Toomey-Manchin question

[Blackstone]

My understanding is that the Toomey-Manchin amendment was to extend background checks to private sales where the seller advertised. It leaves transactions between friends and family alone. Here are my thoughts and ponderings:

1) Is this so unreasonable? Is there not some concern that you could be selling your gun to a felon or a mentally unstable person? I know in many states with CCPs, sellers will often ask to see the buyer's CCP as a sort of background check.

2) However, these expanded background checks will be virtually impossible to enforce without creating a registry. There is no way for a police officer verify if you underwent a background check, unless they knew the exact details of the gun that was purchased - serial number, model, etc....

So with assumption that most private sellers do not want their guns to fall into the wrong hands, but without mandating compulsory background checks, what about having a voluntary background check system? To my limited knowledge, only FFLs have access to the NICS system. What if that could be opened to the public? But then there's the question of how it would be operated, as the number of enquiries would increase. I guess you could go through a FFL but I assume that would involve fees, and I suppose you can do that already.

If I've gotten anything wrong, please correct and educate me

 

[ngnrd]

How 'bout we just keep individuals that are known to be a danger to society away from dangerous weapons and stop trying to justify government regulation of the private sale of lawfully possessed goods .... m'kay?

 

[316SS]

My understanding is that the Toomey-Manchin amendment was to extend background checks to private sales where the seller advertised. It leaves transactions between friends and family alone. Here are my thoughts and ponderings:

1) Is this so unreasonable? Is there not some concern that you could be selling your gun to a felon or a mentally unstable person? I know in many states with CCPs, sellers will often ask to see the buyer's CCP as a sort of background check.

Prior restraint is a poor model for reducing violent crime, because it requires a strict authoritarian police state to be effective.

We cannot live in a free society and prevent bad actors from acquiring guns. We can stop infringing on people's right to self defense and stop creating (legally owned) gun-free killing zones. Mass killings simply do not happen where significant numbers of citizens go armed.

 

[HankR]

How 'bout we just keep individuals that are known to be a danger to society away from dangerous weapons and stop trying to justify government regulation of the private sale of lawfully possessed goods .... m'kay?

Jails and prisons would make good places to keep them. Dangerous folks on the inside, guns, knives, gasoline, matches, cars, etc on the outside. I wonder if anybody has ever tried this?

 

[DSling]

Jails and prisons would make good places to keep them. Dangerous folks on the inside, guns, knives, gasoline, matches, cars, etc on the outside. I wonder if anybody has ever tried this?

Except in the French prison where the prisoner used sticks of TNT to blast his way out.

Justifying my means with their end.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

You should read the thread on the text of the Coburn Amendment. He proposed something closer to what you suggest; but Scumer and the others refused to accept it because it did not create the level of recordkeeping they wanted.

 

[wgp]

I read the proposal and while reading it thought it was not too bad. But on reflection, I realized that it was one more law that would impose more restrictions, and make more things illegal, but still would not stop the wrong people from getting the gun. Remember I said stop them, not just make them even more illegal.

Beyond that, any expansion of background checks is clearly a first-cousin of registration and the government has amply demonstrated that it will not prosecute those who offend under the present NICS background check system.

We've all heard the saying that the definition of insanity is continuing to do something that does not work but expecting it to be different this time -- perhaps it's even more insane to take something that does not work and make it even more intrusive and onerous and even then think the outcome will be different.