What's the big deal about background checks?

Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner ^ | 27 April, 2009 | Paul Valone

[Eaker]

Thanks for the pings Joe!

[Chuckster]

Any twentysomething will tell you that Liberty is highly over rated. What is really important is free health care.

[sionnsar]

Why do they have background checks? Our own POTUS won’t allow anyone to do a background check on him.

He is more equal than the rest of us.

[Eagle Eye]

IMO one cannot claim to be an ardent Pro 2A rights advocate and support background checks.

Bacground checks are an infringement on a right.

[Still Thinking]

In the exceedingly unlikely event you could produce final legislation not filled with the “gotchas” so adored by anti-gun Democrats, you could not draft a law that I could not eventually convert to a registration scheme.

I can if they never get the name, even digitally. Why can’t the feds disseminate the list of those prohibited from buying on permanent non-writable media like CD to the dealers? They’re prohibited from keeping records of the searches, so they can’t say that would be a problem, and they’re trusting the dealer already to run the right name, so they can’t say loss of control of the process would be a problem. That way, we’d know they didn’t have access to any information they could choose to abuse and we’d know they were complying with the law.

[Oatka]

After the “gunshow loophole”, there is the “classified ad loophole” and the “father-son heirloom transfer loophole”, ad nauseum.

Always at the bottom of these laws is eventual registration. (They can’t seize ‘em unless they know where they are.) Next time you run into one of these “close the loophole” or “what’s wrong with registration” types, ask them if the government can seize guns when they don’t know who owns them. The answers of the antis should be pretty interesting.

IMO, one reason the Constitution was written was that the founders didn’t want us to be subject to a good king/bad king scenario. Any time you have to depend upon the good will of the people in power you are in big trouble.

[ZULU]

Please keep me on your list.

[blackie]

My neighbor says:

Be Ever Vigiant!

[Freemeorkillme]

Sadly, a FReeper in my locale posted something like the title nearly word for word.

FMOKM

[HotLead61]

Background checks are an infringement on a right.

You got that "right", Eagle Eye. Your name fits well.

[supercat]

Why can’t the feds disseminate the list of those prohibited from buying on permanent non-writable media like CD to the dealers?

Even under that system, is there any guarantee that the "list" wouldn't contain people who haven't been convicted or even accused of any crime? Given that such people are even today included on the list by design I see no reason to believe the system won't be abused.

[Still Thinking]

Well, I had several points to make by posting and none of them was to argue for a background check system per se.

First and most trivial: the guy said that no background check system could be devised that he couldn't turn into a registration system.

Second, in a world where those in favor of a system are barred from keeping the names from the checks, and they SAY they don't, that there is no excuse for it not to be done in a way that we can trust their claims (and to trust a politician, it has to be physically impossible for them to be lying).

Third, I think this is something incremental conservatives could push for that would paint liberal rights-haters into a corner: it achieves everything they SAY they want and protects the freedoms of individuals, so how can they fight it. They increment and salami-slice us to death, it's about time we did it to them, and better.