They check my name every time I buy a gun. I have no objection to changing the way it’s done to make it less obtrusive. Like I’ve said in my earlier posts, if they were going to do a background check on people who rent guns, they WOULD have to change the way they do them, because you can’t get an instant check under the current system.
My point here is that the whole thread is premised upon the notion that a felon ought not be subject to a background check, and a lot of posters seem to be standing up for the right of a felon to rent a gun without being subjected to a background check. That is just plain crazy. And when they try to turn it around and say they are standing up for the right of law abiding sane people to rent a gun without a background check, they just look foolish. This can be done quickly, easily, with no violation of privacy. There is no legitimate reason that anyone has offered so far for why it should not be done.
Heck, as I stated before, the gun range itself was complaining that it could not do an instant background check. They don’t want to rent guns to nuts either.
No, they're not. They're standing up the for the rights of the sane people, and if a few kooks slip through the cracks, better that than invading the privacy of the other 99.99%.
This can be done quickly, easily, with no violation of privacy. There is no legitimate reason that anyone has offered so far for why it should not be done.
It CAN, they choose no to revamp the system in such a way that the users' names are NEVER in the possession of the feral government, despite the fact that they're prohibited by law from keeping records of the names. If they won't do that, it makes them look like they're lying. Plus we have to trust them with information. What would you say the odds are of the government NEVER, NEVER misusing information once it's in their grubby statist little hands? And, yes I did state (quite clearly I thought) why this was a bad idea.
Once a person is released from custody/probation/parole they are a free citizen and are supposed to have all rights of citizenship restored. They have paid their debt to society and have a right to firearm ownership regardless of what the government thinks. Ben Franklin said it best (although I am paraphrasing) “no free man shall be debarred the use of arms.”
“Shall not be infringed” actually means something, and it doesn't mean that “common sense” or “reasonable” restrictions are OK.
If I were a member of congress I would introduce a bill to require a NICS check on anyone who wishes to register to vote, then watch the libs tap dance their way around why a background check is OK for one right and not for another. After all, it's also illegal for a felon to vote in federal elections.
No, the premise is that INNOCENT CITIZENS ought not to be subject to a background check. The background check is government-run, and thus very much subject to government abuse. The chief purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable citizens to defend themselves *against the government* when the government steps beyond its limits. Obviously that's not possible if you've got the same government in a position where it controls whose names are on the no-guns list and fines and imprisons any gun dealer who sells a gun to anyone on the list.
The government puts people on the list based on the declaration of government-licensed physicians and government-employed judges that someone is "mentally ill". Do you know anything about the Soviet Union abused its psychiatric hospital system? People who were effective opponents of the Communist Party were declared "mentally ill" and locked up in the "hospitals".
As Condoleeza Rice has pointed out, this issue isn't just theoretical in the U.S. either. When she was growing up in Alabama, the state and local governments were largely controlled by people who were perfectly happy to break the law in order to keep black people controlled and subservient. She noted that a government requirement for registration and licensing of gun owners would have seriously impeded her community's self-defense against the law-breaking government officials and their law-breaking agents who were never prosecuted for attacks on black people. The men in the community took turns patrolling the neighborhood at night with shotguns -- sometimes their own, and sometimes borrowed -- and due to the lack of a registration/licensing scheme, the local officials didn't have a list of which blacks owned guns, and thus couldn't trump up charges against them to confiscate their guns and prohibit them from buying another.
The way to deal with dangerous felons is to keep them locked up. Not to let them loose and then use their presence in free society as an excuse to infringe the freedoms of all the non-felons in the country. If a felon has served a long prison term, and seems safe to be given another chance, they can be classified as prohibited to own a gun, and their name and photo put on a publicly accessible registry (like sex offenders) so that anyone who becomes aware that they have a gun can report them to authorities, resulting in their re-arrest and permanent imprisonment.
That is not the premise of this thread - it's about civil liberties. It's not the function of the federal, state or local government to know when or how often a citizen shoots when they are NOT a criminal.
Do you feel comfortable with the government being able to make the case that you're crazy because you made one too many trips to the range for their liking? It's none of their business in the least. I don't even believe that Badger Guns should be turning over their records without a warrant. How many citizens are being investigated without their knowledge just because they now have a list?
If Cardona-Marquez was denied practice that day, who's to say that he wouldn't have gone out and practiced on some human targets? It wouldn't have been a crime to TRY and rent a weapon, would it? He'd have been long gone before the police got there, and besides, he'd already been arrested in March for carrying a concealed weapon.
He then burglarized six homes of more than $90,000 in jewelry and cash. Before the rental at Badger Guns, he robbed a jewelry store of $50,000.
But of course, the police and/or justice system didn't fail. No, no, of course not - it was the eeeeeevil gun range.