Senate Passes NICS Improvement Act

[JohnBT]

"After the repeal of Prohibition, Ness was transfered to the Treasury Department's Alcohol Tax Unit, arriving in Cleveland in 1934 as the head of the Northeast Ohio unit."

Then he became public safety director. But the point is, after Prohibition there was a great deal to do - tax alcohol.

Every picture I've ever seen of him has him wearing a suit and tie. I'd bet he wore wingtips.

JBT

 

[Robert Hairless]

I never thought about Eliot Ness's shoes, John. Have I ignored another key piece of evidence? To put it another way, have I once again ignored the heel and pursued the sole?

 

[gc70]

Eliot Ness did not always wear a suit and tie... or wingtips, as shown in this photo from the Cleveland Memory Collection.

 

[JohnBT]

Playing handball with gloves? The old softy.

 

[DCoats]

Seems like a win for gun-owners in my mind. Is a background check in itself an unconstitutional infringement on the RKBA? Probably. But since we already have the NICS, this bill would seem to improve it and expand and restore inappropriately denied gun rights, especially to veterans. I would rather have the improved NICS than the previous version. As a previous poster stated "There are two ways to fix a piece of legislation in our country. The quick way and the agonizingly slow way. The quick way is Revolution. We're not at that point yet, and I hope we never come to it, because our Founding Fathers' vision might not survive it. The slow way is to work through the system to remove, or rewrite the bad legislation. To do this, we only have to be dilligent, alert, and most importantly, be the voice of reason. Fighting knee-jerk emotionalism with fact is the best way to make people understand our side."

+1 and way to take the high road.


NRA and Brady agree, while GOA and VPC are angry. That means that there is some good, and some bad in this bill. But all in all, I'm glad that the NRA had their input in this bill that would have passed regardless.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

You gotta' remember that some of us, if not all of us, must take a firm stand on our constitutionally protected right(s) lest our rights be whittled down to nothing.

The NRA could have done just as much to trim and reform this bill without expressing outright support for it. It "angered" many of us - myself included.

Woody

 

[JohnBT]

Good gosh man, the NRA practically rewrote the original bill. Go back and read the original bill, or the one from the year before, or the year before that, etc.

Let's not go through this again. It didn't sink in the last time and I don't know what it's going to take to get you to understand that the bill underwent a major "trim and reform" as you put it.

John

 

[TexasRifleman]

It didn't sink in the last time and I don't know what it's going to take to get you to understand

They are only going to understand what GOA tells them, that's pretty clear by now.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

JohnBT and TexasRifleman

Just so you know, I do not belong to the GOA, do not support the organization, nor do I subscribe to any of their news letters or e-mails. The only two gun organizations I belong to are the NRA and the Oklahoma Rifle Association.

Some of us can actually think for ourselves and do not need to receive marching orders from some organization. Some of us actually endeavor to speak our minds to the "leaders" of these organizations in order to influence and maybe set them back on the path to protecting and securing our Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

You assume too much. Besides, DCoats brought it back up, not me.

Why don't any of you support and advocate the permanent incarceration or execution of proven violent criminals, institutionalization of the mentally unstable(those who cannot be trusted with any weapon) and the guardianship of minors? It is, after all, why we have the NICS system in the first place - so that we can prove we're not one of the violent or irresponsible people that those in government let back out on the streets and won't take responsibility for protecting us from.

The NICS doesn't work. Violent criminals still obtain weapons - including firearms - and perpetrate their crimes. All that has been accomplished by the NICS and any other gun control law is the infringement of our rights, back door registration, and certain classes of arms priced well beyond the budget of the average law abiding citizen.

That's reality, my friends. All the rest is twaddle filtered through a bovine sphincter.

Woody

Our government was designed by our Founding Fathers to fit within the framework of our rights and not vise versa. Any other "interpretation" of the Constitution is either through ignorance or is deliberately subversive. B.E. Wood

 

[Phil Lee]

Much of what passed for discourse on this subject is propaganda rather than factual analysis and information. For example, TexasRifleman in his 4/6 9:55 comment uses a granfalloon propaganda technique by creating a false sense of we (NRA backers) and they (unthinking dupes of GOA). It is amazing how often this technique is used to cut off thinking on these pages.

Although Kurt Vonnegut is credited with the term "granfalloon," the technique predates his label by many years (the Nazis use the label "Jews" to create a we-versus-they attitude in the 1920's).

While the NRA prevailed in getting HR2640 passed, it is far from settled whether this bill is good for the right to keep and bear arms or bad for it. The first threshold of settled opinion won't be reached for a year or two as we see whether the HR2640 appeals process delivers real justice to those unfairly denied their right to arms (i.e., those improperly listing on NICS for reasons of mental illness or those "cured" of any mental illness that caused them to be denied their right to arms at one time).