Year: 2013

The Senate Judiciary Committee will likely vote on the gun control measures today. Given the makeup of the committee, I think we’re very unlikely to be able to stop any of the bills from hitting the floor. We have Easter recess coming up shortly. A vote can happen at any time, but it’s likely to happen after the Easter Recess. I hope everyone written their Senators by now, and will make phone calls. We’re going to have a floor fight over major gun control proposals folks, and this hasn’t happened in a long time.

John Richardson mentioned one particular threat, S. 443. I’ve read the bill (text here), and I still can’t figure out what it’s making illegal that isn’t already illegal. It also includes a huge expansion of civil asset forfeiture, which I’m sure ATF is drooling over. That’s probably the true purpose of this bill, and why ATF has been pushing for it. I’m not really amenable to giving ATF the power to seize property and ask questions later. This will be abused.

It would seem to clarify what constitutes a mental health adjudication, but does not concede any ground on private transfers. From the article, it would appear to create a prohibition for someone that uses the “not-guilty by reason of insanity defense” (I didn’t even realize that wasn’t considered an adjudication under current law) and if a person is found by a federal court to be a danger to themselves or others (another thing I thought would have already constituted an adjudication). This doesn’t look to me like it concedes much of anything, since all of these things still require due process, but I’ll hold my judgement until I see an actual bill.

In the mean time, keep calling those Senators, and just tell them no new gun control. I know the negotiations over expanding the background checks broke down earlier, and the Judiciary Committee is voting tomorrow on the other gun control bills. Given the makeup of the committee, I think it’s likely a lot of the bad stuff we’re very worried about is going to hit the floor, and this may end up being used to keep the floor fight going in a direction that doesn’t involve bans on guns, magazines, or private transfers.

From a Californian in the comments:

So in California all transfers (except for C&R long guns) have to go through and FFL, and CA FFLs are required to do them for a nominal fee set by the CA DOJ (correct me if I’m wrong but I think it’s $35). It sucks, and it’s occasionally bizarre, sometimes it’s cool – I’ve met one of my best friends and shooting buddies via a PPT (private party transfer). Here are some of the byproducts of this system: some FFLs will “run out” of Handgun Safety Cards (required for transfers) if you go to do a transfer and don’t have one (to avoid doing it). Some stores will flat out refuse if they are busy or make you wait so long you leave.

Sometimes it takes hours. You need 2 proofs of ID and if the store does not like your proofs, go home and get something else (I have waited a couple times for someone to go get a utility bill). Unless you are a veteran of PPTs, you are pretty much guaranteed to fail on your first attempt. Some stores will give you a gun lock, free, most stores make you buy one, and once the store only stocked locks that sold for $30. Then you get dealers that only do internet sales and PPTs, who are awesome, but… it’s crazy, it’s bizarre, and tons of people do illegal FTF transactions all the time – not because they are trying to break the law, but because the law is so complex as to be difficult to follow. This is what you can look forward to!

The ban on private transfers of handguns here in Pennsylvania is probably the most oft broken law by people who ordinarily aren’t lawbreakers, most of the time out of sheer ignorance of the law. Generally speaking, you can get a transfer done, but the price isn’t set by the state, and around here, about $35 bucks is about the floor. Some dealers charge as much as $50 to do a transfer between two parties, and many won’t do them at all. There’s also a problem in lending a handgun to someone, which is generally prohibited. The law makes an exception if the person is licensed to carry handguns.

For people cohabiting, but not married, this can be a problem if the two aren’t licensed. For instance, the law allows handguns to be given as gifts, but only between spouses, parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren. For those who want to say you can duplicate the benefits of marriage with contracts, well, here’s a benefit you can’t duplicate with a contract. If you’re married, you can let your wife take your gun to the range, and he or she is legally entitled to receive your guns either temporarily or permanently. If you’re not married, you can’t let your significant other do the same, unless they have a license to carry, in which case you can temporarily lend your significant other a gun. It’s even questionable whether they could use your firearm in a self-defense situation.

This isn’t a place we want to go federally, and if I could, I would undo here in Pennsylvania too.

I mentioned in the previous post that I understand that “sometimes you have to cut deals so that you get slapped around instead of beaten up.” Of all the bills being thrown at us, I can’t tell you that I think they are all equally bad. There’s some I’d suggest charging the machine gun over, and others I’d take as a loss, but life would go on. You likely feel the same way. But there’s a real risk in letting them walk away with any victory, and I want to expand on that principle a bit to make people understand why you don’t want to concede anything out of the gate, and that sometimes being “unreasonable” is a better strategy than being “reasonable” (a.k.a. a sucker).

I’ve touched on some of these reasons previously, during years when I was in a more reasonable mood:

We don’t agree to put this issue to the political process, because there’s no guarantee once the political process starts, the bill that comes out the other end looks like anything remotely acceptable. There are people out there, powerful people, both in and out of Congress, who hate the idea of private citizens having guns and will do everything they can to prevent or frustrate it. There’s no denying that without willfully inserting your head into the sand. There is no reasonable way to work out a sensible compromise through the political system. We didn’t get here by having reasonable discussions or by trying to or together to come up with a solution. We got here through struggle, with both sides advancing and retreating at different times, and in different areas. That’s how the political process works, and it can work no other way.

But I want to touch on a different phenomena in this post, which can be best summed up as “since I have already sinned,” or if you don’t like that, perhaps, “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Once legislators have already staked out their position as being pro-gun control, there’s not much that’s going to bring them back if the vote was severe enough. At that point, your recourse is voting them out of office. If you fail to do that, they will likely remain against you forever, unless you can change the political calculus. You could use the analogy of sleeping around on one’s spouse. Sure, there are spouses who will have a single one night stand, and then feel guilty and never do it again. But there are probably more spouses where a one time encounter turns into a protracted affair, or multiple affairs. Once the fidelity has been violated, it’s been violated. The 102nd Congress passed the Brady Act, and then quickly followed up with an Assault Weapons Ban. It was only the 1994 elections that prevented even worse from being brought up. Once positions have been staked out, and votes cast, that creates a basis for further action. You might think allowing, say, a ban on private sales through wouldn’t be the end of the world, but if that goes through there’s little reason to think that will be the end of it, and our opponents will already have a base from which to work. I don’t see any reason to make it easier for them to get something through that would truly be devastating for us.