Universal Background Checks rant....

milktree

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This has been bugging me for a while, I've finally been able to articulate what's so stupid about the whole concept of universal background checks.

<rant>

Let's assume for a moment that we live in a world where a licence is required for owning guns. (like Massachusetts)

By requiring a licence to posses a gun, we *already have* universal background checks.

The whole *point* of a licence is that the bearer has been pre-checked. That's why you carry a driver's licence, that's why people who go through special screening get to skip a lot of TSA crap. The entire reason to have a licensing system is to pre-check people.

If every single sale has to be checked at the time it happens, why bother with a licensing system at all?

The new law as written would require we use a computer to check a state database before a transfer to make sure that the buyer and seller are both legal.

But how is that different than having a card that says we're legal?

It isn't, see "the point of licensing", above.

There's a couple edges cases:

- Someone forges an LTC. This problem can be solved by making the licences hard to forge, like a driver's licence.

- Someone commits some crime, *gets caught*, and then tries to buy a gun in the time between when he gets caught and the police come and arrest him or confiscate his card. That's a pretty small window. I'm having trouble seeing how this one happens. We could add "or sell" to this, but really, we don't care if bad people get rid of guns, right? Isn't bad people getting rid of guns a good thing?

- Someone becomes a prohibited person unknowingly (e.g. 209(a)), and law enforcement don't bother to arrest him or confiscate his licence. If whatever someone did isn't bad enough for the police to bother doing their job, it's hard to argue it's important enough for anyone else to do it for them.

So... what do we get for universal background checks?

Absolutely nothing in terms of public safety, it just harrasses people
who have done nothing wrong, and have already gone though the effort
of getting an LTC.



Now let's assume we live in a world where a licence is *not* required,
like Vermont or Alaska.

Say you wanted to make sure that "bad people" didn't get guns. (a reasonable want)

One way to do that is to open up the NICS system to anyone who wanted to use it. Make it a requirement that you verify that someone who is not known to you isn't a prohibited person before transfering a gun.

I'd be more or less OK with that law. (with some conditions)

- It's already illegal to knowingly transfer to a prohibited person

- It wouldn't be registration (no data about the firearm is part of the check other than the type)

- It would allow me to make sure I'm not handing a gun to a known thug if I didn't know the buyer well enough for my comfort level.

- If you know the person (personally or through reputation) you'd not be required to check.



</rant>
 
I showed up at One Ashburton Place, the home of the MA Dept. of Public Safety, the very people who issued my LTC, with a handgun.


You should have seen the commotion.
 
I find your logic and reason appauling.

the fact remains that more background checks will save the lives of innocent children. Do you have something against children? Do you want them to suffer?

Personally I feel much better knowing everyone at my gun club gets background checked with each firearm purchase. I dont want these guns "falling in the wrong hands."

background checks are good for everyone. And the more the merrier. I hope we have to pass background checks for ammo, powder and even ballistol. Hell do a background check to even read a gun magazine or purchase a watergun. Anything even shaped like a firearm should be subject to background checks.
 
I find your logic and reason appauling.

the fact remains that more background checks will save the lives of innocent children. Do you have something against children? Do you want them to suffer?

Personally I feel much better knowing everyone at my gun club gets background checked with each firearm purchase. I dont want these guns "falling in the wrong hands."

background checks are good for everyone. And the more the merrier. I hope we have to pass background checks for ammo, powder and even ballistol. Hell do a background check to even read a gun magazine or purchase a watergun. Anything even shaped like a firearm should be subject to background checks.

Huh... shouldn't we have background (training, sobriety, etc.) checks when buying cars, and gas?
 
I find your logic and reason appauling.

the fact remains that more background checks will save the lives of innocent children. Do you have something against children? Do you want them to suffer?

Personally I feel much better knowing everyone at my gun club gets background checked with each firearm purchase. I dont want these guns "falling in the wrong hands."

background checks are good for everyone. And the more the merrier. I hope we have to pass background checks for ammo, powder and even ballistol. Hell do a background check to even read a gun magazine or purchase a watergun. Anything even shaped like a firearm should be subject to background checks.

It is appauling. 90% of the public wants them.
 
The problem with background checks is that they are a basic 4A and Due Process violation that people have become accustom to and lulled into accepting. They are a presumption guilt placed in between you and the exercise of your fundamental rights along with a 5A violation as you are compelled to sign the 4473 and testify against yourself under pains of perjury.

There is no Probable Cause, Reasonable Suspicion or Exigence at work when I go to buy a gun.

Yet somehow my persons, papers and effects are no longer secure despite no warrant issued to violate this sanctity and no cause to do so with or without a warrant.

Once you accept the BS argument of "public safety interest" trumping your fundamental rights, it is a slippery slide down the slope and you are quibbling over degrees of violation of our rights from a little to outright tyranny (generally tending towards tyranny as people become numb to the violations and groping in public of their persons, papers and effects).

5 SCOTUS justices (and maybe more) would howl at the idea of being thusly hampered from violating our rights to "stop guns from getting into the hands of the bad people", but to them I say tough cookies, no one said governing free people was going to be easy. Show me cause and a high burden of proof on the state with strict-scrutiny (or this whole scrutiny regime torn down and stop redefining plain english words to mean something they have never, don't and never will mean to anyone but an ivory tower academic jurist who does not live in the real world).
 
I find your logic and reason appauling.

the fact remains that more background checks will save the lives of innocent children. Do you have something against children? Do you want them to suffer?

Personally I feel much better knowing everyone at my gun club gets background checked with each firearm purchase. I dont want these guns "falling in the wrong hands."

background checks are good for everyone. And the more the merrier. I hope we have to pass background checks for ammo, powder and even ballistol. Hell do a background check to even read a gun magazine or purchase a watergun. Anything even shaped like a firearm should be subject to background checks.

2279B74F_zps10557d50.jpg
 
I showed up at One Ashburton Place, the home of the MA Dept. of Public Safety, the very people who issued my LTC, with a handgun.


You should have seen the commotion.
Commotion? You mean they didn't have you sign the log book and lock the gun in one of the lockboxes in the drawer to the left of the chair the trooper sits at in the lobby?
 
The anti's have been clamoring for universal background checks for years without really knowing what it means especially in a state like MA. Same with the 'gun show loophole'. It's rhetoric ginned up by the media & Brady campaign that is nothing more than 'feel good legislation' that will do absolutely nothing.
 
Commotion? You mean they didn't have you sign the log book and lock the gun in one of the lockboxes in the drawer to the left of the chair the trooper sits at in the lobby?

No they didn't. They said they had no way to store my firearm. They suggested I go back to my car and leave it there.

They did ask me three times if I was in law enforcement.

I take it you are not being facetious, and there are really lockboxes for LEO's?


ETA: They really don't even trust LEO's in the building with firearms?
 
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The push for "background checks" is for one reason and one reason only. It will create a veiled de facto gun registry. They want to know where the guns are at before they attempt confiscation.
 
The problem here is you put reason and intellect behind you opinion. Something the left wing libtards completely lack. The left is pushing for "universal background checks" because obummer, biden, bloomturd, and the hag Feinstein have all played games with facts and the general population of non fire arm owning people in this country think no background checks are done at all in mass or anywhere.

Basically the liberal hears from their " fearless leader" that "we need background checks" and the liberal voter starts crying for universal background checks.......they follow like blind idiots. Many of us here on NES and in the fire arm owning comminuty in general actually stay informed and can form our own opinions and this I believe is one of the reasons the liberal leadership in this country hates us!
 
I disagree with the OP.

Mandatory universal background checks translated from doublespeak into English means "criminalization of law abiding citizen private property sales".

As it stands the 4473 is unConstitutional but we accept it because it isn't that intrusive of a process. Once you stigmatize an inanimate object, as the media and anti gun establishment did in the latter 20th century, it is only a consequence of time until said item is blamed for more ails of society, further restricted and regulated.
 
- Someone forges an LTC. This problem can be solved by making the licences hard to forge, like a driver's licence.

Many states already use their DL system to print LTCs. I was wishing for MA to do that back when we had those oversized cards.
 
Most people have no clue how gun transfers work. I'm not surprised that people get behind these proposed laws when the media is saying anyone can go to a gun show and walk out with scary, black guns.
 
I disagree with the OP.

Mandatory universal background checks translated from doublespeak into English means "criminalization of law abiding citizen private property sales".

You misread what I wrote.

Currently we're legally prevented from transferring a gun to a prohibited person. Letting us (but not *requiring* us) do a NICS check on someone we're not sure about is just a tool. If you know someone, don't do a NICS check. Simple.
 
Background checks only apply to law abiding citizens. Criminals are not going submit to background checks. So, no.



How true. I get a background check 3 times within a 5 year cycle for my LTC's. I'd love for somebody to tell me what is getting another one at the time of purchase going to prove.
 
The argument that background checks aren't necessary because we have licensure, while accurate, is idiotic. Background checks aren't necessary because they go against the very intent of the 2nd A, as does licensure. If you want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys who will do innocent people harm, then do something with the bad guys.
 
The argument that background checks aren't necessary because we have licensure, while accurate, is idiotic. Background checks aren't necessary because they go against the very intent of the 2nd A, as does licensure. If you want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys who will do innocent people harm, then do something with the bad guys.


I've just learned to accept the fact that my 2nd ammendment rights have been stepped all over and there ain't jack shit I can do about it. This state just sucks and the best I can hope for is that it doesn't get much worse.

As for putting the bad guys away for a very long time, sure we can hope for that but I don't see it changing anytime soon.
 
I've just learned to accept the fact that my 2nd ammendment rights have been stepped all over and there ain't jack shit I can do about it. This state just sucks and the best I can hope for is that it doesn't get much worse.

As for putting the bad guys away for a very long time, sure we can hope for that but I don't see it changing anytime soon.

What's your point? Suck it up?
 
I've just learned to accept the fact that my 2nd ammendment rights have been stepped all over and there ain't jack shit I can do about it. This state just sucks and the best I can hope for is that it doesn't get much worse.

While true, you don't have to accept it. That's like being raped in the a55 and hoping you don't run out of lube.
 
The push for "background checks" is for one reason and one reason only. It will create a veiled de facto gun registry. They want to know where the guns are at before they attempt confiscation.

yep. its the only way it could possibly work
 
What's your point? Suck it up?


Well sort of but in reality I worked on doing what many others here have or are doing. Moving out!!!
I've got a considerable investment that has already been built out of state. For the time being I'm just riding the wave while paying my dues to GOAL every year.

- - - Updated - - -

While true, you don't have to accept it. That's like being raped in the a55 and hoping you don't run out of lube.

Not worrying about running out. At the drop of a hat I could change residence.
 
The argument that background checks aren't necessary because we have licensure, while accurate, is idiotic. Background checks aren't necessary because they go against the very intent of the 2nd A, as does licensure. If you want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys who will do innocent people harm, then do something with the bad guys.
BAM! I will assume you dropped the mic and walked off stage after that... NICE!

Unfortunately, we often find ourselves trapped into conceding rights and liberties with which we were born by linguistic and political games of those attempting to erode those rights and liberties.

There is nothing wrong with working the system as they have worked it against us, but don't lose sight of the underlying problem and goal as we make incremental improvements. I can assure you, they never lose sight of their intention to disarm all but those in power.

At any time, if you find yourself accepting an abridgements of your rights and privacy, stop and ask why? Is that really required? Does it actually solve a real problem? What will happen if this encroachment is expanded (because I can assure it will be)? What would happen if these powers were abused? How would it be stopped or caught in such a case? How easily would it be stopped or caught?

Never stop asking that question. Again, they never stop looking for new ways to get you to trade your liberty away. We should always look for ways to claw it back in everything we do and every "conversation" we have with them.

If not, its just a long slide into servitude or worse.
 
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