Nope. Because you can know and trust that felon white supremacist
If I handed a gun to that individual today, without knowing he was a felon, I would be exonerated: I didn’t know.
If I did it tomorrow, after NICS checks are made available to the public, I would be convicted: I should have known. My claim of ignorance no longer exonerates me. My claim of ignorance is now an admission of guilt: I could have known, I should have known, I was responsible for knowing, and I failed to perform my due diligence and duty.
Requiring an FFL to be part of all transfers and keeping the records solves th
Define “transfer”.
When my neighbor says he’s feeling low and needs me to take custody of his guns for awhile, does he need to conduct a background check to give them to me? Or can I walk over and take care of them? If I am injured in a car crash, can I hand my gun to my sister before the ambulance takes me to the hospital?
My brother and I both have Glock 17 handguns. We used them at the range. A few weeks later, I looked at the serial number on my gun and realized we had swapped them. Should we both be jailed?
The punishment for violating this “universal” background check requirement is going to have to be a simple fine at most; anything more is going to be an egregious miscarriage of justice in all of these cases and in virtually every scenario in which it could be applied. It will be treated about the same as failing to renew a driver’s license or vehicle registration; a purely administrative offense.
And how is the government going to know you handed them the gun?
The guns go to an FFL for storage. And if you can’t keep track of your guns then they should absolutely be removed from you. Get a paint marker if you need to. It’s what the Army does.
What public safety concern are you mitigating in any of the scenarios I described? What impediments to public safety are you creating when you impose your mandates?
How do the guns get to the FFL? If I take them, the transfer has already occurred. The only available method with a “universal” system is for my neighbor to take them himself.
Yes, that’s the idea. If your neighbor wants to give you guns, they take them to an FFL and then you pick them up after the FFL runs your background check. Or the FFL can just store them. At no point should guns transfer between people without a record that is permanently kept.
And the problem with what you’re suggesting is if you give your guns to Billy Bob the terrorist, and he never tells anyone where he got them from then you aren’t even getting a knock at the door. There’s not even a case for you to defend yourself in. If you happen to have a particularly new gun which still has records then you can just say you “lost it” which is another loophole we need to fix. Losing a gun needs to be a crime that results in forfeiting the right to own guns.
This blasé attitude about guns for the sake of preventing a hypothetical tyrannical crack down needs to die and never be brought back.
Do me a favor and run your little plan by a mental health professional, a social worker, a paramedic, a 14-year-old babysitter… The moment you left those guns in the hands of my emotionally distraught neighbor for even a second after he asked for help, you lost this particular argument.
There are decent arguments for a UBC; you’re not making them. You should be focusing on what few public safety benefits would actually arise. You should be drawing attention away from the myriad administrative clusterfuck issues where UBCs fail, and toward those few scenarios where UBCs would actually benefit public safety. You should be conceding that “Universal” is completely impractical. You should be pointing out that none of the proposed "U"BC plans have ever actually been truly “U”, and that all of them have included broad exceptions in a (piss-poor) attempt to avoid many of the problems I’ve described.
No. If they want to surrender their firearms they can do so to an FFL or a police station. I’m very familiar with mental health stuff and having access to the guns in any way shape or form is extremely dangerous. That includes at places you frequent. The option is not, you taking them or nothing. Load them all in your car with your buddy and drive down to the local range. Arrange for storage there and leave them in the storage.
If you want to have guns you have to have the responsibility too. Kid time with the deadly weapons is over.
you want to have guns you have to have the responsibility too.
No, you don’t get to make that argument. Not after you try to make me a criminal for trying to take such responsibility. You’re continuing to make the same mistakes. Argue better.
Your mentality of treating guns as “NBD” is the real issue here. Guns have been dumbed down and ingrained so heavily into our society, that you almost jokingly say how you “switched guns at one point”.
All of that absolutely should be illegal. And we shouldn’t be so careless with our weapons, as you make it sound so normal to have done.
You’re going to have to explain how my brother’s Glock 17 is somehow a significant threat to public safety in my hands, while my own Glock 17 is perfectly safe.
While you’re contemplating that, try this one on for size: under a “universal” system, a felon in possession of a gun cannot be charged for transferring to another felon. There is case law on this point, relating to felons failing to register firearms. The state cannot compel an individual to admit to or to commit a crime. Requiring FFL involvement constitutes either self incrimination or entrapment should the felon attempt to make the transfer through them, so he cannot be prosecuted for failing to use one.
Under my scheme, however, the seller’s status is entirely irrelevant. The state merely needs to prove the seller made the transfer and the buyer was prohibited. The seller could know, and should know the buyer’s status, and is criminally liable for not checking. A felon-seller can be charged both for simple possession and for transferring to another felon.
The danger is you being so non-chalant about your weapons that you do not realize you have just swapped them. There are a billion scenarios in which doing so gets you arrested even today with current laws.
You can act as tough and mighty as you’d like, but viewing guns in this way, and acting so non-chalant about them is how people get killed.
There are a billion scenarios in which doing so gets you arrested even today with current laws.
There probably are. But that wasn’t the question. The question was about the danger to the public in this specific scenario. The only difference is the serial number. What significantly greater danger is the public in from the differing inscriptions stamped into our receivers?
The correct and obvious answer is, of course, “none at all”, which is why I raised the point to begin with. The fact that I could be “arrested even today with current laws” demonstrates that such laws are not actually enhancing public safety, and should be adjusted so that they don’t criminalize completely inoffensive acts.
If I handed a gun to that individual today, without knowing he was a felon, I would be exonerated: I didn’t know.
If I did it tomorrow, after NICS checks are made available to the public, I would be convicted: I should have known. My claim of ignorance no longer exonerates me. My claim of ignorance is now an admission of guilt: I could have known, I should have known, I was responsible for knowing, and I failed to perform my due diligence and duty.
Define “transfer”.
When my neighbor says he’s feeling low and needs me to take custody of his guns for awhile, does he need to conduct a background check to give them to me? Or can I walk over and take care of them? If I am injured in a car crash, can I hand my gun to my sister before the ambulance takes me to the hospital?
My brother and I both have Glock 17 handguns. We used them at the range. A few weeks later, I looked at the serial number on my gun and realized we had swapped them. Should we both be jailed?
The punishment for violating this “universal” background check requirement is going to have to be a simple fine at most; anything more is going to be an egregious miscarriage of justice in all of these cases and in virtually every scenario in which it could be applied. It will be treated about the same as failing to renew a driver’s license or vehicle registration; a purely administrative offense.
And how is the government going to know you handed them the gun?
The guns go to an FFL for storage. And if you can’t keep track of your guns then they should absolutely be removed from you. Get a paint marker if you need to. It’s what the Army does.
What public safety concern are you mitigating in any of the scenarios I described? What impediments to public safety are you creating when you impose your mandates?
How do the guns get to the FFL? If I take them, the transfer has already occurred. The only available method with a “universal” system is for my neighbor to take them himself.
Yes, that’s the idea. If your neighbor wants to give you guns, they take them to an FFL and then you pick them up after the FFL runs your background check. Or the FFL can just store them. At no point should guns transfer between people without a record that is permanently kept.
And the problem with what you’re suggesting is if you give your guns to Billy Bob the terrorist, and he never tells anyone where he got them from then you aren’t even getting a knock at the door. There’s not even a case for you to defend yourself in. If you happen to have a particularly new gun which still has records then you can just say you “lost it” which is another loophole we need to fix. Losing a gun needs to be a crime that results in forfeiting the right to own guns.
This blasé attitude about guns for the sake of preventing a hypothetical tyrannical crack down needs to die and never be brought back.
Do me a favor and run your little plan by a mental health professional, a social worker, a paramedic, a 14-year-old babysitter… The moment you left those guns in the hands of my emotionally distraught neighbor for even a second after he asked for help, you lost this particular argument.
There are decent arguments for a UBC; you’re not making them. You should be focusing on what few public safety benefits would actually arise. You should be drawing attention away from the myriad administrative clusterfuck issues where UBCs fail, and toward those few scenarios where UBCs would actually benefit public safety. You should be conceding that “Universal” is completely impractical. You should be pointing out that none of the proposed "U"BC plans have ever actually been truly “U”, and that all of them have included broad exceptions in a (piss-poor) attempt to avoid many of the problems I’ve described.
No. If they want to surrender their firearms they can do so to an FFL or a police station. I’m very familiar with mental health stuff and having access to the guns in any way shape or form is extremely dangerous. That includes at places you frequent. The option is not, you taking them or nothing. Load them all in your car with your buddy and drive down to the local range. Arrange for storage there and leave them in the storage.
If you want to have guns you have to have the responsibility too. Kid time with the deadly weapons is over.
No, you don’t get to make that argument. Not after you try to make me a criminal for trying to take such responsibility. You’re continuing to make the same mistakes. Argue better.
Your mentality of treating guns as “NBD” is the real issue here. Guns have been dumbed down and ingrained so heavily into our society, that you almost jokingly say how you “switched guns at one point”.
All of that absolutely should be illegal. And we shouldn’t be so careless with our weapons, as you make it sound so normal to have done.
You’re going to have to explain how my brother’s Glock 17 is somehow a significant threat to public safety in my hands, while my own Glock 17 is perfectly safe.
While you’re contemplating that, try this one on for size: under a “universal” system, a felon in possession of a gun cannot be charged for transferring to another felon. There is case law on this point, relating to felons failing to register firearms. The state cannot compel an individual to admit to or to commit a crime. Requiring FFL involvement constitutes either self incrimination or entrapment should the felon attempt to make the transfer through them, so he cannot be prosecuted for failing to use one.
Under my scheme, however, the seller’s status is entirely irrelevant. The state merely needs to prove the seller made the transfer and the buyer was prohibited. The seller could know, and should know the buyer’s status, and is criminally liable for not checking. A felon-seller can be charged both for simple possession and for transferring to another felon.
The danger is you being so non-chalant about your weapons that you do not realize you have just swapped them. There are a billion scenarios in which doing so gets you arrested even today with current laws.
You can act as tough and mighty as you’d like, but viewing guns in this way, and acting so non-chalant about them is how people get killed.
There probably are. But that wasn’t the question. The question was about the danger to the public in this specific scenario. The only difference is the serial number. What significantly greater danger is the public in from the differing inscriptions stamped into our receivers?
The correct and obvious answer is, of course, “none at all”, which is why I raised the point to begin with. The fact that I could be “arrested even today with current laws” demonstrates that such laws are not actually enhancing public safety, and should be adjusted so that they don’t criminalize completely inoffensive acts.