[AWB]Dems prep ground for 2014 Electoral Defeat

[Ben Kenobi]

It is inconvenient for me to buy car insurance, or limit myself to 70 miles per hour.

Cool! There's a constitutional right to drive a car! Awesome, Guynemer!

[regexcellent]

It was the AWB.

Too many Dem Reps directly attribute it as the cause. This book has a few chapters on the AWB/Mag Ban...and a lot of it is Dem reps whining that they constituents were shouting them down at rallies and/or telling them specifically "I don't need you or anyone else to tell me that I don't 'need' 17rds" while they were canvassing.

They also didn't like Hillary's health care bill.

[Lonestar]

They also didn't like Hillary's health care bill.

No one cared about the Healthcare Bill that never even made it to committee. People who say otherwise are just looking for an axe to grind because of the SOCIALISTS.

There is much, much, much more evidence to support that the AWB and the "Incumbent bump" is what caused the Dems to lose Congress.

[regexcellent]

Why is it a good thing to have the gun show and online loopholes?

These terms are a bit misleading. The "loophole" you're talking about has to do with the FFL system we have in place. FFLs are Federal Firearms Licenses.

History lesson time!

There are three main federal firearms laws in the United States. The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Brady Act of 1993.

The National Firearms Act was written to severely restrict the ability of citizens to gain access to weapons which were deemed particularly dangerous. These weapons were concealable weapons, suppressed (silenced) weapons, machine guns, and "destructive devices" (a term which includes large-caliber firearms, explosive ammunition, etc). Concealable weapons were split into four categories: pistols, short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, and "any other weapons." Before the law was passed it was amended not to include pistols, making the other three categories of concealable weapons completely pointless. The authors of the law decided they didn't actually have the constitutional authority to ban any of these due to the 2nd amendment, so they decided to circumvent that by enacting a $200 stamp tax on each item and requiring registration with the federal government. There are also restrictions on the movement of these weapons across state lines. At the time, $200 was prohibitive; today, it is merely irritating compared to the cost of a firearm and ammunition. In 1986, the NFA registry was closed to new machine guns, which was a kind of stupid move since there have only been two murders ever with a NFA machine guns and they were by police officers with department-owned firearms. Local and state government agencies can still register their NFA firearms freely including machine guns and they have never been required to pay the stamp tax (obviously).

In 1968 the Gun Control Act or GCA was enacted. It created a system of federal firearms licenses with various categories for gun manufacturers, gun dealers, and pawn shops. All firearms sold as part of a commercial operation, per the GCA, must be sold through an FFL. In addition, any guns sold across state lines must be sold through an FFL. All sales through an FFL must be accompanied by an ATF form 4473, which documents who bought the gun, what kind of gun it is, etc. and is stored by the gun dealer for 20 years. Congress did not feel it had the authority to regulate private, personal sales between individuals in the same state because that is not interstate commerce, so those transactions were left out.

Then came along the 1993 Brady Bill which implemented national instant criminal background checks for all sales through an FFL. Because private sales within states were left out of the 1968 GCA, they do not go through a background check.

So that's where the "online loophole" and "gun show loophole" come from. If you sell guns commercially, then all of your customers must have a background check done, whether it's online or at a gun show or in a store or wherever. In addition if the gun is purchased online it must be shipped to an FFL and the purchaser must complete the form 4473 and background check in person. And private online sales must actually be conducted face to face; those online gun purchases you're hearing about are craigslist-style.

[Lonestar]

Just alerting you, McAuliffe said he supports an AWB. He might backtrack, but I wouldn't trust him.

I know. I'm probably going to vote for Bolling if he runs as a independent.

[Hauldren Collider]

Bolling's not running.

[Egbert]

Could a privately owned road impose speed limits without depriving America of freedom? If so why can't public roads have speed limits that serve the interests of the public?

Because I feel like driving downtown at 150 miles per hour. What is life of a pedestrian or 70 compared to my right to drive like a crazed maniac?

[-Jrabbit]

Conflating the actual "right to bear arms" with reasonable safeguards against impulsive criminal acquisition of assault weaponry is also disingenuous. All this "wouldn't have stopped Incident X" piffle is pure BS, and several here who keep propagating it are intelligent enough to know better. An amazing number of otherwise-reasonable people are just the emotional tools of the NRA, a trade organization which has subverted the 2nd amendment and made it the personal ***** of firearms manufacturers.

Would that the same was true of, say, our cellphone makers and Internet providers re due process and domestic spying.

Also, I had no idea the AWB was so controversial.

[Lonestar]

Conflating the actual "right to bear arms" with reasonable safeguards against impulsive criminal acquisition of assault weaponry is also disingenuous.

So is pushing "impulsive criminal acquisition assault weaponry" when, by and large, criminals don't buy assault weapons. They are expensive and difficult to conceal.

400 black kids got blown away in Chicago last year with handguns and not a whisper about banning handguns...and yet, here we are, striving to ban "assault weapons" that are only used in statistical outliers that occur in white neighborhoods.

[regexcellent]

That's not even getting into the fact that the very concept of an "assault weapon" is nonsensical legalese with no basis in reality.

One proposed california law would make this Ruger 10/22 .22 caliber rifle an assault weapon:

[-Jrabbit]

So is pushing "impulsive criminal acquisition assault weaponry" when, by and large, criminals don't buy assault weapons. They are expensive and difficult to conceal.

400 black kids got blown away in Chicago last year with handguns and not a whisper about banning handguns...and yet, here we are, striving to ban "assault weapons" that are only used in statistical outliers that occur in white neighborhoods.

This is exactly the kind of crap I'm talking about. I'm talking about background checks and an irresponsible congress with a broken process. But you see the word "assault" and impulsively respond by quoting gun death statistics from Chicago. (BTW, I live in the suburbs. Zero gun deaths in my town last year.) Then regex chimes in with a totally unrelated factoid about a proposed California law. Like the difficulty of writing meaningful, effective laws means we shouldn't have any. WTF.

It's like the NRA just winds you up and sets you loose on the Interwebs. Makes it hard to have an actual conversation.

[Ben Kenobi]

Welcome to my life, JR.

[Lonestar]

This is exactly the kind of crap I'm talking about. I'm talking about background checks and an irresponsible congress with a broken process. But you see the word "assault" and impulsively respond by quoting gun death statistics from Chicago.

Probably because you said " impulsive criminal acquisition of assault weaponry". And now since the statistics don't fit your narrative of the criminal use of assault weaponry, you're trying to downplay it, while ignoring that you didn't once type the words "background checks" in that post.

Why'd you use the word "assault weaponry" if not to convey Evil Black Rifles?

(BTW, I live in the suburbs. Zero gun deaths in my town last year.)

Yeah, somehow I didn't think you lived in the Ghetto. Which goes back to my statement about you and others more concerned about "assault weaponry" that's used in statistical outliers that occur in white neighborhoods.

Then regex chimes in with a totally unrelated factoid about a proposed California law. Like the difficulty of writing meaningful, effective laws means we shouldn't have any. WTF.

If you can't write a gun law that doesn't makes sense from a public safety standpoint...then perhaps you shouldn't be writing gun laws.

It's like the NRA just winds you up and sets you loose on the Interwebs. Makes it hard to have an actual conversation.

It's like the Brady Bunch just give you talking points and you were set loose on the Interwebs. Your fixation on "impulsive criminal acquisition of assault weaponry"(because I guess that a $1000 firearm is a impulse purchase. Wish I had the kind of money you do.) kinda shows just how little you know about firearms and how most people go about buying them.

[Lonestar]

If we're trying to solve for specific events like Newtown, Aurora, or many of the others, the expanded BG check would not have done anything at all to solve for the issue. If we're trying to solve for the larger issue of violence, specifically that of criminals using guns to commit murders, it also wouldn't do much, if anything to solve for this issue.

The Feds won't even go after people who knowingly lie on 4473 forms but I guess they will MAGICALLY do so now?

[Dinner]

Conspiracy requires I believe there was some purpose behind it other than wasteful procurements.

Except the claim itself has been debunked as false so many times it isn't worth relinking to. BTW I'm betting that the Republican opposition to a universal background check will actually hurt them in the common election. For instance, Colorado's senators both voted to filibuster the background check bill while the state just recently passed a fairly strong gun control bill which is widely supported by the population of the state. I don't expect this pandering to the NRA extremists will help when 90% of the population including something like 70% of NRA members actually support a universal background check.

That Republicans have had to resort to lying about the bill, just like they did with "the secret death panels", just tells me they know their position is weak and contrary to public opinion. That's why they invented lies to defend their indefensible opposition to the bill even getting a fair up or down vote.