How Laws Work

Thought I’d share this very telling twitter exchange.

Everygun is more-than-likely a Joyce Shill (No idea what her real identity is, but if she isn’t she’d be the first civilian regularly followed and re-tweeted by the Big Dogs of Joyce) who’s quite single-minded at her pursuit to ban private sales of firearms.

Now their claimed motive is a valid one. We have a lot of violent crime in America, and about half of those crimes are committed with guns (no candles for the less, the antis only want the right victims), of this fraction of violent crime, the vast majority is drug or gang related. So we’re talking convicted felons, people on parole, people with warrants for crimes, drug addicts, and minor children who have already taken the career as a criminal.

This is nothing new, and there have always been various laws on the state and local level to help prevent this. Some of them worked, most of them just kept the criminals who bribed the police or politicians in guns, and kept poor people, and people of the wrong skin color defenseless.

In 1968 after the Assassination of John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr, the Gun Control Act was passed. Like all prominent gun control laws, this law would not have prevented the crimes showcased for the bill. (This is why we call the antis “Blood Dancers”, victims are ONLY useful to them for furthering an agenda, they could care less about preventing further crime) The GCA made it illegal to sell guns to Felons, addicts, and people with warrants or orders of protection against them, and it banned people with such convictions from even owning or using guns. To buy a gun you needed to go to a licensed dealer (also created by the GCA) and fill out a form under penalty of perjury that you were an upstanding person.

I like to satirize the antis circular logic I like to say: “If guns were as illegal as murder, nobody would be murdered with guns!” This little fallacy shows the issue with the law. If you’re a criminal and you want a gun despite one being a crime for you to posses, you probably WANT one a nefarious reason. If these penalties don’t dissuade you, why would lying on the FFL paperwork?

So the system was updated after the attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinkley (BTW Hinkley WAS crazy, but had yet to be committed, so he legally acquired and owned his gun…consistent!) the “Brady Bill” was signed into law named after Jim Brady who was also wounded in the attack. This meant that not only did you need to do the paperwork but the police were going to check your work for validity. First this was done via Mail, today by electronic background check.

You’ll note that nothing has changed. While the Brady Center claims 1.9 Million “Criminals” have been stopped, most of those numbers are actually false positives, and the people stopped still get their gun, and go on to commit no crimes. The Antis say its because you can still buy and sell guns privately.

Here in Mass we go one better, all “private sales” are done through the state, I talked about it here in the story of Eleanor, so everybody is checked every time they buy or sell a gun…Just like the Antis want! (Well I suspect the antis want something like Mexico or DC where there is only ONE shop that needs to be used for all lawful commerce)

Except what stopped us from giving the state the finger and just exchanging cash and guns? Fear of the law. I’m a gun collector and avid shooter. I commit a felony, I lose my collection and my hobby!

But what if I was a drug dealer? A Gang Enforcer? A Pimp? The law is already after me for my lively hood, what’s one more felony?

Heck Criminals don’t even need to exclusively deal in stolen guns! Criminals just hire friends and girlfriends with clean backgrounds to buy guns legally from shops, then illegally transfer them! Heck in one of the more famous Blood-Dancing Massacres, Columbine, three of the guns used were bought in a straw buy from legal dealers. Robyn Anderson illegally gave the guns to the killers who were underage and felons, and she was never charged with a crime!

Again they PRETEND to be out to stop criminals, but really they’re just concerned with harassing and fining lawful people. Further they know about Mexico and Washington DC! In Mexico to legally buy a gun you need to go into an Army base and go through metal detectors and searches, and this is in Mexico City! Mexico is a big country! You may need to book AIRFARE just to buy a gun! In DC there is just one shop that will sell to private citizens…they closed for a short while when moving! While that shop was closed you couldn’t buy, or sell a gun in the District! Its open again now, but when it first closed it was unclear when or if it would open again! You see that’s the ONE and ONLY license they’ll issue in DC. A Bunch of people offered to open shops but were denied by the District.

You see the antis complain about this injustice?

How about when Massachusetts lost their contract with the printer of the FA-10 transfer forms? (Livejournal! Blast from the past!!)

The forms were ALWAYS in short supply, and when they stopped printing them, Private sale suddenly became illegal without a law being passed! The state did eventually run a stopgap and switched to the online form, but again did you hear the antis complain? The FA-10 was no less safe than a dealer background check…the difference was that the dealers often charge $20-$50 for the transfer (DC charges $150!).

What they say, and what they want are NOT the same thing! Remember that!