H R 127 - It's far worse than it looks at first glance. Absurdly so, in fact.

[Dial H For Hero]

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/127/text

Someone in another thread has already described this bill as an $800 poll tax.

It's almost indescribably more draconian than that.

Let's use as an example someone who wishes to own a single firearm, a .22 rifle. They buy it at age 25 and keep it for 40 years.

Our gun owner needs to get a General License. This entails passing a Brady background check. No federal fee, but almost all dealers charge for it. My local gun shop charges $45. We'll just round it to $50 because of increased demand. Next, a psychological evaluation. A quick bit of Googling states that the cost for this would be at least $600 (please correct me if that's wrong). I very much doubt anyone but the potential licensee will be on the hook for this. Next, 24 hours of training. This is speculative, but I'm going to say $20 an hour per person for large groups, so that's $480. Finally, you need a firearms insurance policy, specified to be $800.

Total cost of your gun license: $1,930.

But wait! There's more! The license has to be renewed every year for the first 5 years, and every 3 years after that. Our hypothetical gun owner will need to renew his license 15 times. So how much does a renewal cost? There's another Brady check ($50), another psych evaluation ($600), and 8 hours of training ($200). Each renewal will cost $850. Multiplied by 15, that's $12,750 over the course of the next 39 years.

Still more costs! The mandatory insurance policy is only good for one year, and has to be renewed annually for the same price ($800). 39 more annual policies will cost $31,200.

That means the total cost of owning a single firearm for one's lifetime, aside from the now trivial cost of the firearm itself, would under this bill be $45,880. And if the firearm in question is a "military-style" weapon, it will cost tens of thousands of dollars more over time due to increased training costs. Per gun.

Telling gun owners they're going to have to pay in the neighborhood of fifty grand just to own a bolt action .22 or a double barreled shotgun is not a recipe for increasing one's share of the vote.

[aeromanKC]

1. And make it a felony to not pay your gun tax

Life no parole penalty. Drain the gun swamp!!

[LiberalArkie]

2. Say hello to out new QOP overlords and I don't own a firearm.

[mr_lebowski]

3. These are, I take it, your back of the napkin calculations?

What's proposed is almost certain to change, and probably drastically, before it's passed ... if ever.

Better to start with something egregious-sounding, and negotiate it down from there.

Many of those costs would not be PER GUN, btw.

[Dial H For Hero]

6. I did the calculations rather quickly, but I think they're correct as per the text of the bill.

Someone was kind enough to point out that the link wasn't there, so I edited it in.

Many of those costs would not be PER GUN, btw.

Quite so, the per gun costs only apply (as I read them) to "miltary-style" fireams.

The fact remains that it would cost 50 ground to own a .22 single shot rilfe over the course of one's life.

[Straw Man]

30. If you only own one gun ...

Many of those costs would not be PER GUN, btw.

... then they most certainly would be "per gun."

[mr_lebowski]

32. True, but still much more accurate to say 'for 1 gun' :) nt

[mikeysnot]

4. Link

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/127/text

First draft one version some good stuff in there but I doubt those fees or this bill will see the light of day. But it is a good start.

[LiberalArkie]

5. I think it might come down to registering all the person firearms. (also comes in handy if stolen)

And just one license. A person does not have to have a seperate drivers license for each and every vehicle the person owns, but does have to have them individually registered.

The license in a lot of states could serve as their "Real ID"

[Dial H For Hero]

7. Thanks for catching that, I edited it in.

First draft one version some good stuff in there but I doubt those fees or this bill will see the light of day. But it is a good start.

I do hope I'm misreading you. When you describe the bill as a "good start", are you saying that it doesn't go far enough or rather that you like the general frameworld of the legislation, but would more prefer reasonable (99% less?) fees.

[mikeysnot]

9. Yes glad you also think it is a good start!

my comment about fees was in the first sentence. It’s just a start, fees will be negotiated in further drafts to be more realistic.

With what has happed the last few months with wrong wing violence this should get fast tracked..

[Dial H For Hero]

13. Oh, on the contrary. I do, however, appreciate that the matter can be discussed rationally

with someone such as yourself who desires some aspects of the framework of the bill but acknowledges that the details are ridiculous. In contrast, someone who upon being informed that the bill would result in owning a single firearm costiing $50,000 and that possessing a single magazine that holds 11 rounds would result in decades of jail time and says "Sounds good to me!"is beyond hope.

[hack89]

24. This is some serious fantasy writing

Reads like something the NRA would write.

[Under The Radar]

8. Sorry for the inconvenience, we are just looking for a solution to this shitshow

Maybe at the minimum we could ask for a hunting season and a hunting license for everyone that you disagree with before you shoot us? You do it for wildlife without raising a constitutional crisis, so why not people?
Well let’s try this.... for any gun under by 3 rounds and small caliber just register the gun annually and have a single background check? Also if you feel that overthrowing your government because that have restrictions that save your life, that is a disqualification automatically, no need for expensive test.

[krispos42]

12. Because gun control puts Republicans in power...

... and Republicans make open-carry legal, I would suggest that Democrats shut up about gun control, get into power, outlaw open carry.... And then shut up again about gun control.

I'll even give you the law. "Open carry of firearms is prohibited at all times within municipal limits, except as where and when expressly permitted by municipal ordinance".

I don't care if they have slung rifles or holstered pistols out in the sticks. But inside city limits, it's concealed only unless the city expressly says otherwise.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

14. Your OC ideas are good ones. HR 127 not so much just a vote loser.

IMO this group (HR 127) of proposed regulations is so onerous and burdensome as to have little chance of any consideration. What gain is imagined from getting the government into the insurance business?

I can't really take this seriously.

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. If this goes anywhere, it'll be a House and (maybe) Senate loser, too.

Thankfully, there are no co-sponsors so far, a fact which should cause some sighs of relief for Dem reps in purple districts...

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

22. In my experience...

...2 out of 3 "control" advocates are hung up on the "unreasoned acceptance" (aka religious type belief) that a law will actually "control" criminal behavior. This is plainly wrong since at some point in their courses of action they point a gun at another person. I conclude that they have considered the immediate and also the eventual possible consequences and continue with the assault. Desperation can result in many unfortunate events.

I believe that this is one cause for violence that must be fought against.
Improving the lives of people especially about aspects that lead people into criminal behavior is more productive than restarting prohibition.

I know some of the restriction favoring folk justify the laws and demands for licenses and insurance with ideas about the militia and the miller decision, etc. What I can't believe is that they think some of these ideas will help.

[hack89]

25. Why would registration stop what is happening in that picture?

Don’t see your point.

[Under The Radar]

26. Registration is a vehicle to expose red flag applicants.

In the picture is a 17 year old carrying a semiautomatic gun in a state for which he doesn’t live in, walking the streets hunting other people that he disagrees with. That kind of flys in the face of their self defense argument for having guns.
Registration without investigation alone will not solve this issue, even background checks and mental evaluations would eliminate all of the issues. The more difficult that it is to obtain the guns the less likely people will own them.
But none that was my point, I asked the question of all of those other suggestions, what do you suggest be done to change it?

[hack89]

28. The kid was breaking multiple laws

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 03:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Precisely because he could not legally purchase and own a gun. Registration would not have made a difference.

Stronger background checks are needed, especially for private sales. A rigorous gun owner ID card program would be more useful than registration.

[Under The Radar]

29. I agree.

[Straw Man]

31. You're missing the point.

This kind of legislative nonsense is pure oxygen for these yahoos and their beliefs. It confirms all their paranoid fantasies and gives them a rallying cry, a concrete cause, a raison d'être, while doing little or nothing to actually promote public safety. Without the gun issue, all they're left with is racism, and that one is still relatively uncomfortable and divisive for the far right.

[aka-chmeee]

10. The Bell Curve.

There are LWNJs to balance the RWNJs.

[PirateRo]

11. I have no problem with this at all

The simple fact is that owning a weapon is and should be a complex affair. If you cannot afford these basic costs of doing business how will you afford correcting the problems that will arise when you misuse the weapon, either deliberately or accidentally?

I remember a time when my wife walked our dog. She was standing behind a tree not twenty feet from our car. The car was in the parking lot just behind the building that had our apartment. While she picked up after the dog, the tree right near her head simply obliterated. She cried out in surprise. The hunter who thought she was a deer popped out and apologized and begged her not to call the cops. She just exploded and this guy just ran away! She called the cops and gave a description.

This lack of judgement, the inability to stand up for the process or to stand responsibly for the use of the weapon is important for the continued health of the 2nd. This bill goes a long way to ensuring this and if it means disqualifying some gun owners, then that’s what it means. For the rest of us who are responsible gun owners, it means protecting the 2nd without bullshit.

[Dial H For Hero]

15. Could you please explain exactly how charging someone $50,000 or so over the course of

someone's life for them to be allowed to own a single firearm "protects" the 2nd Amenedment?

[friendly_iconoclast]

17. It's merely antigun Orwellian bullshit, on the order of "Freedom is Slavery" and "War is Peace"

This is a previous reply to your interlocutor:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=209943

You offer little more than glittering generalities and superlatives in defense of HR 127

Generalities such as:

It has to do with responsible gun ownership and the application of an independent standard to ensure the 2nd Amendment far into the future. That bill is an excellent start to this process...

https://propagandacritic.com/index.php/how-to-decode-propaganda/glittering-generalities/

These are all glittering generalities. These words sound great, but they mean different things to different people...

...Alert readers will recognize that glittering generalities are the mirror image of name-calling words. One technique encourages us to reject ideas or people without considering the evidence; the other hopes we will approve of ideas or people without considering the evidence...

...Propagandists don’t want us focusing on specific details. They hope to see us bathing in these words’ positive emotional glow.

It is also important to consider a close cousin of the glittering generality: the superlative. Superlatives are adjectives used to describe something of the very highest quality. Words like amazing, beautiful, best, fabulous, phenomenal, strong, and tremendous are all such words. But what do these words really mean in the context of the speaker’s claims? What, specifically, makes the speaker’s idea so tremendous?...

Then there's the following passage from Orwell's ""Politics and the English Language" :

"The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like "Marshal Pétain was a true patriot," "The Soviet press is the freest in the world," "The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution," are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, liberal, reactionary, equality..."

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. Note also the attempt at 'forced teaming' in the post you're replying to

...This lack of judgement, the inability to stand up for the process or to stand responsibly for the use of the weapon is important for the continued health of the 2nd. This bill goes a long way to ensuring this and if it means disqualifying some gun owners, then that’s what it means. For the rest of us who are responsible gun owners, it means protecting the 2nd...

A tactic noted many years ago:

How to recognize the tactics used by anti gun activists in their plan to ban guns.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x361725#361836

From post #55 therein:

Empathy: “I’m a gun owner and I support this common sense gun law.” The goal is for them to appear to be on your side then they will try to soften you up to the next step in their gun ban agenda. But remember that even members of the Brady family own guns, that does not mean they are not willing to ban you from owning them.

Also called "forced teaming" by X-digger: "An advocate for more restrictions pretends to be a 'gun person', and decries the problems that 'we' face- nevermind that to many ears, this sounds like, "I'm not a racist, I have lots of black friends..""

I think HR 127 counts as 'harassing gun owners'. From the same post as above:

Harass gun owners: The laws they pass are not designed to make society more safe, they are designed to only effect law abiding gun owners by threatening or harassing them via legislation. Their goal is to reduce the number of people who own guns and therefore the number of people who fight for the right to own firearms. They try to make gun laws complicated and they try to use intimidation via legislation to try to get people to sell their firearms.

So, yeah- you're right to be skeptical. This is SS,DD...

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. This "protects" the 2ndA the way Republicans keep trying to "protect" women seeking abortions

[yagotme]

27. Sounds like that "hunter"

was violating more than one law. Hunting in urban area. Discharging weapon in urban area/close to residences, etc. He may jump through all the hoops you set, but is still an idiot when it comes to target identification.

And you think $50,000 for one firearm is a "basic cost"? Other than insurance for an accident, all the other fees are $ for the govt coffers. There are a lot of people in jail that "misuse" firearms. Some accidently, most were on purpose. Try selling insurance for a purposeful act.

[USALiberal]

20. Sounds fair! Nt

[Dial H For Hero]

21. Is "Screw anyone who wishes to own a firearm" fair?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

23. Translation

"Sounds fair" = Throw enough at the wall and some will stick.

What can I say? I know a lucid and carefully reasoned opinion when I see one.