All In All, A Lousy Week
This has been a very trying week for a lot of us. The Boston Bombing, the ricin mailings, and now the failure of the Senate to pass even a minimal gun control bill. David Horsey was obviously not amused by the last item.
The nation has just gone through two years of unusually awful slaughter that began with the near-fatal shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, continued on with the terrible attack at a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and climaxed with the mass murder of first-graders in Newtown, Conn. Yet, even after all of that and even with the support of an overwhelming majority of voters, it is clear that Congress will do nothing of significance to address the ongoing bloodbath that hits a different town every few months.
The National Rifle Assn., which in the 1990s actually supported a background check scheme, went all out to defeat the idea this time. Over the last decade, the NRA has become more radical on the issue of gun control, and most Republican elected officials have drifted to the extreme side with them. Just four GOP senators voted for the background check plan. ...
Once again, the win went to the bellowing paranoids on the right who see any proposal to deal with gun violence as a covert attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens. Most Americans disagree with them, but that matters little to our cowardly Congress. [Emphasis added]
Yes, yes ... I am aware that the Republicans control the House, but even their constituents were on board with closing the loopholes in registration. We weren't going to eliminate military style automatic weapons or large ammunition delivery systems, just require the same registration on line and at shows that we have for purchasing a gun at a dealer. I don't think even my Libertarian nephew would object to this.
But that was too much for Wayne LaPierre and the gun manufacturers lobby and the spineless Senate caved. What the people want doesn't matter. Only our corporate overlords and their campaign dollars matter. Only the wackiest of the wackaloons count.
And that is shameful.
Labels: 113th Congress, Gun Control, NRA, Our Owners
posted by Diane at 2:30 AM
1 Comments:
Shrug. The whole "gun show" and "online" phrasing is all red herrings.
The issue is simply "are background checks required for person to person sales?"
Many gun shows, like those run by the Washingon Arms Collectors in WA state, have their own rules:
1. in order to buy a gun at the show, the buyer and seller must be members of the WAC.
2. in order to become a member, you go through the same background check as you would at the sale.
those rules still only apply to person to person sales.
Any sale of any firearm from a FFL dealer always requires the existing, already in-place process. That applies whether the sale takes place at a gun show, in a parking lot, or online. If the seller is an FFL, there's process.
"online sales" is a rather nebulous phrase. Any online sale of a gun by a FFL dealer already has existing laws and processes. no handguns across state lines, background checks, 4473's, etc. And even if you do "buy" the gun online, nobody can ship the gun directly to you. the "transfer" portion already requires transfer through an FFL, where the existing process already covers everything. This also allows states to tax the sale or use at the point of transfer, which is required to be in the buyer's home state.
more to come after I get some lunch! :D
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