? Do I wait until he starts shooting? We’d be safer if nobody had guns.”
Let us compare background checks to medication prescriptions, shall we?
government == physician
background check purchase authorization == prescription
firearm == pharmaceutical
gun store == pharmacy
Your physician (government) provides a prescription (background check purchase authorization) for you to purchase a firearm (pharmaceutical) at your local gun store (pharmacy). Thus, requiring background checks for all firearm purchases should eliminate most/all misuse of firearms, just like requiring prescriptions to purchase medications and “controlled substances” should eliminate most/all misuse of medications and “controlled substances”, right?
And yet tens of thousands of people in the United States misuse and abuse prescription medication and “controlled substances” every year. Abusers steal and forge prescription pads, fake illnesses to get prescriptions from their physicians, steal drugs from pharmacies, make their own drugs, and/or purchase drugs from street labs.
And so it will be even if government requires background checks for all firearm purchases. Violent criminals will steal firearms from people and gun stores, make their own firearms, purchase firearms from garage workshops, or purchase firearms smuggled in from other countries. Or, violent criminals will simply use bludgeons or knives which they can always acquire on the cheap without a background check.
Criticizing obama you are racist. Criticizing anti gun homosexual politician Tom Ammiano you are homophobic. Criticizing Giffords you are making war on women. All seems normal to me.
So is this guy saying we need flatout gun bans in lieu of ineffective background checks? Because that’s what it sounds like he’s saying, and that’s how the anti-gun lobby will use it against us if they catch wind. We really are our own worst enemy sometimes.
For 3 years I’ve been posting the reality that Sheriff Dupnik rushed through the Maggot’s CCW card because he was “friendly” with his mother. He only passed NICS because Clinton had set up a barrier to keep the Services from sharing drug and psych test results in the NICS database.
She’s just Brady 2.0.
Did anybody see the Breitbart article on how Comrade Kelly failed to pass two gun background checks that Jolly Jared passed?