Shall Not Be Questioned

Word is he’s going to sign the bill Wednesday, but that leaves today to call his office and express disapproval that he’s allowing Colorado to be run from the White House and New York City Hall. The Denver Post is noting that there may be a ballot measure to overturn the ban. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve always been wary of the ballot. Ballot fights are expensive, and a loss has much more dire implications than losing a vote in a legislature. What I absolutely do support, in the mean time, is the recall effort of the Colorado Democratic lawmakers who voted for this crap. Keep the heat on until 2014 as much as you can, then be heard at the ballot box.

A disappointed DiFi will always mean happy us:

After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.

Looks like Harry Reid, who likely doesn’t want to vote on it, told her no. Now the question becomes what the Democrats are going to try to pass in its stead. The gods of “Something Must be Done!” have to be appeased, you see. The Dems also likely can’t deal the President a complete embarrassment, so something will be done.

There are two likely paths: Reid could advance a gun trafficking bill with a school safety provision; some form of background checks and the assault weapons ban would then be offered as amendments. In the other scenario, Reid might offer a background checks bill that includes the gun trafficking and school safety provisions, with assault weapons again offered as an amendment.

Apparently the gun control groups are willing to go with a background check bill that is “slightly less stringent” than Schumer’s S.374 “background check” bill. Slightly less is not going to be remotely acceptable. We’re not going to have every gun owner in this country living at the whim of a federal prosecutor because he handed a gun to someone outside of some ridiculous list of exemptions. End of story.

A panel of people, containing no firearms experts or Second Amendment advocates, and generally composed of people Certified Better Than You, comes to the shocking conclusion that the State of Connecticut needs a whole lot more gun control, including universal registration, a ban on background checks, licensing, ban on magazines these Certified Better People deem too large, draconian storage requirements that render firearms useless for self defense, restrictions on how much ammo one can purchase, and my personal favorite:

Requiring gun clubs to report any negligent or reckless behavior with a firearm, or illegal possession of any firearm or magazine, to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, Commissioner of Public Safety, and local law enforcement.

All good citizens report zheir neighbors to ze Gestapo, Ja? They have their pretext, and now they can do whatever they want to those of us who actually take the Bill of Rights seriously.

Pennsylvania has long prohibited private transfers of “firearms,” which are defined legally in our Uniform Firearms Act as:

Any pistol or revolver with a barrel length less than 15 inches, any shotgun with a barrel length less than 18 inches or any rifle with a barrel length less than 16 inches, or any pistol, revolver, rifle or shotgun with an overall length of less than 26 inches.

Our transfer prohibition is not quite as draconian as what the folks in Colorado will have to endure, and nor is it nearly as bad as what Chuck Schumer has proposed federally. But nonetheless, when it comes to living under such a prohibition, lax enforcement and prosecutorial discretion is what makes it possible to live with, because the truth is that Pennsylvanians are violating the state’s transfer prohibition on a regular basis without even knowing it. That prohibition can be found here:

(c)  Duty of other persons.–Any person who is not a licensed importer, manufacturer or dealer and who desires to sell or transfer a firearm to another unlicensed person shall do so only upon the place of business of a licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or county sheriff’s office, the latter of whom shall follow the procedure set forth in this section as if he were the seller of the firearm. The provisions of this section shall not apply to transfers between spouses or to transfers between a parent and child or to transfers between grandparent and grandchild.

Additionally, Pennsylvania prohibits “lending or giving” a “firearm,” with the following exceptions:

• The person who receives the firearm is Licensed to Carry Firearms
• The person who receives the firearm is exempt from licensing (e.g. cops)
• People engaged in hunter safety, a firearm training program or competition sanctioned by the NRA.
• Persons under 18, directly supervised by someone over 21 who is not prohibited.
• To a person lawfully hunting.
• Any transfer occurring only in the home or place of business.
• Any bequest or inheritance

This was a blanket prohibition until 1995, when this admittedly weak set of exceptions was added. It’s unclear whether any firearm training program is exempted or only training programs sanctioned by NRA are exempted. What constitutes loaning is pretty well defined, but the law also prohibits giving, which is less well defined. Presumably handing a pistol to a fellow IHMSA (not an NRA competition) competitor who’s pistol went down might constitute illegal giving if he doesn’t have an LTC. Our law is still not very clear, despite far broader exceptions than federal and other state proposals currently. The exception for LTCs, which most Pennsylvanians who shoot have, at least removes quite a bit of ordinary legal hazard.

The big problem with “Universal Background Checks,” or more accurately, banning private transfers, is that you have to define transfers. Our opponents clearly want to define this as broadly as possible, to include even handing a gun to someone to shoot. Even with our exceptions, Pennsylvania law is only tolerable because of lax enforcement. For instance, I bought Bitter a little .22 revolver for Christmas one year. The “gift” is really just sort of an agreement. Legally, it’s my gun. She can take it shooting because she has an LTC. She can also carry my guns, again, because she has an LTC. If she did not, she can handle it in the house, but not take it outside the house. If she and I split, I’d have to formally transfer the gun into her name before she could remove it from my possession on a permanent basis. Many Pennsylvanians are unaware this is the law, and routinely commit serious crimes without realizing it.

If the anti-gunners have it their way in other states, and at the federal level, routine criminal acts will be in your future too, only worse, because the anti-gun folks have shown they aren’t willing to accept exceptions even as narrow as ours.

A House committee is scheduled to debate a gun bill tomorrow on background checks. The Senate in Minnesota is, meanwhile, reporting gun control out of committee. Now, as we well know by now, they might claim the issue is background checks, but that’s not the case at all. It’s really about changing the definition of transfer in an attempt to make gun ownership legally risky. Colorado’s bill is very similar to the federal bill. You can find the Senate bill here. I note this bill also redefines transfer to include temporary possession as well, and what’s even more pathetic is they failed to exempt spouses, and this time, you can’t leave home for even a day without affecting a transfer. It removes the exclusion for antique firearms. Also, it would seem you can’t even leave home for more than a day under this law without effectively affecting a transfer.

I currently live under a regime similar to the one Minnesota is proposing, and I don’t recommend it. First, it won’t work. They’ll be back for more gun control.