Again.
BainsBane (17,055 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023692459
So it turns out that pro-gun proponents don't really support background checks after all
Last edited Wed Sep 18, 2013, 09:01 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Many of them oppose them and make false claims that all gun sales already go through background checks in an effort to deter people from acting. If that were true, why would the NRA devote so much money into defeating background check bills?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=131721
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1172131721
BTW, please click on the second link to accept the challenge about calling your representatives to demand expanded background check legislation.
She really has no clue on what is in the bill or why the NRA is against them- but the stawman is just too easy to kick in the nuts.
PoliticAverse (6,915 posts)
6. But there is also no background check for private sales not at gun shows.
So it's not a 'gun show loophole' as it has nothing to do with whether the sale occurs at
a gun show or not.
Let me rremind you all, int he Pro-Gun forum on DU anyone can post. In the Anti-Gun Forum only anti-gunners can post...
rdharma (3,920 posts)
18. No. Private sales are NOT private sales regardless of location.
Last edited Wed Sep 18, 2013, 10:19 PM USA/ET - Edit history (2)
You're uninformed. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html
You are correct about Colorado which recently passed a background check law for private sales everywhere in the state. The way it should be!
Known as the "gun show loophole," most states do not require background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows from private individuals -- federal law only requires licensed dealers to conduct checks
Private sales means that at a gun show the two private citizens go off the gun show site and sell a gun, thus a private sale. BUT---- it's a gunshow loophole!!!
Recursion (29,549 posts)
42. The problem is it had nothing to do with gun shows
Keep calling it that, and people will keep saying it doesn't exist, since in fact the laws at gun shows are no different than anywhere else.
However, "yard sale loophole", "classified ad loophole", and "Christmas present loophole" don't poll as well.
Say... where is the big-titted Ph.D?
hrmjustin (18,414 posts)
2. I just wish we people would call the NRA for what it is, EVIL.
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
4. Thank you
Couldn't have said it better myself.
mwrguy (1,101 posts)
17. The myth of the law-abiding gun owner
The Straight Story (44,997 posts)
23. Only 99.2% or so are law abiding, but folks love them some bias, unless of course
it is bias against something else. Post about Gosnell and his abortion practice "Well, most are not like that! Don't let the rw use that crap to pass new laws, you know they will!" or the RW'ers and post after post about Islam, etc.
Nice one, SS-dude.
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
34. I don't know that I did think that
The OP doesn't mention you by name. That was in reference to the legions of gungeon folk who have sworn up and down they support background checks. Well it turns out only a handful of them really do. Given a chance to voice exactly what they want in a bill, they oppose it.
I understand that some consider it crucial for felons to have ready access to guns--lots of money to be made from bloodshed. Who cares about children when profits are at stake? Crazy for me to think that people who identify as Democrats actually want a safer American. I'll ask my GOP brother in law to call. He supports background checks, along with the rest of the 92% of the American public. Funny how much of that 8% who opposes them are on DU tonight.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #34)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:16 PM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
35. You've made another hyperbolic leap of logic
assuming the worst motivations resulting in ideological heresy.
Actually I don't necessarily have a problem with universal background checks, but with the registry that would go with it.
You know, these expostulations of high dudgeon are faintly entertaining, but not enlightening.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #35)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:17 PM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
36. What registry?
Oh, you mean the one the NRA has?
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #36)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:40 PM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
37. I don't think the NRA has a list of
every gun and gun owner in the united states. And whatever they've got, I'm against that too. I'm not much of a fan of the NRA.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #37)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:42 PM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
38. They've got a whopping database
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12624281 The NCIS need only keep records of felons and those adjudicated a danger to themselves and others. My OP stipulated that you should let your reps know the provisions of the bill you want to see. I didn't specify what those were.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #38)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:44 PM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
39. How would you prosecute an illegal transfer to a felon without chain of custody documentation? nt
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Response to rrneck (Reply #39)
Wed Sep 18, 2013, 11:48 PM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
40. I'm not sure
I'm not a lawyer. Is there a way that you can think of that you'd be comfortable with? I mean, if the person is a felon, they shouldn't be sold a gun in the first place. Are you opposed to keeping records on felons?
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #40)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:10 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
43. That's an interesting question.
Keeping records on felons is fine I guess, but are we really just keeping records on felons? The assumption is that guns get transferred from legal owners to illegal owners, right? New guns already require a background check, so we're talking about transfers between people who are not dealers. So half of every illegal transfer would require a non felon, who would ostensibly have to become a felon at the moment of illegal transfer. You can't really expect a law to work unless it has teeth, and teeth presume prosecution. Prosecution assumes proof in a court of law. Proof assumes documentation of transfer.
But what are we documenting? What is being registered? We are documenting something that happens between two people - the transfer of a firearm. That's a relationship, and I'm not enthused with the documentation of that particular relationship. I know that lots of things that get transferred between people are documented (insert car analogy here), but guns are personal items that occupy a different cultural space than almost any other piece of property.
So to answer your question, no, I can't think of a way to register firearms with which I am comfortable. Unfortunately, when I ask my fellow Democrats here on DU to explain it to me, the only answer I seem to get is "I'm not a lawyer" or "there's no way to convince you" or some other such excuse.
That's not to say that I want bad guys to have guns. What I want, but I don't think there is a way to get, is a means to adequately separate guns and bad guys without seriously eroding law abiding citizens civil rights or their privacy. Furthermore, efforts to do so seem to me to be a dangerous distortion of liberal ideology to no good end.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #43)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:13 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
44. Why do guns occupy a different cultural space?
and why must they? And what have you to fear if you plan no illegal use of a weapon?
Your SS number and identity is on file with the IRS. You fill out a census. Why is the gun so sacred, more sacred than your person?
rrneck (14,783 posts)
54. Because guns are made to kill.
How many times have you heard that? And it's true. The real question to ask is who are they made to kill. Every feature that makes a gun deadly makes it equally useful for offense or defense. Hence the culture war merry go round involving magazine capacity and fire extinguishers. That duality of intent combined with the irrevocability of a firearms function makes almost every analogy to other technologies collapse. Guns are culturally unique because of their symbolic power for great good or great evil. They're also a dandy cash cow for organizations like the NRA and the alphabet soup of competing culture war profiteers.
Information about my relationships with others belongs to me. If the government claims a right to that information, it has to make a compelling case that it will do me more good than harm. I have barely seen that case even attempted, much less compellingly made. The controversy over NSA collection of metadata is ironic since a firearms registry is metadata on steroids, since it documents a relationship between people using an object with a unique serial number kept on file for perpetuity.
Of course my SS number and identity are on file with any number of governmental agencies. How many of them are correlated with the information of others? Again, we aren't talking about registering information about people, which is problematic in itself, but registering relationships, which is significantly more so.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #54)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:46 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
55. That is all the more reason they should be subject to checks
because they are designed to kill and do kill. If you sell guns to a felon, the government has a right to that information. If you don't, what's the issue?
If you think your relationships with others belongs to you, do a Google search under your name right now. I can access all that for $19.95. You want guns to have an exemption that nothing else in society does. The reason you cite is not persuasive. In fact, it shows exactly why guns should be subject to closer scrutiny. They are deadly. They are designed to kill, used to kill, and used in the commission of felonies. The only interest the government has, or has a right to access, is information about felons and guns used in crimes, in addition to people adjudicated dangerous by the courts. The fact they are a cash cow is not something that should keep progressives from supporting UBCs. In fact, when I raise that issue gunners become angry with me. Here you cite it as justification. Are you honestly telling me you believe the gun industry's profits are more important than the lives of gun shot victims?
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #55)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:50 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
56. I even italicised it.
Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:01 AM USA/ET - Edit history (2)
WHO are guns made to kill?
ETA
If you sell guns to a felon, the government has a right to that information.
They don't have a right to that information if it cannot be shown that giving them that right will do me more harm than good. Can you show that?
If you think your relationships with others belongs to you, do a Google search under your name right now. I can access all that for $19.95.
I don't like that either. The most frightening part of the NSA scandal is that private contractors were involved. The relaitonship between business and government has a, shall we say, checkered history.
"Gunners" become angry with you because you insult them.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #56)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:53 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
57. statistically
Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:53 AM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
people use them to kill themselves, black males, white males, women, and children.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #57)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 12:57 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
58. Statistics are useless
to the people actually affected by violence.
I edited the previous post if you would like to check it out.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #58)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:04 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
59. What did you want to know when you asked who they killed?
We could list names but it would take years. Those lives are worth whatever inconvenience you feel at having to go through a background check. I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't recognize that, but I can't put myself in the head of a gun evangelist. The gunners love exchanges where they hurl as good as they get. Asking for action, however, that they hate, which is why so many work assiduously to disrupt any and all efforts at gun reform. Obviously I suspected that many didn't support background checks but I am truly surprised to find out how many have been misrepresenting themselves. I figured it would be about 20%. Turns out it's closer to 80%. So I think the lesson is to focus on ordinary Americans and ordinary gun owners and forget about the extremists that populate the gungeon. The benefit of this is that I've learned who people really are.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #59)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:10 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
60. This is just an internet message board. Who gives a shit about percentages.
Internet polls are garbage.
Even a casual reading of what I have written in this thread would show that I recognize the evil that is done with guns. Can you show where you have recognized the good that is done with them?
Can you show how universal background checks will work?
Can you prove that universal background checks will be effective?
Can you prove that information relinquished by people who mean no harm will not be used to harm them some time in the future?
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Response to rrneck (Reply #60)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:27 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
61. No, I don't recognize that good has been done with guns
when used against other human beings, but I do recognize they are at times a necessary evil.
There are many existing laws and bills governing universal background checks. I am not a legislative aid. My OP specifically said you should tell your representative about the version you support. You see, it has never occurred to me in my life that legislation should be exactly as I want it. I am not a person born into privilege, and I am a woman. The world has ever revolved around me, and I have never expected it should. So I haven't dreamed up an ideal bill because that would be an exercise in futility. Okay, when I was 17, I wrote a college paper about a socialist utopia, but I was 17. I grew out of it, and even then I never believed it would really come about. So I refer you to the Tooney-Manchin amendment and any number of state bills and laws. Take your pick. Imagining an ideal one here would be no more than mental masturbation. I want to see more guns go though them and less guns in the hands of felons and the dangerously mentally ill. That's it. I'm open to all kinds of compromises to protect the rights of law abiding gun owners but not felons or the profits of the gun lobby.
I can't possibly even imagine what harm would come to you from going though a background check unless you are a felon, in which case you shouldn't have gun. It might take you an hour longer to buy a gun. Is that really such a big deal? Limiting access to guns for the mentally ill adjudicated dangerous will likely save many lives from suicide. I think that matters great deal. Those are people the least likely to obtain illegal weapons if it becomes more difficult to do so. Since suicides are the primary use of guns, I would think would be significant. I don't happen to think people deserve to die because they have a mental illness, as many here casually dismiss their deaths.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #61)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:47 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
62. Like I said..
I don't necessarily have a problem with background checks, but with the registry they would require. It's not really about guns, but relationships between people and how that information may be used by government and/or business. Two entities which are becoming dangerously intertwined.
Now, I know you have posted on this subject at great length, and yet you don't seem to have given any thought to how your desires will actually work. I know for a fact that I have asked you, very nicely, how you think they will work and you have consistently declined to even consider it. I don't mind. If you don't want to think about it, you don't have to. But try to remember that a lot of people are asking those same questions, and the answers they are getting will likely shoot any universal background check legislation in the foot.
If you're really serious about gun violence, you will give serious consideration to the mechanics of regulating firearms transfers and elucidate your solutions so that others will accept them. Anything less indicates that your passion is more for your own benefit than for others.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #62)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:54 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
63. Look at Saristaka's thread in the gungeon
He outlines a bill that is okay with me. My only concern was the stipulation about loans. It's important that not become a loophole to transfer weapons to criminals. It must be for very short term loans among friends, and I don't think the owner should be exempt from what the lendee does with the gun because that makes it too easy to pass guns on to criminals.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #63)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:57 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
64. I posted in it.
rrneck (14,776 posts)
8. Registration is the fly in the ointment. nt
sarisataka (2,828 posts)
13. So true it is a solution to so many goals and so unobtainable now that it is hard to envision when any registration law could be enacted.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #64)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:59 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
65. He is saying there is going to be no requirement for federal registration
That would be a separate bill and not part of this. Also there is no way it would pass.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #65)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:06 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
66. It appears to me
that without registration universal background checks are unenforceable. Now it's fine by me to open up the NICS database as long as access to it is blind to anyone whose information is accessed with some sort of transaction number scheme or something, but the people who really need to use it won't if they are not compelled to do so. And that requires the threat of prosecution with some means to actually prove the infraction in court.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #66)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:14 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
67. Look, you can set up a system where you feed in the info
like the Everify for immigration. Then either the person is approved or not, like a credit check. The seller gets a yes or a no. That's it, no info. So say you go to buy a gun and you're denied. You know you shouldn't be denied. So you contact the agency and have your record corrected. If the person who is denied is a felon or has a restraining order, he knows he shouldn't be buying a gun anyway. All the seller knows is the personal qualified or not, nothing else.
You register with the govt to work, via a SS number. Why not to buy a gun? It's not a real registration. It would be more like a black list. The names on there are prohibited. If your name and ID don't come up, you're good to go.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #67)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:18 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
68. Fine by me.
How will you compel people to perform the check?
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Response to rrneck (Reply #68)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:18 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
69. Throw the ****er in jail
Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:29 AM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
How else?
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #69)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:20 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
70. Great.
How will you prove they broke the law without registration?
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Response to rrneck (Reply #70)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:25 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
71. They get a confirmation number and receipt to keep
Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:26 AM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Just a number, no name. Now how to tie the number to the sale, I have to think about. As for the jail part, it really depends on the seriousness. If a person sells to a prohibited person on the blacklist and that person goes on to commit a crime, the seller should do some jail time, maybe a year. If it's a seller known to habitually fail to do background checks, and it's clear he's knowingly selling to felons, he does more time. Other cases less serious that don't seem to be willfully selling to prohibited persons could be penalized with fines.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #71)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:43 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
72. The government cannot possibly prosecute anyone
without associating the transaction with some particular person. If the government can't show that the transaction occurred or the transactees cannot produce an affirmative defense, the law won't work.
Making the check blind to the transactees is pretty easy to do. It's even pretty easy to come up with a scheme whereby the person being checked can request a number with an expiration date so that potential employers or whatever cannot use the system to get information they are not entitled to.
It all boils down to how much you trust government. I am of the mind that government should fear the people, not the other way around. I am also of the mind that the chances of getting another proto fascist Republican administration are still more or less fifty fifty, and I am not at all interested in giving up even a sliver of my civil rights, right to privacy, or right to be left alone until we get some much larger problems straightened out around here.
Crime is on the decline and for my money the political will to enact background check legislation is not only weak, but too precious to waste on a problem that should be solved within the more civilized purview of liberal ideology.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #72)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:48 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
73. Well, what you're prosecuting is the absence of a check
not the check itself. Right?
Homicide is on the decline because of the population of young adult males. Our country's homicide rate far exceeds every other industrialized nation and most underdeveloped nations as well. More Americans have died from gun violence since 1968 than in all wars in US history. Are you going to tell me avoiding war is insignificant because not enough people are killed? Those numbers pale in comparison to domestic gun shot victims.
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #73)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 02:57 AM
rrneck (14,783 posts)
74. Yes, the absence of a check,
so if the government doesn't have the record they could prosecute based on that absence, and if the seller is tasked with keeping the records he or she would have to produce an affirmative defense. Either way, chain of custody documentation has to exist somewhere and the government must have access to it to prosecute illegal transfers.
Like I said, crime is on the wane. The cause doesn't matter. What does matter is that since crime is going down the political will to do something about a problem that is diminishing will be weak, and political capital doesn't come cheap.
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Response to rrneck (Reply #74)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 03:14 AM
BainsBane (17,055 posts)
75. The political will is a function of you
you, me and the citizens. 32,000 people a year is a very high number of gun deaths.
The seller keeps the numbers. That is all the seller has to keep. The govt stores the denials for decades but destroys the records associated with the approvals within a shorter period of time. here is no risk to anyone's privacy but the felons or otherwise ineligible purchaser.
What you are really saying is that the lives that could be saved aren't worth the bother. If that is where you're at, I have nothing else to say. We might as well drop the nuclear bomb next time Syria or Iran get testy because human life isn't worth anything anyway. More people die from guns, so we might as well go to war every week. It would take a long time to catch up to the toll from gun violence. You are saying the people who die from gun violence aren't worth your mental energy or inconvenience. I don't understand that world view. It seems extremely reactionary, the kind of thing I would expect from a caver but not a real human being.
