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(courtesy trblive.com)

“If you oppose the passage of a federal law requiring background checks for gun buyers, you’re endangering police officers and empowering cop killers — and you’re not doing anything to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” – Lane Filler in A bad case against gun-buy checks [via triblive.com]

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58 COMMENTS

  2. The Constitution does not give the Federal government the authority to impliment universal background checks. I do not suppose that matters though, since most of what the Federal government does is not authorized by the Constitution.

    • All those other things they do, they granted the authority to themselves. “We the People” just never noticed.

  3. They’re getting ever closer to literally shouting “look at this baby!”

    What happens when hyperbole collides with reality? Is it like crossing the streams or something?

    • I just watched “Ghost Busters” again last week. It is still a funny movie.

      Of course, the EPA guy is a perfect example of government arrogance based in ignorance and actions that end up doing more damage to the public safety in the Quixotic attempt to create a “safe” public environment. (ATF anyone?)

    • I’m not sure why he thinks UBCs would drive the price of criminally-obtained handguns up tenfold. I’m no economist, but I just don’t see how that’s supposed to work.

      • The key is knowing that universal background checks does not mean universal background checks, per se. That is, they don’t simply want every gun sale to be subject to a BC, and that be the end of the story.

        If that were what they wanted, then they would allow everyone (private sellers, not just Federal Firearms License holders) to access the NICS database to obtain a Proceed confirmation, prior to completing the sales transaction. The Democrats do not want any such thing. In fact, they’ve repeatedly rejected that very proposal since the 1990s, including as recently as post-Sandy Hook.

        No, what the Democrats, aka gungrabbers, really want is UBC through the FFLs only. That’s the key to everything, because the federal government controls who gets a dealer license and what the requirements are. With control of the FFLs, the feds can jack up license fees, record keeping/reporting requirements, and business equipment mandates. They could force every FFL to have an actual storefront and massive security systems. They could force them to have super sophisticated computer systems and software, instead of just the log book.

        All of which is expensive and gets passed on to the customer in the price of the merchandise. Or they could simply limit the number of license holders and restrict competition to a chosen few. ( Washington, D.C. reportedly only has ONE FFL in business.) Facing less competition, they would raise their rates to monopoly levels (or near so, oligopoly levels).

        Fundamentally, when they say universal background checks, they mean banning private sales of firearms, as all sales must go through an FFL. That eliminates even more competition, as you won’t be able just to buy your buddy’s pistol or another one online. The gun industry considers itself to be its strongest competitor, as guns last decades, and thus new sales compete with used sales. UBC hack away at the used gun market by forcing private sellers out.

        The most sinister part, is that UBC automatically mean universal gun registration, since all sales must go through an FFL and FFLs must keep the records and report to the feds. Registration leads to confiscation.

        So that’s why it’s bad for citizens. They’ll thottle supply because they control the bottleneck that is the FFLs, thereby raising prices, and eventually result in confiscation. The Dems won’t even consider alternatives that address their claimed objective, because those alternatives don’t achieve their real objectives.

        • In defense of not allowing the public access to NICS, my understanding is that there would be an overuse of the system by individuals not actually selling firearms using the system to do a free background check on everyone from the new babysitter to the neighbor down the block. It also raises some privacy issues due to the same. While you don’t get specific info on why a person might not pass a NICS, you have a good idea of the potential disqualifiers.
          While I like the idea of being able to do a quick check on someone that I might sell a firearm to, I would have a significant problem with anyone being able to run such a check on me without my express permission.

        • Jonathan,

          Kudos to your comment! It highlights aspects of the UBC initiative that even I didn’t realize … and I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on this stuff.

          I’ll be bringing that out the next time someone asks for UBC.

        • @Johnathan-Houston- Well stated it is nice to see other American Citizens who know they are in for a hell of a ride on a statist whirlwind.

        • @Jonathan-Houston–I was wrong to not say that I hope you and those you care for all doing well in the floods, as many of your fellow citizens are not.

          The truth about guns that you spoke had me shell-shocked, and that doesn’t happen for me. It made me wonder if the Jewish people in Germany that survived, were content that they followed the registration laws that were being enacted incrementally by those who wished to disarm them, because it was for public safety.

          Ammoland has an article about the gun magazines in Colorado and how they are being sold openly, in defiance of the law. The article says it is dangerous when Citizens have no respect for the laws passed, which creates disdain for the whole legislative body that passed them. It tears at the very social fabric of our nation of laws, when unconstitutional laws are passed, just to pass them.

        • “…which creates disdain for the whole legislative body that passed them.”

          I think we passed that point quite a long time ago.

      • What he is doing is ASSUMING that handguns are being purchased in private transactions without background checks in Georgia for $200 apiece (as if), and then being transported to New York where they are sold to criminals for 2-3 times as much. He further ASSUMES that these transactions, when traced (again as if) are the reported as “stolen” firearms (wink wink). He ignores that the gun that killed two officers was stolen in a burglary from a gun shop.

  6. He forgot that we apparently want old people, school children, puppies, kittens, baby seals, and baby whales to die because background checks are mostly useless security theater.

  7. I wonder if Lane Filler (whomever he is) can articulate an argument supporting the assertion that a law requiring background checks for private transfers of guns will keep criminals from obtaining guns through private transfers?

    Approximately 90% of guns possessed by criminals come from some means other than FFLs (primarily, theft, family members/friends, and the black market). Prior to enactment of the Brady bill, that number was about 80%. So, criminals have shifted, slightly, in the manner in which they obtain their guns – but the total number of guns obtained/possessed by criminals has not been reduced by requiring background checks for commercial sales, which are at least mostly enforceable.

    There is simply no mechanism to enforce background checks for private transfers between criminals; therefore, a law requiring such background checks would be completely impotent and ineffective at reducing the number of guns obtained by criminals. So, if a reasonably enforceable law requiring background checks for commercial transfers produced only a minor shift in criminal behavior, what reason is there to believe that an entirely unenforceable law would cause an equal or greater shift?

  8. Because laws against drugs, prostitution, alcohol, crossing state lines for immoral purposes, murder, rape, terrorism, and the like have worked so well. . . .

    At least he admits he wants to raise the price of guns. To keep them away from the poor. Many of whom are poor and of color. So in essence, he admits he is racist like Bloomberg and Shannon Watts because Black people with guns are icky

    • Don’t forget about the Brown and “other shades” of the population. Can’t have the “different ones” feeling empowered.

  9. It is WRONGFUL, not just ‘wrong’ for anyone to claim that they can protect you on an individual level, as it is IMPOSSIBLE. If Lane Filler or the Lib trash that they work for took a single penny from any foreign sources to overthrow our Constitution, there’s a name for that.

  10. “If you oppose the passage of the Enabling Act, you’re endangering…”

    Yep, we heard this before.

  12. “If you oppose the passage of a federal law requiring background checks for gun buyers, you’re endangering police officers …” – Lane Filler

    I will argue that it is the other way around. If universal background checks actually could prevent criminals from purchasing firearms on the streets, criminals will simply turn to ambushing police officers and stealing their handguns.

    Picture it: a nice man asks a police officer for directions or simply says “hello” which puts them within two feet of Officer Friendly … and then bashes Officer Friendly’s head with a short and heavy steel club such as a crowbar — a sawed-off crowbar no less. Then the “nice” man simply relieves Officer Friendly of his handgun and magazines and walks away. (Review the “Liberator” pistol of World War II for a more in-depth description of the concept.)

    • Or unfasten the duty belt, snap open the keepers and take the whole pile of business ‘tools’ hanging on it.

  13. This Lane Filler seems to me to be the sort of short-sighted Leftist who, on the one hand, calls for a monopoly of force on the part of The State and its agents, and then turns around and bemoans an out-of-control constabulary. He has no understanding of the reason that the guarantee of an uninfringeable right to keep and bear arms was written into our Constitution nor of the millennia of tradition and philosophical thought that were behind our nation’s forefathers’ inclusion of that right in their newly crafted nation’s guiding principles.

  14. What, no mention of The Children™? Seems like Lane Filler needs to go back to journalism school for a refresher course in Hysterical Anti-Gun Hyperbole.

  15. Not only do I not support Universal Background Checks, I support abolishing the existing Background Check system. Those resources would be put to better use combating actual crime. I guess that means Lane Filler double hates me…..

    • ” We will see if the moderators block the comment.”

      This blog is based in the United States, not Britain or the EU.

      Nobody’s erasing your comment.

      Do you find that surprising?

      • @Geoff PR- I believe Billy Jo was talking about the moderators of the original article. The Truth About Guns believes in free speech as long as the poster isn’t annoyingly disrespectful continuously(SexTyr), or says something that could place the sites employees in danger of a Hebdo or Waco attack. If the site employees were attacked I think they would be scared of how many of us readers would come to their aid, because some of us are the specialized hammers for certain nails.Some of us speak crudely but I wouldn’t mistake that for lack of intelligence, some of us prefer being honest. I crossed that line on here not to long ago. I refuted a man’s claim about being scared of Jihadi martyrs, and I was brutally honest about the consequences American’s fighting a war and not being bound by the ROE’s.

  17. “So “straw buyers” can drive to Georgia (or South Carolina or North Carolina or plenty of other states) from New York, legally buy five handguns for $200 apiece and (illegally) sell them in New York to criminals for $400 or $600.”

    FALSE: it’s already illegal for a NY resident to buy a gun in Georgia from a private party. That transfer would have to go through a FFL with all the paperwork and UBC. What makes the author think that people who are currently violating federal law would miraculously obey new UBCs?

  18. Another complete waste of electrons.

    Does anyone else get tired of the anti-2A crowd making things up? Like Goebbels said…repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. And since the only thing they have is lies, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they keep repeating them…

    • The truly sad part is that delusional men who self-identify as oath keeping, patriotic, American men in your ex-profession will gladly enforce these cranial sunroof inducing unconstitutional laws at the barrels of their tax funded, government issued guns.

      • While I may agree that there are, unfortunately, many in the LEO community who, for reasons that defy an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, will enforce laws that are BS, I don’t see how that particular problem is relevant to the article or the observation that the anti-2A crowd relies on lies and misinformation to support their position.

  19. I’d be happy with background checks on private sales if (1) private sellers could access the NICS system, and (2) there was no Form 4473.

    Otherwise, it’s not a UBC system, it’s a universal registration scheme.

    • Exactly! That is the 1st of 2 goals that the gun ban lobby has had going all the way back to Nelson “Pete” Shiels. Get all guns registered. When that is accomplished, get them banned. That is the HCI/Brady Campaign model.

  20. Blaming lax (that is, constitutional) gun laws and the free market while supporting unconstitutional gun laws creating a black market. Priceless.

  21. Violent Crime (and all violent crime, not just the gun-related stuff the libs seem to care about) is a societal problem, meaning its going to take a lot of long, hard looks at a lot of different data and deep seeded questions and problems to even remotely start getting a slight clue about its inner workings. It’s not going to get any better by saying, “this one law will fix everything….Okay, that didn’t work, but I promise, this new law I just came up with will”. I believe there is an answer to violent crime that won’t infringe the rights of law abiding citizens, but it isn’t and easy fix, therefore the anti-gunners and libs won’t go for it, since it isn’t some feel good “pass this law, now this one” approach, and we won’t be seeing it any time soon.

  22. “If you oppose the passage of a federal law requiring everyone’s favorite color to be blue, you’re endangering puppies and empowering rude jerks— and you’re not doing anything to protect the First Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

    See? I can write conditional statements wherein the consequent does not follow from the antecedent, too!

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