House Democrats Look To Pass Bill Requiring Background Check On All Private Firearm Transfers

On one hand, would it be such a bad thing to have a background check before all purchases and transfers? I’ve stated that I would have no problem requiring a background check on a new gun purchase even though someone had one the previous month, because things can change. But, you know that Democrats will over-reach

House Democrats Plan Push to Criminalize Private Gun Sales

House Democrats plan to introduce legislation criminalizing private gun sales once the new Congress is in session.

Mother Jones reports that Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) met with gun control groups that included the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, the Center for American Progress, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Gabby Giffords’ group. He asked them what they wanted, and a bill to criminalize private gun sales was on their wish list.

So Thompson will sponsor legislation requiring a background check before someone may buy a gun from his neighbor, a co-worker to get a background check before buying a gun from a co-worker, and so forth. The bill will go so far as to require a son to get a background check before a father can give him a gun as a gift.

Private gun sales are legal and have been an American tradition since 1791, the year the Second Amendment was ratified.

Ironically, a ban on private sales would not have stopped a single mass shooting witnessed to this point in the 21st century because nearly every mass shooter acquires his guns at retail via a background check. The exceptions to the rule are the mass shooters who steal their guns.

Interestingly, The Hill makes the same point

Some argue that universal background check legislation will close security gaps in gun purchases and help prevent mass shootings.

Others say that the background checks do not prevent shootings, pointing to the fact that several recent mass shooters, including the gunman who killed 17 people in Parkland Florida last February, passed background checks to obtain their firearms.

If Democrats were smart, they’d push to upgrade the background checks system and fix the existing issues, but, they’ll simply over-reach as they always do.

Meanwhile

Bruce McLaughlin Jr. and Timothy Dill put the jailbreak into motion sometime after 2 a.m. Tuesday. It was the graveyard shift at the jail in Pickens County, S.C., when their fellow prisoners were asleep and, if luck was on their side, the guards were less alert than usual. (they escaped)

But McLaughlin – a tattooed-neck felon who was jailed on charges of grand larceny and first-degree burglary, according to Newsweek – kicked in the kitchen door of a nearby house.

Inside, a woman lay in her bedroom, alone and asleep, authorities said.

McLaughlin picked up a footlong kitchen tool used to hone knives.

A few moments later, authorities received a 911 call.

It was the no-longer-sleeping woman. She had just shot a man, she told dispatchers, and he was dying on the floor outside her bedroom. She had no idea who he was, but he was wearing what looked like jail clothes.

Democrats want to make it much harder for women like the one above to obtain, keep, and carry a firearm. Many of their policies would have required that the gun be kept in a safe or with some sort of trigger lock, so, pretty much useless in the moment.