MUST READ: How "Universal Background Check" turns ALL gun owners into federal felons

TFred · Apr 6, 2013

MUST READ: How "Universal Background Check" turns ALL gun owners into federal felons

Ladies and gentlemen,

One of the most reviled and hated laws on the books of the United States is the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA). This law makes it a federal felony to carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of the edge of a school (K-12) property. It is nearly impossible to live in a suburban area, and literally impossible to live in an urban area without encroaching upon these federally defined "school zones." Almost every otherwise-legal gun carrier is guilty of violating this law at one time or another - even off-duty police officers! The law does provide an exemption for those who hold a state-issued "license to carry" a firearm. I personally believe that Virginia's Concealed Handgun Permit does not meet the "letter" of the requirement to be an exemption, although I'm fairly certain that the feds would not want you to think so.

I have often wondered how in the world did we, the gun rights crowd, ever let this law pass and make it into the books. It's a virtual hammer that the feds hold over nearly every gun owner in the country, and while they choose to not enforce it frequently, it's still there, and it still influences the actions of people just the way the gun grabbers wanted it to.

Fast forward to now. Today. We are faced with S. 649, the falsely named "Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013". The gun grabbers are shouting their lies as loud and often as they can in the effort to convince the people that Universal Background Checks are widely supported. When you ask the questions in the right way, "the people" will support anything you want them to.

Just like the GFSZA, these new background checks will turn virtually every gun owner in America into a federal felon. We let them impose the GFSZA upon us, we MUST stop this one.

Even after you learn what it does, people will certainly say, that's so ridiculous, they would never prosecute you for that! That's exactly what they say about the GFSZA, and that is the evil genius of these kinds of laws. By never enforcing them, they never make it in front of a judge to be thrown out. But by putting them on the books they do still influence the behavior of law-abiding citizens... and that is their ultimate goal!

Please read this excellent article that outlines the common, every-day activities that nearly all gun owners do at some point in their lives...activities which will make you a federal felon, if this bill becomes law.

We lost the GFSZA battle. We cannot lose this one!

TFred

Excerpts from the above-linked article:

To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms “transfers.” She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.

While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.

One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.

Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.

MAC702 · Apr 6, 2013

If it is being compared to the impotent GFSZA, I'm not nearly as worried about it as I used to be.

Old Virginia Joe · Apr 7, 2013

I call this . . . .

I call these kinds of laws that no one enforces right now . . . . . .ticking time bombs. They sit there, on the books, gaining "legitimacy" with every year that passes, until the time is right, and then BOOM, they get used against the People. Kind of like a rezoning that was done on thousands of acres in my county, back in the 1970s, when no one was concerned with big development. It sat there on the books until the 1990s, when the sewer line was installed, and then BOOM, we were flooded with 1,600 houses and hundreds of apartments, all new folks, all at once, requiring new schools, police, etc., and new taxes bloomed. When these gun laws get enforced one day, they say, "but it's been on the books for 'years'!" I agree with TFred---we don't want to be passive on another piece of the tyranny puzzle.

peter nap · Apr 7, 2013

Old Virginia Joe said:
I agree with TFred---we don't want to be passive on another piece of the tyranny puzzle.

Except that attitude conflicts with the baby step approach everyone is so proud of.

TFred · Apr 7, 2013

Even if I am alone on this, I will yell and scream about it until I can no more.

This is about as anti-American as you can get. So what if they only choose to enforce it on certain people, or under certain conditions? That is NOT how a society that lives under the rule of law, and under the equal protection of the law is supposed to function.

One example that comes to mind, and I think I may have mentioned this before... several years ago, our HOA introduced a new "rule" at the annual meeting. They wanted us to vote on it right then and there, and in fact, had already ordered the signs for it.

They wanted to impose a 5 mph speed limit throughout the entire subdivision. They even stated that the reason for this was so that everyone would be in violation, which would give the security folks the "reason" they needed to stop and investigate people who they decided needed "investigating".

I was very unhappy about this, and although I did not argue it on legal terms, I pointed out that such a rule would unreasonably impact those who lived in the rear of the subdivision. I pointed out with simple math how utterly ridiculous such a low speed limit was - and the great impact it had on some of the residents, and they changed their mind and took it off the table.

This is exactly the same end result of this bill. They turn EVERYONE into a felon, and that allows them to pick and choose who goes to jail - for reasons that may have nothing to do with the actual law being violated.

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather decide that fate for myself, by choosing to obey LEGITIMATE laws, not by living in a society where it is impossible to NOT break laws, and give the government the power to hold that over your head.

TFred

Thundar · Apr 8, 2013

UBC questions and LGOC

Questions for Universal Background Checks:

Some questions for 1) Why would any sane lawmaker vote to criminalize gun collecting? (C&R = federal gun collectors license. C&R cannot conduct backgrouind checks, so if law passes gun collecting licenses become invalid.

2) Since C&R licenses would be useless, would the ATF refund all C&R license fees?

3) Do we really want to ensure that 18-20 year old military are not allowed to buy handguns? (no private sales)

4) If private transfers are intrastate commerce (the 1968 prohibits interstate gun sales except by FFLs) then what is the authority of the federal government to regulate intrastate commerce?

5) Do civil rights supressionists (my term for gun grabbers) understand that a consequence of their stupid law would be for younger gun owners to open carry long guns?

6) If the only thing that 18-20 year olds can receive is a long gun, will OCDO finally endorse Long Gun Open Carry?

Live Free or Die,
Thundar

MUST READ: How "Universal Background Check" turns ALL gun owners into federal felons

TFred

Regular Member

MAC702

Campaign Veteran

Old Virginia Joe

Regular Member

peter nap

Accomplished Advocate

TFred

Regular Member

Thundar

Regular Member