Bloomberg’s $20 Million Mistake

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This is a lovely harsh rebuke to the Bloomberg allies who are trying to convince their supporters that the evil Republicans are to blame for not having total background checks on every single firearms transfer. They point out that, no, the gun control groups pushing the initiative are 100% to blame for the “mistake.”

14 thoughts on “Bloomberg’s $20 Million Mistake”

  1. I’m wondering if they knew all along the FBI wouldn’t do the background checks and were hoping to stop all transfers by requiring a background check that could not occur.

    Kind of like how Chicago tried to outlaw CPL’s by banning firing rangers while requiring range time to get the CPL.

    1. I suspect it’s more likely they knew it would pass if people knew there would be a local cost, so they decided to chance this on the assumption that Hillary would win and would order the FBI to cooperate.

  2. This raises an interesting legal/constitutional question, for me: Could a president order a federal agency (i.e., the FBI) to provide a “service” that is not provided for by federal law? Doing so would seem to be at least somewhat analogous to the inverse, when the Brady Act directed sheriffs to enforce federal law, which Sheriff Richard Mack famously challenged, and the SCOTUS declared unconstitutional.

    I’ll make up an example that is deliberately silly, just to establish an extreme: Could president Trump order the FBI to pick up trash along the Las Vegas Strip? If not, could a president Hillary have ordered the FBI to perform background checks not provided for by federal law? In either example, a president would be ordering the FBI to do something not provided for under federal law. Would the argument that the FBI is “doing background checks anyway” be sufficient to get around the fundamental principle?

    Are there any precedents, perhaps involving other issues, that have addressed the question?

    I seem to recall the FBI getting in hot water in earlier decades, for doing things presidents or the FBI Director ordered them to do, that weren’t provided for by federal law; but of course in those examples the orders were arguably criminal.

    1. Since the left cares nothing about the rule of law, I don’t think this would be a barrier to the hypothetical President Clinton.

      1. “I don’t think this would be a barrier to the hypothetical President Clinton.”

        All factions will push “the law” beyond its recognizable limits. That is what the courts are for. Trumpkins have been giving us some contemporary demonstrations of the principle.

        As I’ve commented on in other threads, the concept that “a law implemented for an unconstitutional purpose becomes unconstitutional, even if it wouldn’t otherwise be, per se” seems recently to have been rediscovered — thankfully.

        Of course it is a principle that is applied selectively — as is all “law.”

        1. This one just crossed my screen and would seem at least somewhat analogous, regarding our non-hypothetical president.

          Trump Spurns Congress as He Signals Medical Marijuana Fight

          — Not bound by bar against interfering in state laws, he says

          — Signing statement rebuts numerous congressional limits

          President Donald Trump signaled he may ignore a congressional ban on interfering with state medical marijuana laws, arguing in a lengthy statement that he isn’t legally bound by a series of limits lawmakers imposed on him.

          (No change of subject intended. The principle is the thing; presidents who know no self-limits with regard to law.)

          1. I suppose that we could argue about Trump but some conservatives support the rule of law and NO leftists do.

            1. Funny, the leftists I know totally reverse that statement.

              But might point is that both leftists’ and rightists’ perceptions are wrong. Neither is enthusiastic about the law until it serves their interests.

                1. Politicians and their supporters lie. It’s sort of a tautological requirement.

  3. “The reason it was written saying that NICS was going to do it, if we did it point of contact through the state, it would have added money to every one of those background checks,” said Elizabeth Becker, spokeswoman for the Nevada Chapter of Moms Demand Action. “We did not want it to be a tax.”

    I don’t believe this. I believe the reason it says NICS instead of having the State of Nevada do the BGCs is because it was written in New York City, not Nevada and written by incredibly ignorant people (the kind of people that think a barrel shroud is “that shoulder thing that goes up”). Also these are the type of people that would never balk at an additional tax. Like here in Colorado where along with universal background checks, they also added a “fee” to transfers.

  4. FTA: “The initiative writers could have required that Nevada perform the background checks for those transactions. Instead, they required licensed dealers to do them through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

    ‘The reason it was written saying that NICS was going to do it, if we did it point of contact through the state, it would have added money to every one of those background checks, said Elizabeth Becker, spokeswoman for the Nevada Chapter of Moms Demand Action. ‘We did not want it to be a tax.'”

    Translation: They were hoping that John Roberts would declare that…something. I got nothing, here.

  5. Frankly, as a Nevada resident, I want Attorney General Laxalt to do his job. And the single most important part of his job is not enforcing unconstitutional laws. Even if Question 1 HAD mandated that he do the checks himself I would want him to refuse.

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