First he supported an assault weapons ban, then he kind of backed down, then he supported one again, and now he’s backed down… again. This is why the experienced politicians have all remained non-commital, and waited for the political dynamic to play out a bit before taking any firm position. I’m really not sure what Manchin thought he’d gain here. It’s not like he’s going to suddenly become a darling of the progressive left, and even if he does, West Virginia is full of working-class Democrats who don’t go for that.
7 thoughts on “The Manchin Waffle”
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I wrote Senators Manchin and Rockefeller both last week. What worries me the most is the part of the article that says, “Manchin is part of a quartet of legislators working to tighten background checks required to purchase a gun.” Hopefully the constituents of these 4 Senators will make their opinions known.
I think the real goal, now, is to get a ban on private transfers.
There are parts of ‘tightening background checks’ which I support. The big one is making sure states get people who are adjudicated mentally defective in to the NICS database. These are people who are already banned from purchasing possessing firearms through legal due process. The fact that we don’t keep track of them in the system that was supposedly set up to do so is ridiculous.
I think Sebastian is right though that the private sale ban and the registration needed to enforce it are the anti-gunners goal. If Manchin is supporting that, it needs to be remembered in 2018. Unfortunately, 5.5 years is a long time.
Indeed. These are no-brainers we can give them that may actually even do some good. I mean, we’ve already got the NICS system.
But banning private transfers is not something we’ll cave on. Not to mention, it’s impossible to enforce. These transfers are, by definition, “private.” How is the government going to know about them? Law-abiding people will follow the rules and report them, but simply making it illegal will do nothing from stopping one crook from illegally transferring a gun to another one.
“How is the government going to know about them?”
By closing the “loophole”. Registration. That’s the name of the game. Agree to something, then cry “loophole” later. That is what they are doing now, but Sandy Hook gave them the guts to try and jump passed the gunshow step.
I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Jeff. Once you get this mental “health” bit into NICS, you will see an exponential increase in the number of people being adjudicated mentally deficient in some way. This is a very, very important move for the Progressives, and all the more dangerous for sounding “reasonable”.