Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy want some of the nation’s largest sporting goods stores to wait for the FBI to complete background checks on gun purchasers in all cases – and hope customers boycott those stores if they don’t.
Blumenthal and Murphy have signed letters to Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and EZ Pawn asking them to voluntarily close a what they call a loophole in the federal background check law. This “default to proceed” provision allows retailers to sell an applicant a gun if the FBI has not responded to a background check request within 72 hours.
Honestly I hope the stores tell them to fuck off. It’s not like these turds own guns, hunt, or even know how to bait a hook (let alone tie one), nor does any major amount of their constituency, so I doubt there are many Blumenthal or Murphy bumper stickers in your local Cabella’s or Bass Pro. Never heard of EZ Pawn, but I assume they are a pawn shop chain that deals in guns. Yeah “Progressives” are icked out by Pawn shops, and generally don’t believe in loans and would rather acquire cash through government subsidy.
The issue of the three-day waiting period is being debated because **REDACTED**, who is accused of killing nine people at a black church in Charleston, S.C., last month, was able to purchase the gun used in the attack only because the FBI needed more than three days to investigate his criminal record. **REDACTED** had been recently arrested.
Of course what they don’t talk about is how the killer had the gun for WEEKS before the murders. So maybe, rather than harassing law-abiding American Companies, maybe we should tell the FBI to do their fucking job???
I fully expect Cabela’s and Bass Pro to tell them to pound sand.
Those chains know where their bread and butter comes from; they know who their customers are and what their customers want. They also know that the people asking them to not sell guns would never spend money in their stores even if they complied.
It’s a very simple calculation: someone is demanding they give up a substantial part of their revenue, but is offering nothing in return. The only proper answer is, “Hell, No!”
Blumenthal and Murphy are peddling the “perfectability of man” idea that you hear very often at universities. If only, the salesmen for this bullshit idea goes, we had the right laws (intrusive, suffocating liberal democracy), the right economic structures, (Bolshevism), the right racial-nationalist ideas (Fascism-Nazism), why everything would be pretty damned peachy. The Founding Fathers weren’t that stupid.
I don’t give a fig who’s buying a firearm now at my local Gander Mountain, or informally through private sales. I hope the outfits who’ve been threatened by Blumenthal and Murphy strike back.
Cabela’s and Bass Pro should be very careful here. They don’t want to end up going under like Starbucks did under that oppressive weight of an anti-gun boycott. It would be even worse for them, since their customer base is so heavily reliant on latte sipping liberals, while Starbucks caters more towards conservative good ol boys.
It’s like me threatening Victoria’s Secrets (as a male) that I will not be buying any of their fabulous bras and panties if they do not clean up their catalog.
A right delayed is a right denied. What if I need that firearm right now for self defense? This is not the 1960s anymore, so with instantaneous checking the 3 day period is excessive and highlights that the system is defective.
We need the BIDS system, not NICS to reduce abuse and get the government out of the business of tracking who is buying firearms (which they do, just ask the NSA).