“Think of how unsympathetic I am going to be as Kalifornia sinks into bankruptcy due to their profligate spending and surrender to the public employee unions. Yet these same people tax ME when exercising my right to keep and bear arms and spend tax dollars maintaining various anti-gun databases”
This is what I said to you before. It sounds like you have a problem with your state not the federal government. My original point that you contested was about not allowing convicted felons or documented crazies like the Virginia Tech mass murderer to obtain legal weapons was a reasonable restriction. This is done through the insta check system imposed in 94 and now amended with the crazy portion in 07.
It sounds like California has some high fees when it comes to buying and owning guns. I lived there many years ago when it was more sane so I don’t know what it’s like now.
As I said before, in Pa you have to pay a small fee (less than $10, might be closer to $5) for the insta check system. This is the only federal requirement. There is no fee to register a gun or anything like that here. The last time I bought a firearm was about six months ago and to be quite honest when you are throwing out $500 - $600 to purchase something, you kind of forget the exact price of the insta check.
To be railing about a $5 - $10 federal fee when you are purchasing something that costs hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars seems kind of silly to me. Thats less than the tax you have to pay on the firearm. We as 2A supporters look silly when complaining about such a small fee. How can we get any sympathy about issues that really matter to us such as the sale of auto weapons, more liberal conceal carry laws etc, when we foolishly complain about $5 - $10?
The only complaint I had in 94 about the insta check part of the law was when they originally wanted there to be a three day waiting period from the time you purchase until the time you pick it up. With today’s modern computer system, that was stupid and unneccesary. I don’t know what other states do, but in Pa the insta check is a phone call away.
Lastly, may I suggest to you to move to a more gun friendly state such as Pa. There’s a reason that the NRA holds a lot of it’s conventions in this state. I think they are scheduled to hold their next convention here in 2012 or somewhere like that.
Isn't the Pennsylvania State Police maintaining a database of gun purchases made possible by the mandate that you pay a fee and have your background checked? I pointed out before that there is absolutely NO BENEFIT to you or anybody else in maintaining this system. Now that more records have to be checked, you will be willing to pay a more substantial fee, will you not?
If it were solely my decision to make, I would have left already.
Is Pennsylvania the place to go? What does it mean that the right to keep and bear arms "shall not be questioned"? Is that more or less constraining than "shall not be infringed"?