Posted on 04/08/2013 5:59:39 PM PDT by neverdem
The details of a gun control bill being written by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are now coming to light. As first reported by Politico, Grassley is crafting a Republican alternative to Democrats’ proposals, which are centered on expanding background checks, including information-sharing and record-keeping. In a follow-up piece this morning, Politico suggests that Grassley’s effort could draw moderates of both parties away from the Democrats’ main proposal.
Previously Grassley’s office has declined to comment on the bill being authored, but in an interview today Press Secretary Beth Levine laid out the Iowa Republican’s legislative priorities. She said Grassley is considering five main points: addressing mental health challenges; reining in gun trafficking; preventing school violence and ensuring student safety; protecting veterans from false mental health accusations (e.g. of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder); and improving enforcement of existing laws regarding state information-sharing for the background check database. (On the latter point Levine added that only “13 states do it.”)...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Ronnie Reagan flashback: "There you go again..."
You pose an excellent question but asking for a semblance of logic to be applied in the political realm seems like you're trying to rewrite Einstein's excellent definition of insanity.
"Grassley is considering five main points: addressing mental health challenges; reining in gun trafficking; preventing school violence and ensuring student safety; protecting veterans from false mental health accusations (e.g. of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder); and improving enforcement of existing laws regarding state information-sharing for the background check database."
I fail to see how any of those things limit anyone's God-given rights.
Got a mirror?
No, the only suitable alternative is a national Constitutional Carry law, like Vermont, Alaska and Arizona currently have.
We don’t need more laws; we need more good guys with guns!
Ponder the true meaning of the words "background check database." And "addressing mental health challenges." And "reining in gun trafficking." And "preventing school violence and ensuring student safety." And "protecting veterans." And "improving enforcement."
If you don't smell further incursions on our right to keep and bear arms in those words, I think you need to get your nose checked.
record keeping?
this is just code for mandatory INVOLUNTARY registration.
only slaves pay taxes.
slaves do not need civil rights
the second amendment is a civil right
judges fear civil rights
politicians fear civil rights.
this is why obama is taking the sandy hook coffin podiums to each senator’s office.
Where is the NRA with hundreds of people who have SAVED lives going senator to senator to country this PR stunt?
why do we have to suffer the fools of the MSM?
I have another alternative. Just enforce the gun laws we already have.
That’s just brilliant! You ought to run for president. /s
"Keeping records" of background checks would eventually provide a database of every person who has purchased a firearm since the law passed.
This is a de facto registry of firearm owners, only excluding those who bought no new firearms.
In the event that someone gets a bill (or amendment to another bill) through requiring private sales to go through a dealer and be subject to NICS clearance, within a generation, virtually every legally transferred (owned) firearm would be in the registry, and a very high fraction of legal firearm owners.
The enemies of this Republic have been patient when impatience would not work, and this would lay all the necessary groundwork for seizure of firearms in the future, much as registration under the Weimar Republic laid the groundwork for the seizure of firearms by the Nazis--the records survived to be used against firearm owners.
With other developments in this administration, I would never trust the Government with such a database, not now, nor in the future. Not ever.
We have seen how well-intentioned programs have been sold to the American People under one guise or another, and then used to harm our Country, our culture, and our society.
Judge this not by the good it might do in the right hands, but the harm it will do in the wrong ones.
I'm not. I believe in 'trust but verify' though not 'knee jerk before researching.'
"...and improving enforcement of existing laws regarding state information-sharing for the background check database..."
One of the problems everyone has acknowledged is that states have not been turning info on convicted felons and those adjudicated mentally incompetent over to the Feds to be put into the NICS database. Another is that some states (CO for instance) do their own background check with their own database thus missing info from the rest of the nation and wasting money in the duplicate effort. I see nothing in the statement above about Grassley's bill to indicate anything other than solving those problems. The words "enforcing existing laws" are at least some indication that the bill is not intended to expand the parameters of 'background checks.'
Beyond that everyone seems to be missing the political meaning of introducing a competing bill. It's a common method used to kill the first bill with no intention of passing the latter one. Something that's beyond the thinking of the would-be president.
No, I haven't missed that, but IMHO, any bill in the hopper is a loose cannon on deck.
I hope you don’t, if you don’t understand that “moderate” incursions on our right to keep and bear arms are dangerous in the same way that radical incursions are.
Not if it’s full of neutral or positive changes to the law.
You’ve said that several times, but it’s simply not true.
No one's Rights are safe while the Congress is in session.
Show me some infringements. Straw man arguments don’t impress me.
What straw man argument?
Nevermind. It's complicated. Don't worry your pretty little head about it.
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