Jazkal
19th March 2011, 04:08 PM
I didn't see this posted yet.
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-st-louis/is-onslaught-of-gun-show-loophole-legislation-and-worse-about-to-begin
In the wake of President Obama's guest editorial in the Arizona Daily Star Sunday (discussed here yesterday), calling for a "new discussion" about "gun control," some forcible citizen disarmament advocates are incensed that Obama didn't go far enough for their tastes. Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, for example, comes just short of wailing and tearing his hair over Obama's disinterest in talking about magazine bans:
Throw in the political class’s inability to address high-capacity magazines, and it’s all another mark of how decisively conservatives have won the gun control wars, and of how far off the rails the national conversation about guns has strayed.
The fact of the matter is that a magazine ban bill's chances of passage are remote indeed, with Rep. Carolyn "What's a Barrel Shroud?" McCarthy's (D-NY) H.R. 308 (magazine ban bill) still strictly monopartisan (I know that's not a word. Get over it.), and of the minority party in the House, to boot. This, therefore, reduces Obama to going after what the Huffington Post's Sam Stein describes as the "low-hanging fruit":
The principal debate, then, will likely center around the application of background-check standards to private dealers.
Yep--the outright ban of private sales of firearms is what is apparently considered an unambitious gun-hater's aspiration. And yes--if a requirement for an FBI check of one's legal records (and increasingly, one's medical records) for any gun purchase is not a ban of private firearms commerce, the word "private" has taken on a new, Orwellian meaning.
What's worse is that Stein may be correct in his assessment that legislation to close the mythical "gun show loophole" is "low-hanging fruit." Such GOP stalwarts as NRA-endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have not only supported such laws, but have at times actually made them something of a signature issue. Keep a close eye in the coming days on "gun show loophole" bills, like McCarthy's H.R. 591, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) S. 35.
Actually, Obama seems to be aiming somewhat higher than "merely" banning private sales (as if that's not an enormous abomination in its own right)--he seems also to want to expand the "prohibited purchasers" list. From his Arizona Daily Star guest editorial:
But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun.
That would seem to strongly indicate that Obama has in mind legislation like Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) S. 436, the "Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011," Congresswoman McCarthy will apparently be introducing the House companion bill to S. 436 some time today. National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea pointed out some of the serious problems with Schumer's proposals back in January, but that was before S. 436 had been released. That bill, in fact, seems to go far beyond what Mr. Codrea was talking about--which was actually what Schumer was claiming would just be "regulatory changes," made at the executive level, rather than actual legislation. With S. 436, Schumer hopes to take the agenda much further--as, apparently, does Obama.
For one thing, it includes the "gun show loophole" closing language as just one part of the bill--and not just gun shows. Private sales would be illegal everywhere, whether at a gun show, or not. Worse yet are some of the ways one can become a "prohibited person." Provisions of S. 436 would require disarming a person for half a decade, for substance abuse, without even a conviction. Under the heading "CLARIFICATION OF THE DEFINITION OF DRUG ABUSERS AND DRUG ADDICTS WHO ARE PROHIBITED FROM POSSESSING FIREARMS," we see this:
‘(B) an arrest for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past 5 years;
‘(C) an arrest for the possession of drug paraphernalia within the past 5 years, if testing has demonstrated the paraphernalia contained traces of a controlled substance;
If the accused is found not guilty, or if the charges are dropped, he's still out of luck when it comes to buying firearms.
That's Obama's "low-hanging fruit," his "common sense" reform, to be talked about in his "new discussion."
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-st-louis/is-onslaught-of-gun-show-loophole-legislation-and-worse-about-to-begin
In the wake of President Obama's guest editorial in the Arizona Daily Star Sunday (discussed here yesterday), calling for a "new discussion" about "gun control," some forcible citizen disarmament advocates are incensed that Obama didn't go far enough for their tastes. Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, for example, comes just short of wailing and tearing his hair over Obama's disinterest in talking about magazine bans:
Throw in the political class’s inability to address high-capacity magazines, and it’s all another mark of how decisively conservatives have won the gun control wars, and of how far off the rails the national conversation about guns has strayed.
The fact of the matter is that a magazine ban bill's chances of passage are remote indeed, with Rep. Carolyn "What's a Barrel Shroud?" McCarthy's (D-NY) H.R. 308 (magazine ban bill) still strictly monopartisan (I know that's not a word. Get over it.), and of the minority party in the House, to boot. This, therefore, reduces Obama to going after what the Huffington Post's Sam Stein describes as the "low-hanging fruit":
The principal debate, then, will likely center around the application of background-check standards to private dealers.
Yep--the outright ban of private sales of firearms is what is apparently considered an unambitious gun-hater's aspiration. And yes--if a requirement for an FBI check of one's legal records (and increasingly, one's medical records) for any gun purchase is not a ban of private firearms commerce, the word "private" has taken on a new, Orwellian meaning.
What's worse is that Stein may be correct in his assessment that legislation to close the mythical "gun show loophole" is "low-hanging fruit." Such GOP stalwarts as NRA-endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have not only supported such laws, but have at times actually made them something of a signature issue. Keep a close eye in the coming days on "gun show loophole" bills, like McCarthy's H.R. 591, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) S. 35.
Actually, Obama seems to be aiming somewhat higher than "merely" banning private sales (as if that's not an enormous abomination in its own right)--he seems also to want to expand the "prohibited purchasers" list. From his Arizona Daily Star guest editorial:
But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun.
That would seem to strongly indicate that Obama has in mind legislation like Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) S. 436, the "Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011," Congresswoman McCarthy will apparently be introducing the House companion bill to S. 436 some time today. National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea pointed out some of the serious problems with Schumer's proposals back in January, but that was before S. 436 had been released. That bill, in fact, seems to go far beyond what Mr. Codrea was talking about--which was actually what Schumer was claiming would just be "regulatory changes," made at the executive level, rather than actual legislation. With S. 436, Schumer hopes to take the agenda much further--as, apparently, does Obama.
For one thing, it includes the "gun show loophole" closing language as just one part of the bill--and not just gun shows. Private sales would be illegal everywhere, whether at a gun show, or not. Worse yet are some of the ways one can become a "prohibited person." Provisions of S. 436 would require disarming a person for half a decade, for substance abuse, without even a conviction. Under the heading "CLARIFICATION OF THE DEFINITION OF DRUG ABUSERS AND DRUG ADDICTS WHO ARE PROHIBITED FROM POSSESSING FIREARMS," we see this:
‘(B) an arrest for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past 5 years;
‘(C) an arrest for the possession of drug paraphernalia within the past 5 years, if testing has demonstrated the paraphernalia contained traces of a controlled substance;
If the accused is found not guilty, or if the charges are dropped, he's still out of luck when it comes to buying firearms.
That's Obama's "low-hanging fruit," his "common sense" reform, to be talked about in his "new discussion."