Universal Background Checks: the Liberal Holy Grail

March 22, 2013

By Rick Averill

Feinstein’s assault rifle ban has been removed from the Senate gun-control bill. While that is good news, it was recognized from the beginning as a bridge too far. What has survived, and may well become law, all in the spirit of bipartisan compromise, will actually be far worse.

The goals of the left have always been shrouded in deception and misrepresentation. Hide your true agenda behind a deceitful argument and then, after grabbing power, do what you really meant to do all along. That is what Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Castro and Obama have all done. By controlling the terms of the discussion, the left controls the argument. Actual Assault Rifles are not sold to the general public. The left invented the term “assault-style rifles” and the next thing you know assault-style rifles become assault rifles.

Fully automatic firearms have been restricted since the 1930s but recently the left has started combining “automatic and semi-automatic” weapons as one type of weapon. Another one of the left’s favorite misnomers is the term “gun-show loophole.” Loopholes, of course, are a way of skirting the law. They must be bad. Any chance to demonize firearms, like connecting the term “gun shows” with questionably legal practices like loopholes, is a win/win for the liberal media. The real goal behind closing the gun show loophole is actually to confiscate your personal property.

First of all, there is no gun show loophole. People who sell firearms at gun shows are licensed Federal Firearms Licensed (FFL) dealers to begin with. Other people can set up a table at a gun show to sell tee shirts, laser sights, hand grips and other shooting accessories. Unless they are FFL dealers, they cannot sell guns. If you read articles by journalists who visited gun shows, read carefully what they write because you will discover they will mix buying a tee shirt with buying an AR-15 and state that is some cases, they didn’t even need a background check. The LIV reads the article and goes away thinking, “Wow, he bought an assault rifle at a gun show without any background check.” Actually he bought the tee shirt without the background check but combined multiple purchases to mislead the reader. People do sell guns at gun shows without a background check, but those people are you and me. I went to a gun show last summer and brought my Walther PPK with me. I brought it because I wanted to make a side-by-side comparison with a new gun that I thought I might find at the show. (And yes, I actually did find the gun and held it side by side with my Walther) When I checked in my firearm at the gate, there was a man stationed right next to the check-in table. He took one look at my PPK and asked, “Do you want to sell it?” No, I had no intention of selling my pistol, but he worked for one of the vendors and his job was to identify attendees who owned a firearm that they might be interested in selling. Like anybody else there, I could have sold my PPK to any of the FFL vendors (already cleared front, back, and sideways by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives [BATFE]) and I would not have phoned in a background check on the gun dealer. THAT is the actual “gun-show loophole”.

The left is seeking to fix the “gun-show loophole” problem with what they call a universal background check. It is all part of what Obama collectively terms a “common sense” approach to reasonable and responsible gun laws. First of all, the law would restrict law abiding citizens and have NO EFFECT on criminals obtaining guns. Watch the TV show “Sons of Anarchy” to get clued in to what a big business selling guns illegally really is. The left knows this, but they have no interest in actually cutting back on crime. What they really want is to disarm all of us who obey the law. Passing a universal background check law is how they will make firearm ownership illegal, and thereby confiscate our guns.

The UBC will require any citizen selling their gun to go through their local FFL dealer. That means: you find someone who wants to purchase your firearm. Both of you go to a gun store and pay the gun store a processing fee to do the paperwork on the sale. You leave the firearm at the gun store and if everything turns out okay, the purchaser comes back 30 days later and picks up his gun. If everything does not turn out okay (e.g. if the purchaser has an unpaid parking ticket from 5 years ago) then the sale does NOT go through. You get your gun back. (Or does it get held by BATFE for “processing?”) But that is only the tip of the iceberg.

The worst part of UBC will be the check on the seller (that’s you and me). In the interest of getting illegal guns off the street, the left will want to throw in this little addition to the universal background check scheme: the seller must prove that they legally own the gun they are seeking to sell. I have a very modest gun collection (the number of guns just barely breaks into double digits). Half of the guns I have bought in the last several years, the other half go back to the 1970s and 80s. For example, I have a .22 my parents gave me for Christmas in 1980. My folks are long gone and I certainly don’t have a bill of sale for the rifle. Half of my guns fit this mold. I have no proof that I own them. All the government needs to do is write the law so the seller must provide proof of ownership (original bill of sale, in your name) and we are all in trouble. By this UBC law, the .22 my parents gave me 32 years ago is now an ILLEGAL GUN. What about the Mauser your grandfather brought back from Germany after WWII? Without a bill of sale, in YOUR name, that is an illegal gun. Under this law, every firearm that goes through probate could be considered illegal. When you die, you cannot leave your firearms to your family — they would be considered illegal and be confiscated. Not only that, if some widow unwittingly went to a gun store to sell her late husbands’ shotgun because she doesn’t need it, a background check on the seller will show that she does not own the gun in her name (legally) and she is now in possession of a stolen gun. The shotgun is confiscated and the woman may face criminal charges. The same thing goes for you. If you attempt to sell an old shotgun your father left you years ago, to your neighbor you have known for 10 years, both of you must go to the FFL dealer and fill out the paperwork. When it turns out you don’t have a bill of sale for the shotgun IN YOUR NAME, you are now in possession of an illegal gun. The shotgun will be confiscated and the police will now have a reason to search your house for any other illegal weapons you might have in your possession. That means they will legally take every gun you have and you will have to go to court to try and get any of them back. Good luck with that now that you are already on record attempting to traffic an illegal shotgun.

The universal background check to close the “gun show loophole” is the Holy Grail to the left and is their “common sense” approach to gun confiscation without firing a shot. Of course, there is an alternative where we can keep our guns. We simple bring all our guns to the government and officially register our weapons to show that we own them. Universal gun registration would give us official title to our guns and the left would accept that choice just as eagerly.

We must defeat the universal background check.
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