2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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From a former British Citizen who understands why the Right to Bear arms is important...
Bloomberg’s Universal Background Checks Article Oversimplifies the Issue | National Review
And those plans matter. The Bloomberg editors insist that our present “two-tiered system” — by which they mean that we run background checks on commercial and interstate transfers, but not on private intrastate transfers — “is an insult to common sense and undermines public safety.” But that two-tiered system is exactly what one would expect to see given that the federal government is permitted to superintend interstate commerce, but is not permitted to superintend private transactions within the same state.
Moreover, it is far, far easier to write a law that applies mandatory background checks to commercial sales than it is to write a law that applies them to private transfers, because, while there is no argument as to what constitutes a commercial sale (that’s any gun transferred to a person by an FFL, via form 4473), there is a raging argument as what constitutes a private transfer.
Does loaning a gun to someone for a month count? Does giving your wife a gift count? Is there a difference between handing someone a gun at a range and handing someone a gun in your property? Should we limit the definition to transfers that take place at gun shows and via public notices, as Toomey-Manchin sought to do, or should we expand it beyond that? And who should be exempt? Your brother? Your cousin? Nobody? Only people with concealed-carry permits?
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And how should the government ensure compliance? The traditional answer to this is, “by setting up a registry.” Or, at the very least, “by forcing the commercial entities that would be charged with running the checks to keep records that could be made available to the police.” (That’s apparently “not a registry.”) But if we do that, we’re not just talking about extending background checks; we’re talking about reversing a decades-long prohibition on gun registries, too. How does that play into the dynamic?
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Furthermore, the editors are not comparing like with like here. The promise of “laws against murder, assault and the like” is not that they will prevent those things — “murder, assault, the like,” remember, are malum in se, not malum prohibitum — but that they provide the government with the chance to punish people after the fact. The promise of background checks — a promise that is repeated endlessly, including in this editorial — is that they will prevent people from dying in the first place. It would be, to borrow a phrase, “patently ridiculous” to suggest that we need universal background checks so that we have something to prosecute criminals with once they have committed a crime, given that those criminals are already prosecutable for both illegal possession of firearms, and for whatever it is that they’ve done having got hold of one. So if they don’t work in the first place . . .
Bloomberg’s Universal Background Checks Article Oversimplifies the Issue | National Review
And those plans matter. The Bloomberg editors insist that our present “two-tiered system” — by which they mean that we run background checks on commercial and interstate transfers, but not on private intrastate transfers — “is an insult to common sense and undermines public safety.” But that two-tiered system is exactly what one would expect to see given that the federal government is permitted to superintend interstate commerce, but is not permitted to superintend private transactions within the same state.
Moreover, it is far, far easier to write a law that applies mandatory background checks to commercial sales than it is to write a law that applies them to private transfers, because, while there is no argument as to what constitutes a commercial sale (that’s any gun transferred to a person by an FFL, via form 4473), there is a raging argument as what constitutes a private transfer.
Does loaning a gun to someone for a month count? Does giving your wife a gift count? Is there a difference between handing someone a gun at a range and handing someone a gun in your property? Should we limit the definition to transfers that take place at gun shows and via public notices, as Toomey-Manchin sought to do, or should we expand it beyond that? And who should be exempt? Your brother? Your cousin? Nobody? Only people with concealed-carry permits?
-------
And how should the government ensure compliance? The traditional answer to this is, “by setting up a registry.” Or, at the very least, “by forcing the commercial entities that would be charged with running the checks to keep records that could be made available to the police.” (That’s apparently “not a registry.”) But if we do that, we’re not just talking about extending background checks; we’re talking about reversing a decades-long prohibition on gun registries, too. How does that play into the dynamic?
---
Furthermore, the editors are not comparing like with like here. The promise of “laws against murder, assault and the like” is not that they will prevent those things — “murder, assault, the like,” remember, are malum in se, not malum prohibitum — but that they provide the government with the chance to punish people after the fact. The promise of background checks — a promise that is repeated endlessly, including in this editorial — is that they will prevent people from dying in the first place. It would be, to borrow a phrase, “patently ridiculous” to suggest that we need universal background checks so that we have something to prosecute criminals with once they have committed a crime, given that those criminals are already prosecutable for both illegal possession of firearms, and for whatever it is that they’ve done having got hold of one. So if they don’t work in the first place . . .
