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Arizona Senator Jeff Flake to consider "Universal Background Checks"
Gun Watch ^ | 22 January, 2013 | Dean Weingarten

Posted on 01/21/2013 9:24:38 PM PST by marktwain

Freshman Senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, appears to be bending from pressure in the media to "do something" to infringe on Second Amendment Rights. Given the rumors about Senator John McCain, one wonders if John may be giving his younger colleague advice. On Sunday, 20 January, this was published in the Arizona Republic:

Echoing many of his lower-chamber colleagues on Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he likely would have a hard time supporting a new federal ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines but suggested there may be common ground on universal background checks.

“I’ve always said we’ve got to do a better job of keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them,” Flake said. “There have been some technological issues with gun shows, and you want to make sure that people can legally buy guns for protection or recreation or collection without untimely delays. But I think technology has moved so that we can better deal with that issue and have broader background checks.”

Requiring the 99 percent who are law abiding to jump through hoops in order to try to keep the 1 percent who are dangerous from aquireing firearms has always been a losing proposition. It is a failed paradigm that should be abandoned. It has always been a path meant to end with registration so as to enable confiscation.

Jeff Flake has an A rating with the NRA. It is time for his constituents to remind him that they do not need, nor does it serve the public, to suffer further infringements on the Second Amendment with "universal firearms registration" I mean "universal background checks", which are designed to end up at the same place.

What does work are projects to make sure that those who are prohibited from having firearms do not have them. That has been tried and does work. Limited resources should be applied to that effort, not the irresponsible and ineffective idea of establishing dangerous bureaucracies to check on millions to catch a few irresponsible individuals.

Dean Weingarten


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: az; backgroundchecks; banglist; guncontrol; jeffflake; secondamendment
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To: marktwain; MamaDearest; Lumper20; mosaicwolf; SkyPilot; ZULU; overbore; mazda77; justiceseeker93; ..

Starting with everyone in the White House and then everyone in Congress, how many do you think would pass an FBI or US military top security clearance? My estimate is very few, like you can count on two hands ya think?


41 posted on 01/22/2013 7:46:35 AM PST by ExTexasRedhead
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To: PizzaDriver

Yep same here.

They will go to whom I want them to go.

Nothing else.


42 posted on 01/22/2013 7:47:24 AM PST by chris37 (Heartless.)
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To: marktwain
LOL 42 posts when I make this one and nobody has observed that the idiot's name is FLAKE. Like he's sure living up to his name! Too bad he's in Arizona (where I hope he's voted out soon), because he'd fit right in with the rest of the granola crowd in California, you know, the fruits and nuts need the FLAKES!
43 posted on 01/22/2013 8:29:37 AM PST by ExSoldier (Stand up and be counted... OR LINE UP AND BE NUMBERED...)
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To: marktwain

First, local gun laws have no meaning. New Yorkers can go to neighboring states and buy all the guns they can afford. ANy one with criminal background can go there and buy guns.

I made it clear I support background checks but NOT registration. They are two different animals. Registration means you have to declare exact gun you purchased along with serial number etc.

I have absolutely no problem if they want to do my background check. I wish it was done for every gun purchase. The FBI already has a national data base of criminals. Why not use it?


44 posted on 01/22/2013 9:05:01 AM PST by entropy12 (The republic is doomed when people figure out they can get free stuff by voting democrats)
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To: pepsionice

You know, this started out as dark humor, but maybe we’re on to something here?

I’d rather not have ANY 4473’s with the buyer’s name and the make model and serial number of the firearm (the whole idea is offensive), but this at the heart of the “big lie” about “universal background checks”.

Why NOT tie it in to other civil rights? Why not push to gut the very registration scheme that gun grabbers are pushing for? Why not use this as a bit of political jui-jitsu to try to roll back a little bit of the regulatory apparat that always seeks to insinuate itself into our lives at every level?

It won’t work, I’m not that much of a polyanna, but it would be fun to watch the statists try to wriggle off of their own hook for a while.


45 posted on 01/22/2013 10:41:06 AM PST by absalom01 (You should do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, and you should never wish to do less.)
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To: HiJinx

He needs to back off.


46 posted on 01/22/2013 12:07:19 PM PST by Brad’s Gramma (Psalm 83)
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To: CharlesWayneCT

You’re assuming the ones deciding the check are fair.
The point of the 2ndA is when they’re not.


47 posted on 01/22/2013 12:15:27 PM PST by ctdonath2 (End of debate. Your move.)
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To: ez

“Background checks stopped Adam Lanza from legally buying a gun but they didn’t stop him from shooting 26 people.”

Worth repeating.


48 posted on 01/22/2013 12:17:27 PM PST by ctdonath2 (End of debate. Your move.)
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To: entropy12
This is not, and never has been, about keeping criminals from having guns. It has always been about reducing the number of people who legally own guns to a small enough number to make them politically insignificant. All of these registration, background checks, waiting periods, bans on "Saturday night specials, and other "gun control" laws have not had any measurable effect on crime rates.
When gun control first became an important national issue in the 1960s, there was almost no research worth noting on the subject. Partisans on both sides of the debate had hardly more ammunition than intuitions and bumper-sticker slogans.

The man most responsible for the change in the intellectual terms of the gun debate was Jimmy Carter, or, more precisely, the grant-review team that Carter appointed to the National Institute of Justice. Intending to build the case for comprehensive federal gun restrictions, the Carter administration handed out a major gun-control research grant in 1978 to sociology professor James D. Wright and his colleagues Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly. Wright was already on record as favoring much stricter controls, and he and his colleagues were highly regarded sociologists. Rossi, a University of Massachusetts professor, would later become president of the American Sociology Association. Wright, who formerly served as director of the Social and Demographic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, now teaches at Tulane. Daly is now at the University of Michigan.

Wright and his colleagues were asked to survey the state of research regarding the efficacy of gun control, presumably to show that gun control worked and that America needed more of it. But when the researchers produced their report for the National Institute of Justice in 1982, they delivered a document quite different from the one they had expected to write. Carefully reviewing all existing research, the three scholars found no persuasive scholarly evidence that America's 20,000 gun-control laws had reduced criminal violence. For example, the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned most interstate gun sales, had no discernible impact on the criminal acquisition of guns from other states. Washington, D.C.'s ban on the ownership of handguns that had not already been registered in the District was not linked to any reduction in gun crime. Even Detroit's law providing mandatory sentences for felonies committed with a gun was found to have no effect on gun-crime patterns, in part because judges would often reduce the sentence for the underlying offense in order to balance out the mandatory two-year extra sentence for use of a gun.

If local gun laws have no meaning, why do we not see New Yorkers openly carrying holstered handguns all throughout New York City?

These laws do have effects... only on those who obey the laws. They do not reduce crime.

49 posted on 01/22/2013 12:27:25 PM PST by marktwain
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To: ExTexasRedhead

Oh I don’t know..... I have one and I’m a right wing extremist! /s


50 posted on 01/22/2013 12:31:00 PM PST by Forty-Niner (The barely bare berry bear formerly known as Ursus Arctos Horribilis.)
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To: marktwain

Honestly, when I saw the headline, I was hoping some ‘pubbie had the stones to propose something linking a firearm background check system with things like e-Verify, voting registration, and other identity and anti-fraud systems. Sort of in a “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” type situation — let’s make “universal” mean “universal” and watch the libs start squealing like stuck pigs.


51 posted on 01/22/2013 12:35:51 PM PST by kevkrom (If a wise man has an argument with a foolish man, the fool only rages or laughs...)
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To: CitizenUSA
I’m not saying background checks should be mandatory for private transactions.

That is what "Universal Background Checks" means. We already have mandatory background checks with NICS for all firearms transfers through FFLs which is all transfers except private transactions.

52 posted on 01/22/2013 1:55:19 PM PST by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: marktwain

yeah! and how about we just tattoo your ID on you in invisible ink like a bar code so no one can steal your ID anymore

We can put a mark on you hand, or your forehead- so that none may buy or sell without it

what could go wrong?


53 posted on 01/22/2013 1:58:55 PM PST by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: marktwain

How about one for the Kenyan usurper?


54 posted on 01/23/2013 12:41:04 AM PST by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
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