It's 49 pages and surprisingly hard to parse. I actually don't think that this is to flummox people, but rather because there is a huge amount of cross-referencing with existing US Code, and amendments of older statutes. For example, one of the "findings" seems to amend the HIPAA health privacy act to say that releasing patient health data to the NCIS background check system is not a violation. My understanding of the law proposed here is pretty tenuous, and you should absolutely take this with an enormous grain of salt.
Surprise #1: I don't see anything about doctors being able to send your name to the NCIS as "armed and dangerous" as it were. It's possible that I missed this because it's buried in 49 pages of opaque text, but I just plain didn't see it in the text. Commenters who read the text, please keep me honest.
Non-Surprise #1: There's a lot of confusion over who is exempt from background checks. For example, the folks at The Corner shoot and miss:
I think that this is plainly wrong; There's considerable effort in the text devoted to exempting family members - there's listing after listing of definitions, including First Cousins (and spouses), step-parents and step-children, siblings, uncles and aunts, etc. The idea that you'd find out that your Uncle was selling his Winchester by reading the local fish wrap but it's OK because he's your Uncle just doesn't make sense. This section has a lot of confusion in the statute as written.The Toomey-Manchin compromise language is finally public. Here’s the relevant part:It shall be unlawful for any person other than a licensed dealer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed importer to complete the transfer of a firearm to any other person who is not licensed under this chapter, if such transfer occurs-Basically, there would need to be a background check for any sale that began with any type of published advertisement. If you heard through the grapevine that someone wanted a gun, you could sell it to him without a background check; if you saw his ad in a newspaper, you couldn’t.
“(A) at a gun show or event, on the curtilage thereof; or
“(B) pursuant to an advertisement, posting, display or other listing on the Internet or in a publication by the transferor of his intent to transfer, or the transferee of his intent to acquire, the firearm.
There's $400M allocated to provide grants to the States to improve their reporting systems. This seems pretty harmless. There's a stupid Blue Ribbon Commission established to study mass shootings. No doubt many fine lunches and dinners will be enjoyed before the report is presented to Congress and the President.
There's more here (for example, transporting across state lines), but I'll need to reread it to figure things out.
Like you said, that is some tough slogging. What they had proposed out here in Washington was WAY easier to find the fail in.
ReplyDeleteNo gun control bill is harmless.
ReplyDeleteThis seemingly innocuous "compromise" was simply the vehicle to get the bill out of committee and onto the floor where a list of Democrat approved amendments are waiting.
Things will be added in the middle of the night and the whole thing will be deemed passed so no individual democrat will be held accountable for it.
Alan, my gut tells me that there's fail in this bill.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not sure about the midnight passage. There's so much distrust around 2A issues that there is likely to be considerable downside to Purple State Democrats if they try. Maybe the Blue State types don't care and will push their ridiculous dogma come Hell or High Water, but I think that Harry Reid would sniff that out. And the House would have a great excuse to let it die.
That's why I think there's fail in this bill.
This is a microcosm of my theory that society has turned into a "make work" program for lawyers. Sort of like the ideas of guys going down the median in teams, one digging holes, the next filling them in. The guy who plants the trees in the holes is out sick.
ReplyDeleteThis is so full of things that are great for allowing the state to harass people and make felons out of innocent behavior it's amazing. It's a gun show sale if I'm in the parking lot, but if I step across the street into a slightly different parking lot, it's not? That'll never be abused. It's background check if I post a "for sale" sign or ad online, but not if I tell you verbally. What if I'm at the range and put a post-it note on my rifle saying "for sale"? Is that a "display" ad? There's bound to be some sort of borderline case that goes to court.
You're going to need a team of lawyers with you every day to keep you apprised of all the laws and whether what you want to do is legal. To them, this is a feature, not a bug.
49 pages is a footnote by Senate standards.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few things in the bill that seem like they will help, but it's hard to tell.
It seems that FOPA is strengthened, that having a concealed carry permit or license exempts buyers from a NICS check, and a couple of other things I can't remember off the top of my head.
I'm inclined to oppose anything that does more than the following two things.
Increases funding making NICS more efficient.
Requires (and funds) states to improve the accuracy and efficiency of entering data into the NICS system. There are just too many omissions that help people who should e prohibited and too many data errors that screw up people who should be able to easily acquire firearms.
Oh, anything that defines "mental illness" down below the current standard is a non starter to me.
Step one: Eliminate private sales
ReplyDeleteStep two: Register all sales with the government
Step three: Know who all of the gun owners are
Step four: ???
Step five: confiscation
Divemedic;
ReplyDeleteWhile those might be the goals, the actual steps will end up looking more like this:
1. Eliminate private sales
2. Create huge black market
3. Lose complete track of pretty much all the guns.
4. Arrest and prosecute paperwork felons at an amazing rate.
5.fail miserably to stop or even slow down the occurrence of gun crime
6. Panic.
7. ???
Goober, the parallel to the War On (some) Drugs sort of writes itself, doesn't it?
ReplyDelete