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'Jamie's Law' Would Mandate Background Check for Every Bullet You Buy
Townhall.com ^ | November 24, 2021 | Bob Barr

Posted on 11/24/2021 6:00:41 AM PST by Kaslin

For all the Left’s ongoing hoopla about the dire necessity for “common sense gun control,” nothing currently being proposed makes any more sense than measures already tried and failed. The American public has seen and heard it all before, and is even less interested in buying into it today than in years past.

But the Left keeps trying. Their latest gambit is to attack ammunition purchases.

Earlier this month, Democrats in the Florida legislature filed a bill they call “Jamie’s Law,” named after a victim in the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The legislation would subject all purchases of ammunition to background checks.

When making this same proposal nearly three years earlier in the U. S. Senate, leading gun-control advocate Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut called the lack of background checks on ammunition sales a “ludicrous loophole” that allows would-be killers to amass “arsenals of ammunition.”

Even for the typical anti-gun nonsense spouted by Democrats, Blumenthal’s hyperventilating is extreme; but then again, so is the proposal, whether as federal or state law.

The basic premise of the legislation is that it would prevent people who are already prohibited by law from purchasing or possessing firearms, from buying ammunition. Really.

The only situation in which Jaime’s Law might be considered even remotely applicable would be in stopping an individual from purchasing ammunition for a firearm they acquired illegally. It does not take a firearms expert or criminology PhD to know that finding ammunition is far easier even than for a criminal to get their hands on an illegal firearm

For the sake of argument, though, let us take Democrats at their word and assume there is an actual need for this proposed law. For instance, a “prohibited” person erroneously passes the first background check to purchase a firearm, and (for reasons that defy logic) later goes back to buy ammunition, subjecting himself to a second background check that hypothetically would prevent that purchase. What this scenario -- which serves as the sole justification for Jamie’s Law -- clearly suggests is that the background check system itself is the problem, not that more background checks are needed.

The suggestion is not entirely off-base (though the proposed solution is). Failures of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) allowed the killers in both the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, and the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shootings to obtain firearms they should have been prevented from purchasing.

The obvious – dare I say, “common sense” -- solution to tragedies such as these, however, lies with better and more consistent enforcement of the existing background check system on firearms, notwithstanding that the system even as currently configured has worked remarkably, but not perfectly, well for over two decades.

Creating a whole new background check criteria and database for purchasing rounds of ammunition is wholly unnecessary and would be phenomenally costly and disruptive to the industry and to lawful firearms owners -- which, of course, may be exactly what Blumenthal and his fellow gun-control advocates in the Florida legislature want.

Ironically, albeit predictably to anyone with even a passing familiarity with government data systems, proposals such as Jamie’s Law would wind up reducing the effectiveness of federal background checks, and placing citizens in greater danger, by overwhelming NICS with requests. Ammunition purchases by nature are exponentially more common than sales of firearms, and there simply is no way NICS could handle such volume, meaning more purchases would be approved by default (as required by law now).

In addition to making NICS less effective, an ammunition check procedure would come at a significant cost to law-abiding citizens who could no longer easily pick up ammunition for a trip to the range or before a hunt.

Jamie’s Law is a solution in search of a problem. Fortunately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis understands both the constitutional and practical consequences of such a proposal, and never would sign such legislation even if it were to somehow make it through the Florida legislature. Still, if history of the gun control movement is our guide, this and other counterproductive and unconstitutional measures will continue to have life breathed into them by gun control advocates in the Sunshine State and elsewhere.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: ammunition; banglist; florida; guncontrol

1 posted on 11/24/2021 6:00:41 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
A true "Jamie's Law" would honor Jamie by mandating schools and police stop threats to shoot up a school even if the person making the threat is a PERSON OF COLOR like someone named NICHOLAS CRUZ.

What killed those kids was the fear of being called a racist.

2 posted on 11/24/2021 6:03:32 AM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Kaslin

shall not be infringed.


3 posted on 11/24/2021 6:09:57 AM PST by exnavy (we are not a democracy.)
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To: Kaslin

How about a law that there will be a legitimate ID proving American citizenship for each voter ballot?


4 posted on 11/24/2021 6:12:36 AM PST by Bon of Babble (Rigged Elections have Consequences)
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To: Kaslin

These people are COMMUNISTS trying to overthrow our Republic. They must be stopped at any cost!


5 posted on 11/24/2021 6:18:38 AM PST by Don Corleone (leave the gun, take the canolis)
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To: Kaslin

They tried just that in the late 1960s. It didn’t work. They got tons of paper that nobody good pick any meaningful information from.


6 posted on 11/24/2021 6:47:12 AM PST by GingisK
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To: Kaslin

There are six people dead in Waukesha and I’m pretty sure that no one who is affected is saying “Well, at least the SUV Was properly registered.”


7 posted on 11/24/2021 7:02:13 AM PST by LittleBillyInfidel (This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
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To: Kaslin; JulieRNR21; Travis McGee; AAABEST; kinganamort; katherineisgreat; floriduh voter; summer; ..
This just goes to show that even in a free state like ours, enemies to our freedom and God-given liberties still exist, and must be dealt with.

The struggle to remain free is a never-ending one. A pity, that. But a story as old as humankind.

Florida Freeper

I'm compiling a list of FReepers interested in Florida-related topics.
If you want to be added, please FReepMail me.

8 posted on 11/24/2021 9:03:53 AM PST by Joe Brower ("Might we not live in a nobler dream than this?" -- John Ruskin)
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To: Tell It Right

Got it one.


9 posted on 11/24/2021 10:05:37 AM PST by ASOC (This space for rent)
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To: Kaslin; Joe Brower; Travis McGee

Well, it seems Florida has its own share of commie politicians.


10 posted on 11/24/2021 10:07:56 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Florida: America's new free zone.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

A few liberal counties out of 67 don’t mean much now.


11 posted on 11/24/2021 12:11:24 PM PST by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Kaslin
it is a badge of honor among the Lib-Tard hoplophobes to remain as ignorant as humanly possible of firearms or anything related to them, which is why they keep writing such silly and unenforceable laws. And this will be yet another example because thanks to the 2010 ruling made by the DC Court of Appeals in the case of Herrington v. United States, ammunition is protected by 2A.

No higher court has made a ruling to the contrary, therefore Herrington v. US is the controlling case law. So add case law to the VERY lengthy list of firearms-related facts that the aptly-named "Dims" are ignorant of.

It's been obvious from the jump that ammunition must also be protected else 2A becomes completely impotent. If emanations from the penumbras of the Bill of Rights give a woman the right to murder her unborn child, then you're damn skippy 2A protects ammunition.

12 posted on 11/24/2021 12:12:10 PM PST by Paal Gulli
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To: Tell It Right

Meanwhile, the idiots at the FBI were warned repeatedly about this punk Nikolai Cruz and his threats, as were the sheriff’s department.

They did nothing, even though this punk Cruz had more red flags than a May Day parade in the former Soviet Union.


13 posted on 11/24/2021 10:02:16 PM PST by july4thfreedomfoundation (Donald J. Trump is my president, not the Commander-in-Thief, brain-dead Joseph Stolen)
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