Maybe The Senate is Listening to Gunbloggers

No word on the nuts and bolts, but this sounds like what gunbloggers have been talking about for years:

According to the sources, Senator Joe Manchin — who has an “A” rating from the NRA and is trying to win GOP support for the proposal along with Chuck Schumer — has privately offered Coburn a deal that looks something like this, according to the sources: All private sales would get background checks (except family members). All background checks done on private sales that are done through a commercial venue — say, via a gun clearinghouse Web site like ArmsList.com or at a gun show — would see their records kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer.

But — and this is the compromise part — all private sales not done through a commercial venue would get a background check but a record would not be kept. This would mean records wouldn’t be kept for acquaintance-to-acquaintance or friend-to-friend sales.

Despite Coburn’s continued opposition to record keeping, and despite suggestions that there is an impasse, talks remain ongoing, and compromise remains at least possible.

Again this article doesn’t say HOW this no-records background check will be conducted, but this is a true compromise bloggers have been talking about for a while. Of course I’m always wary of a government-controlled background system, as it can simply be shut down for “maintenance” and stop all gun commerce in America, still background checks keep you from accidentally doing a criminal sale, and I wonder if such a law will get less-informed people to realize just how foolish some of the crimes that cause one to become a “prohibited person”.

Interesting to see where this goes going forward. If serious talks of taking NICS checks out of the hands of the FFLs happens it will be interesting to see the opposition from the anti-rights groups. Why? Because they don’t care about background checks, that’s just the carrot at the end of the stick, what they want is registration for a future confiscation.