I heard reports of Reasoned Discourse breaking out over at Common Gunsense, but my comments seem to have gotten approved. But I will offer another thought exercise for Ms. Japete. Consider this article from the UK talking about what a mess their gun laws have become. Ours are really not much better. The other side talks about working together, and arriving at common ground. The other side talks about the importance of universal background checks. But how dedicated is Ms. Japete and the Bradyphiles to that proposition? What follows is meant to be a mental exercise, not a proposition for a serious policy prescription.
What if gun owners finally accepted the Brady way and acquiesced to a licensing scheme, and for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it’s tied into the criminal databases so that it gets revoked immediately if you’re convicted of a disabling offense, or go bonkers and get involuntarily committed. Sounds good right? A Brady dream. Oh, but there’s a catch.
The license is available at any post office, costs five dollars, and is valid for as long as you aren’t convicted of a disabling offense. Licensed individuals in any state can buy, sell, trade, transport, and ship firearms to licensed individuals in any other state, or to import firearms from outside the United States. This means licensed individuals can buy firearms off the Internet. The license is also a valid license to carry a loaded firearm, concealed or otherwise, in all fifty states. There are no dealer or manufacturer FFLs. Dealers and manufacturers are only required to make sure their employees who handle guns or gun parts have a license. Non-licensees can possess firearms only under limited circumstances (such as taking someone target shooting, or if your non-licensed wife has to use your gun in self-defense, etc).
This is a general framework. Obviously there are details that would need to be filled in. But if this is not an acceptable regime to the Bradyphile, then the real concern has nothing to do with background checks, or it being “too easy for dangerous people to get guns.”
This little gedanken experiment handles my issues with proposals for licensing pretty well, by limiting the price to a fin–I’d go as high as a Jackson, with a sawbuck a reasonable compromise–making it available at every post office, and having no training requirement.
I could live with a training requirement, but the training has to be free, and universally available. (Which includes classes 7 days a week, and at hours that shift workers can attend without having to take time of.)
Actually, I think Eddie Eagle should be part of every elementary school curriculum, and NRA Home Firearm Safety taught in junior high school, but I’m a radical.
To me you can solve the training issue by making it part of school curriculum. We did archery in gym class when I was a kid. Why not shooting?
I would also note that requiring every high school student to take a training course in firearms use would be well within Congress’ militia powers.
FYI she’s not a “Bradyphile” like many of our well-documented trolls, but an honest-to-god Brady Board member and President of a MMM chapter Joan Peterson
http://www.bradycampaign.org/action/meetanactivist
FYI for about a Month that I had been reading her blog and intermittently posting comments she was only approving random comments, most very simple pro-gun sentiments, and anti-rights talking points. Recently she decided to start printing SOME comments, tho I suspect close to 50% still don’t see the light of day.
Should include NFA items, including automatic weapons as well
Weer’d:
Their Board Members are uncompensated, so I tend to consider it more of a reward for being a dedicated activist, rather than being a paid shill. The fact that Mary McFate got close to a board position should give you an idea of how desperate they are for people who are willing to be engaged on their side of the issue.
Monte:
I left that out of the calculus so as not to complicate the exercise. For the purpose of the mental exercise, I was assuming we don’t touch the NFA stuff.
Why not touch the NFA stuff? Which is more dangerous? A law-abiding, sane adult with a machine gun? Or a convicted murderer with a .22 rifle? If the goal is really keeping guns “out of the wrong hands,” then the national firearms license should apply equally to all firearms.
There’s a reason that licensed machine guns have essentially no history of criminal misuse, and it is because of the stringent, but not ridiculous requirements for background check that the federal government imposes.
In reality it would be on the table, Clayton, if we were actually doing a real overhaul of gun laws. But in this unreality, I don’t want them thinking about it. They will be uncomfortable enough, I think, with the idea I’ve put forth. Your argument would be the next logical step.
Secretary Knox’s proposal for a universal militia was perhaps a bit too optimistic about the benefits that would accrue from it–but I think this is one of the reasons that the Swiss, until very recently, managed to be so heavily armed, and yet so well behaved towards each other.
Start reading part way down the page, where it starts “An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic…”
Oh I hear you Sebastian. I know how their board positions work, but how does the leadership of MMM chapters work, is that also 100% volunteer or are those members compensated.
FYI I just hadn’t read your previous post on Joan. I just wanted to make it clear that unlike say MikeB or “Laci the Dog” who are sycophants and water carriers for the Brady Cause, Ms. Peterson is in fact a direct part of their small organization.
How pathetic her post is only relevant to show how decrepit the organization has become, it should be made clear that Joan Peterson, IS the Brady Campaign, and not just another loon who sends them money and subscribes to their newsletter.
As far as I know, MMM never had much in the way of paid staff. They were largely a flash in the pan at the beginning of the decade and never amounted to anything. For some reason the Bradys took them on rather than letting them die (which would have been the smart thing).
The feminization of the gun control movement that happened under Michael Barnes was one of the biggest mistakes I think they made. Brady core supporters may be majority women, may even be overwhelmingly women, but why alienate men with that kind of branding? Somewhere, there’s a You Tube video of Ladd Everitt, from CSGV, wearing a MMM shirt while giving a speech. It’s hard to watch without feeling like he’s surrendering a bit of his manhood. Maybe he doesn’t feel that way, but a lot of guys would.
My comment on the Brady Board, which was kind of meant to be a bit of a joke, was that “another loon who sends them money and subscribes to their newsletter” apparently isn’t that far off being a Board Member for them. Otherwise how could Mary McFate have gotten as far as she did?
Quoted from the COMMON GUNSENSE, Drug cartels and guns article: “This is serious stuff. How can we go on providing weapons of mass destruction to another country and turn away from one of the main causes of the massacre? ”
Wait… Who are we giving nukes to? I’m confused.
s
Just like the ones we provided to Iraq, but never found.
I had to go and point out Hugo Chavez’s participation via his client organization FARC, and that Venezuela is a major manufacturing site for AKs.
Typically the Left likes to give-away such merchandise to their proxies when they are working-up their usual destabilization efforts.
I agree with Clayton, and blogged about it (feebly, to be sure). And since the RKBA has been recognized to be a fundamental right, that $200 fee needs to go away (as well as the Hughes amendment).
In the past I’ve contemplate almost the exact same Great Compromise with the enemy (mandatory HG registration in exchange for universal 50 State must-issue CCW permits). Of course there is no genuine compromise possible with the gun-control crowd. Which is why the Great Compromise is such a marvelous thought experiment. Because the gun haters only notion of ‘compromise’ is taking away from us merely half as much as they usually propose.
One day our nation will fully awaken from the mad dream of gun prohibition and wonder why there was ever so much fuss in the past. It kind of boggles the mind that a small core of anti-gun fanatics aided by scheming media personalities and opportunistic politicians could have ever driven the nation so close to the brink. These future Americans will be astonished that for much of our lives we feared a different outcome.
But sadly our nation has shown a dangerous tendency to give in to fanatics when ill-favored stars align, as our nation did during Alcohol Prohibition and the Civil War.
I’d go further on the compromise.
Upon reaching adulthood, citizens can get a license to either keep and bear firearms, or to possess and use marijuana and narcotics. (That is to say, narcotics without a prescription).
The punishment for using narcotics without a license would be the same as the punishment for bearing a firearm without a license.
I dunno that the licenses need be exclusive, any more so than possessing a drivers license would exclude you from drinking. Being under the influence and discharging a firearm would fall under a “criminally negligent” catch, barring extenuating circumstances. And being habitually and heavily intoxicated might be a disablement. But I don’t see the reason to prohibit possession of one based on licensure to possess the other
I’d like a unified licensing scheme for all fundamental rights, most notably voting and gun possession.
If we as society don’t trust a person to vote, for whatever reason, they shouldn’t be allowed to handle guns. If we don’t trust a person with guns, for whatever reason, they shouldn’t get a vote.
If a poll tax, test, or ID are impermissible bars to voting, likewise they shouldn’t bar buying, keeping and bearing arms. If you need to see ID and run an instant background check before I can buy a gun, certainly America needs an instant background check at polling places.