Triple Threat: Common Sense measures

Obviously everyone is all worked up about Dianne Feinstein's modern weapons ban, and about impending magazine capacity bans.

There's another threat out there too:  "reasonable, common sense gun control."  Rep Jim Moran (D-VA) is putting forward legislation to attack many issues.  From The Hill:

• 74 percent of NRA members support criminal background checks on all potential gun buyers — as opposed to current law, which requires background checks only on those who buy from licensed gun dealers;

So this closes the "private sale loophole."  There are many issues here.  First is the inconvenience:  why should I have to go to an FFL and pay money to transfer a firearm to a family member or friend?  The other issue is generating a 4473 for every transaction.  This could be used as a back door registry in the future.  I would be ok with something that let me do a more robust background check in a private sale, like hitting NICS, but the paper trail is unacceptable.

• 79 percent of NRA members back requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees;

Basically a way to make life yet more difficult for FFLs.  It is already a felony for a prohibited person to touch guns or ammo, even if its their job.  Why do we need to make it triple plus illegal?  The devil is in the details, and what do you think the odds of the new "background check" involving a time consuming, expensive, invasive process are going to be?  What happens when ATF takes six month to process the "annual employee check" paperwork and a store lacks staff to keep the store open?

• 71 percent of NRA members would bar those on the FBI's terrorist watch-list from buying and owning guns;

I bet if you asked NRA members the question differently they'd respond differently.  Let's poll this:  "Do you support allowing attorney general Eric Holder, who oversaw a program arming the Mexican Drug Cartels with thousands of weapons and strongly opposes private firearms ownership, to place any American citizen on a secret list with no due process or appeals options that would make them a prohibited person?"

The ban on possession with no due process is VERY troubling.  What happens if the government puts you on the secret terrorist watchlist accidentally -- as has happened to numerous people, including the late Sens Ted Stevens & Ted Kennedy -- and you already own guns.  How do you find out that you are now a prohibited person in possession?  Will your first warning be when a SWAT team shoots your dog and crashes through your door to execute a no-knock warrant?  I don't know how they could notify you that you're now on a secret watchlist any other way (are we going to mail postcards to terrorists letting them know to start running?).

• 64 percent of NRA members support requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms.

Again, links to closing the private sales loophole.  They can't have future registration and confiscation if people can claim to have sold or lost their firearms without a paper trail.  The fact that this could well criminalize conduct of actual victims who have their property stolen is just a bonus feature.

Moran's package would institute all those changes, while also establishing tougher standards for gun owners wishing to get concealed carry permits, including new age and safety-training mandates.

National CWP standards?  Really?  That's a shitty idea.  What about the almost 10% of states that have Constitutional Carry?

Unless this idea is in the context of disciplining the militia with broad training standards that apply to all military aged males (and maybe women too, it is the 21st century and all) this idea is intended to create barriers to entry before exercising a specifically enumerated Constitutional right.  Does Rep Moran intend to require me to get mandatory training before I can blog or pray as well?

It is necessary to educate even folks on our side of the issue why it is a bad idea to allow Eric Holder to declare you a felon overnight or why it is a bad idea to force everyone to record every firearms transaction on a 4473 (*cough* Red Dawn-style backdoor registry).

Sadly these sorts of things are pretty likely to pass, much more so than the outright bans.  They are esoteric, technical, and sound eminently reasonable.