I know I’m starting with a question, but this will descend into a debate, but hopefully stay within the current bill under consideration and reasonably possible amendments that may be attached to it.
I understand that the compromise extends background checks to guns purchased at gun shows and those purchased online. I suppose gun shows could be defined easily enough. X number of people and Y number of guns within the same Z geographic area.
But what is an online purchase? A person already cannot buy privately from someone outside his home state without a dealer and a background check. So this must apply purely to in state purchases. How will that work? If I buy a gun from my brother, but email him the night before and say, “I’ll see you tomorrow at 10am, and bring a couple of boxes of ammo!” did I just make my sale subject to the Manchin-Toomey restriction?
Also, what of the possible amendments to the bill? You all know my stance, but I might trade background checks at gun shows in exchange for recognition of my carry permit nationwide: in D.C., Chicago, and NYC. Sounds like a reasonable compromise.
Thoughts? And again, can we try to keep it within the realm of the bill? Handgun bans and legal machine guns with no registration aren’t on the table.
So, it seems to me (non-lawyer, of course) that your purchase from your brother would not qualify, the transfer must originate from a listing on the Internet or in a publication.
I would love a nationwide carry permit.
So once again, the media is misleading. It’s not only online purchasers: it’s “publications” as well. So if someone advertises in the local “Ad Pad” or similar free circular you get at convenience stores, that’s subject to the law as well?
That’s my understanding, yes. The intent seems to be put private (non-dealer) transfers in which neither party knows the other through background checks. I can transfer to friends and family, but if it’s someone responding to a print or internet ad, it’ll have to go through a check.
Nothing, which is why I plan to set up a seasonally-appropriate beverage stand (lemonade or hot chocolate) just off the “curtilage” of all future gun shows in my state to ease in accomplishing Manchin-Toomey compliant transfers (if it passes, which it won’t) without the dealer transfer fee.
Again, not a lawyer, but by my reading, nothing stops them. The internet/publication part, t(1)b, includes “intent to transfer/acquire” language, but the gun show part, t(1)a, does not, it seems to apply strictly to the physical location at which the transfer takes place.
That said,
The vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding and don’t want criminals to have them, so if a customer at a gun show asked a seller to drive around the block so as to avoid the background check, most would refuse.
A court might hold that someone ducking the background check in that way qualifies as reasonable cause to believe that the person is prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms.
And further it seems that if I see my brother at a gun show, the one I grew up with, the one with no criminal or mental history (in fact, I don’t have a brother at all) we MUST drive off of the curtilage to transfer a gun to each other so as not to be subject to the bill.
We could sell to each other anywhere in the state without a check, tomorrow or the day before even at the very same location, but not right now since a gun show is going on.
I don’t necessary agree. There are a lot of people who don’t want their names on a federal form for buying a gun; could be for political or religious reasons. I wouldn’t call that a per se prohibited person. If they said other things, then I might agree.
Yeah, it’s really not that much of a change, really. It’s pretty narrowly tailored to affect a specific group of firearm transfers; it’s nothing close to universal background checks.
That said, I strongly support the bill’s measures to improve the NICS system.
I do too, but there is a federalism issue there. Can the feds mandate that the state turn over medical records to them? Who pays? Which records? What illnesses? What privacy concerns?
+1 to this. If potential purchaser says, “Do you mind if we go across the street so that this sale doesn’t get added to the evil ATF gun registry and the black helicopters don’t come to get us both once Hillary Clinton is elected?” then I don’t see a reasonable belief that you’re selling to a prohibited person. If, on the other hand, he says, “Hey, look, I’d love to buy your gun, and I’d pay double, but I can’t pass a background check because my good-for-nothing ex-wife lied and told the judge I beat her, so we’d have to go to the Walmart parking lot to make the exchange,” then you probably do have evidence of a reasonable belief.
is a nice addition to the code, but simply confirms what most legal scholars believe is implicit in the current language anyways. I guess some poor schmo wouldn’t have to be the (easy) test case if the law passed, but we need more than that for gun owners to support it. It’s weak sauce.
That makes sense as well, just throwing out the possibility that a court might rule otherwise. I’m not informed as to the current case law of that part of the GCA; and that might not be relevant anyway, as if I’m not mistaken Manchin-Toomey would be the first federal law to require a background check when neither party to the transfer is a license holder.
The answer appears to be “no”. The incentive to create and implement an improvement plan is withholding of federal grants. From the bill:
Federal taxpayers. From the bill:
After reading the bill, it doesn’t appear to make any changes there, so it’s the same criteria as it’s always been under the GCA:
Again, seems to be the same as under the GCA. Though the bill does say:
So if a newspaper runs a print-only classified ad; “gun for sale, call XXX-XXX-XXXX” I can buy it legally, but if they run the same ad online I need a background check?
My neighbor can sell me a gun at his garage sale with no background check, but if I see him at a gun show with the same gun, I need a government check to complete the sale? Why? I’m still me, he’s still him, and it’s the same gun.
These scenarios will soon be known as the “print ad loophole” and the “garage sale loophole”. Once they’re “closed”, there will be others. Guaranteed. I expect to see the “guy you knew for 30 years loophole”, the “your son’s 16th birthday loophole” and the “your own father” loophole. This won’t stop until you can’t buy a single-shot .22 from your own wife without a government approved DNA check, and maybe not even then.
If you ask most people what constitutes “online sales” of guns, you’ll find they’re under the impression that you can buy a gun on the internet and have it shipped to your house. More work from the intentionally deceitful anti-gun crowd.
The bill refers to listings on the Internet or in publications, so you’d need the background check for both.
Correct. Why? Because the law can’t reasonably have exceptions for if you know a guy or not, how would you implement that in a statute?
California already requires a background check for all transfers, so it’s not unheard of.
Right, and that’s been illegal since 1968. This bill doesn’t affect interstate transfers, it just applies some of the GCA to some intrastate transfers.
This is a manifestation of the general issue that people on the gun-rights side tend to be much more informed about guns and gun laws than people on the gun-control side or those in the middle.
I don’t know, I like and support this bill. We have all the gun control we need, if it’s enforced. Incentivizing and funding states to actually supply data to the NICS is a good thing. As a law-abiding, responsible gun owner, I want to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally incompetent, without costing me my rights. The NICS system achieves that, if it can be run competently.
Does anyone think that the Manchin Toomey bill gets past the house even if it gets past the senate?
It seems to me that there are a lot of conservative Democrats in the House that practically HAVE to vote against gun control right now (in part, because of how badly the gun control side of the debate has flubbed things).
My (D) representative here in Utah will vote against it if he wants to continue his political career. It’s dead in the House. It might die in the Senate. The liberals’ own ignorance killed any chance of gun control. Too much (“but then the clips will be all used up” or “Lanza used a full-auto weapon” or “anti-gun legislation”). Next time you guys want to give it a try, why don’t you start by learning what the hell you’re talking about (speaking to D’s generally, not Damuri directly)?
ETA: which part of it is a “sensible bill” in your eyes? Reid’s bill? Feinstein’s AWB? Schumer’s standard-capacity mag ban? Manchin-Toomey’s background-check expansion?