Gun interests WANT criminals to have guns

[rrneck]

124. Well, I guess that's enough to start.

Last edited Mon Jun 17, 2013, 11:49 PM - Edit history (2)

Manchin/Toomey attempted to regulate internet and intra state sales (as I recall). I thought that was very interesting. It hadn't occurred to me to go about it that way. Why intra state and internet sales? Some more cynical than myself would think it was an incremental approach to firearms confiscation. I think that's unlikely. I think it was an attempt to regulate firearms transfers based on intimacy. The assumption was that is was unlikely that two people who met online or live across state lines share a sufficiently close relationship to allow the seller to determine if the buyer would be a legal and responsible gun owner. In theory it makes sense. In practice I don' think it would work. Given the population density across the eastern seaboard it is quite possible to be intimately familiar with somebody across a state line. There are not a few cities and towns in the United States that actually straddle state lines. And if you're selling a gun through an internet connection you'll never see the buyer, or the straw purchaser who is buying the gun for him.

The law would have zero impact while annoying a lot of voters. That's all risk and no payoff for any legislator that supports it. Now I know that it almost passed the senate. The United States Senate is the most exclusive club in the world. There is no doubt they got together and decided who would vote how based on who could and who could not afford to do so. It was all political theater from the get go. They took one look at the legislative task at hand and turned it into WWF wrestling match to distribute red meat to their respective bases.

So the legislation was based not on firearms (the AWB and mag capacity tried that) but on relationships between people. I don't know what social circles you run in, but where I am relationships come in all sorts and kinds of flavors. People create, change, redefine and manipulate relationships all the time. There is simply no way to write workable legislation designed to regulate personal relationships between people. The only relationship between people that involves a gun we can hope to regulate is that between a licenced FFL and a qualified buyer because it's a business relationship. Beyond that all bets are off. There is no way in hell we can demand a wife do a background check on her husband if she wants to give him a gun. That's just stupid. The legislation that the president and Manchin/Toomey proposed made exceptions for family. But define "family". We already have a problem with that right now in this country. There are already outrages aplenty with laws regulating marriage and you want the Democratic party to tell two people in a relationship what they can and cannot do? Under penalty of law? It's morally repugnant and politically suicidal. It's an invasion of people's privacy, and that won't work.

So now do you want to have a try at explaining how the law would actually work? For real people in the real world?