Toome/Manchin Bill & Remmington

I am very interested in what you all think about the SAF and Remmington’s decisions as of late.

I am trying to play catch up here and feel like I don’t have enough background to understand it all.

1.  The Toome/Manchin/Schumer gun control bill amendment was apparently written by a gun-rights organization

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As a shocker, the Toome/Manchin/Schumer amendment to a gun-control bill in Congress was written by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA)!

Alan Gottlieb, with CCRKBA, told a group of gun owners at a meeting that his organization wrote the bill and it has a lot of improvements to current law that are good for gun owners.  In fact, CCRKBA actually ENDORSES the bill (http://tinyurl.com/cea4le4).  HOWEVER, VCDL continues to OPPOSE that bill.

The bill does indeed offer some improvements to current law:

* Provides a felony penalty for anybody who attempts to make a gun registration database (currently such a thing is illegal, but there is no penalty)

*  Allows handgun to be purchased in all 50 states, and not in just the state where the purchaser resides

*  Clarifies the federal peaceful journey law to allow a person to stop at a hotel, eat a meal, get gasoline, etc. while traveling across a gun-unfriendly state

*  Provides criminal and civil protections for private sellers whose sale was run through a background check

*  Provides a method for protecting veterans from having their gun rights removed without proper adjudication

While those items are indeed good, the serious problems with the bill comes in the area of requiring background checks for all guns sold at gun shows or for guns that are advertised either in a “publication” or on the internet.  While selling a gun or giving a gun to a family member would be allowed without a background check, selling a gun to anybody else would become almost impossible:

1.  If you sell a gun at a gun show, then a background check MUST be done.  There is no requirement in the bill, however, that a dealer would be available to run the background check!  So it would be quite possible that private sales at gun shows would not be possible at all if no dealer agreed to run the background check.  In fact, based on the definition of a gun show as having 75 or more guns for sale, a large flea market might qualify as a “gun show” because of a lot of small private sellers, with NO FFL present at the show to run background checks.  In that case NO guns could be legally sold at the flea market at all, wasting everyone’s time.  And how would a person know if there were 75 or more guns at the flea market or not?  Talk about a trap to turn good people into felons!

2.  If you say you have a gun for sale and either list it on the internet or post something about it in a “publication,” then the gun MUST be sold through a dealer at that point.  If the buyer posts in either place that he is looking for a gun, the gun he purchases will also require a background check.  The only way to sell a gun to a non-family member is if you are NOT at a gun show and never make mention of wanting to sell the gun on the internet or in any kind of publication.  Basically, you would have to do it by word of mouth only.  Good luck with that!  What are you going to do – walk down a street and ask everyone you pass if they want to buy a gun from you?

3. While Alan claims that this bill would in no way lead to a registry, the data would be there for the taking, since the sale would be on a form 4473 kept by the dealer.  If you didn’t sell through a dealer, the feds would know they only have to look to your family members to find the gun, since they would be the only people really exempt from the background check.

There is no doubt that this bill would do serious harm to gun shows and to private sales.  You could find yourself at a gun show unable to sell your gun because no dealer will run the background check.  You might not be able to sell your gun at a large flee market because there are no dealers in attendance to run the check.  Make a mistake in how you sell that gun, for example mentioning it in an email but not selling it with a background check, and you can become a felon.

This is simply not the time for ANY gun bills to be considered in Congress, because they can be hijacked and made into anti-gun bills.  Or, in this bill’s case, it already has some serious problems that can be made even worse.  Surely, no one is really stupid enough to trust Senator Chuck Schumer when it comes to guns?

VCDL continues to OPPOSE ALL gun control bills in Congress.  Sadly, this bill only makes our job harder at a time when Bloomberg and his illegal mayors are about to go on another offensive against our gun rights.

Here is the text of the bill:

http://tinyurl.com/c4r6pdo

Here is video of Alan explaining the bill:

http://tinyurl.com/c3ro553

Alan’s faith in background checks, and in Chuck Schumer, is misplaced and this bill must be defeated.  Criminals will continue to have no problems getting guns with or without background checks.  It’s the rest of us who will have lost our right to sell or buy guns from a private sale without Big Brother’s approval.  That Big Brother, BTW, is the same Big Brother who provided guns to the Mexican cartels in Fast and Furious and tried to blame innocent gun dealers.

12 thoughts on “Toome/Manchin Bill & Remmington

  1. I lean toward endorsing the M-T amendment because of the perks gun owners received. I strongly suggest that people read the bill and watch the video without the influence of commentary from those who both like the amendment and hate it. Keep an open mind. Bar your person biases from your thoughts as you study it. Then make your own independent, well-informed decision whether you support the M-T amendment or not.

    In other words, don’t let anyone else do the thinking for you and tell you how you should react.

    • “…don’t let anyone else do the thinking for you and tell you how you should react….”

      OK, I won’t. How does this sound…

      “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed…”

      Is there something about that which makes it so difficult to understand? Like, is ‘shall not’ something a two year old doesn’t know? How about ‘the right of the people’. Is that some foreign language in need of an interpreter?

      Any- repeat, A-N-Y- law regarding firearms is an infringement.
      Any- repeat, A-N-Y- time there’s a ‘compromise’ on a gun bill, what does the other side surrender in the ‘compromise’? Oh, ‘s’cuse me: the only ones who need to compromise are those who lose. Forgot about that.

      So far as I’m concerned, not one more inch. Not even a fraction of an inch. I will not surrender my rights to anything just because some dipwads write some words and some other dipwads think are a good thing. Especially people like Allan Gottlieb.

      AGirl- begging forgivness for this rant, but it needs to be said. We’ve surrendered more than we should have.

  2. Yes, good advice. I did read the bill and my very first reaction was not to support it. I do not like the idea of any kind of “background” check and I don’t trust the government, especially this administration. It always feels like there is a trick. There are some positives for sure, but that is kind of their game. Dangle something pretty and then wack you up side the head.

    My questioning came in when SAF supported it. I thought maybe my lack of knowledge on most thing is coloring my decision. Perhaps I am reacting out of ignorance which is why I posted the post.

  3. One thing I have learned over the decades (yep, it sounds better in decade count) is that I like to hear others interpretation of bills & laws. A lawyer is trained to read differently than layman & they can find problems we can not. In some of the proposals, it is argued to “keep the guns away from the criminals”. Reality is that the proposal/law can be interpreted many different ways, if it is written incorrectly.
    I like to read the exact text, but I also like to read others interpretations. I always read something that I hadn’t thought about.

    I especially want to read what a pro-gun lawyer’s opinion of interpretation.

  4. The Toomey sellout bill would make it nearly impossible to sell a gun without using a gundealer. It would effectively register all gun sales. If anyone believes the Justice Dept is going to prosecute or investigate itself you only have to look at operation Fast & Furious to see how improbable that is..

  5. I don’t believe that Gottlieb and the CCRKBA have sold us out.
    I just don’t believe it’s in his nature.

  6. Heh, I guess I will never understand the naivete of some people. Look…..take into consideration all the BS that has been put out be some members of Congress. Take into consideration the duplicity of the Department of Justice. Take into consideration the phoneyness of the present administration…… and you expect there is no deceit in this bill????? Bottom line, and history will bear this out….once the ability to be armed is removed from a nation’s citizens tyranny follows. Don’t be fooled by some pious sounding politician…..PLEASE!

  7. I have some friends in the SAF office. Initially when I read the amendment I figured someone had a hand in it. That said, I lost a little faith when the holes were pointed out yesterday that I had missed.

    I chatted with a friend in the SAF office last night. They are aware and there are changes that will be required for the SAF/CCKRBA to continue support. Remember he had a hand in getting stuff in there, he didn’t write it and you can be our enemies scratched stuff out. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those “holes” were created by our enemies.

    The main statement was, “Mr. Gottlieb has a game plan.” As I’ve said before, that man plays political chess like no other. I cannot go into all of the conversation, the short of it was my faith was restored.

    • Here in Oregon, not much is changed by this bill: background checks are required for all firearm purchases at all gun shows – with the definition of “gun show” being “an event at which more than 25 firearms are on site and available for transfer” (ORS 166.432) – but private sales at places other than gun shows are legal.

      That said, I read the full text, and my initial opinion generally matches Dave Kopel’s, wherein there’s enough … call them “areas of concern” … to make me not want to support this bill. I don’t like the vagueness of the traveler “protections”, or the definition of “Internet sales” (advertising counts, but “advertising” is not defined). I don’t like the “Commission on Mass Violence”, which – even with the restrictions on who can/would be included – could be used as a think-tank on further gun restrictions, all “common-sense” and For The Children(TM), of course. I don’t like the removal of HIPAA protections from medical records, to be included in NICS.

      I do, however, like the “findings” section – including the repeated prohibition of a federal registry – but it lacks any real force of law. I do like the attempt to protect the rights of veterans and active military personnel.

      I’m mixed about the expansion of NICS and the incentives to states to provide more complete records. We’ve already demonstrated that criminals rarely attempt to purchase guns at stores and shows, but if they want to fund the states, they can knock themselves out.

      But, even with all there is to not like, Barron, your opinion is one I generally also trust. Alan Gottlieb has shown himself to be a genius at political chess-maneuvering so I’m willing to give him the benefit of doubt, but I sincerely hope he’s not being out-played. Even Garry Kasparov loses sometimes, and we can’t afford to give any ground.

  8. The initial input will not resemble the bill that ends up getting voted on… We need to watch the amendments and what language gets changed… And lawyers WILL read it differently than we will!!!

  9. The problem with these “carrots” added by “pro-gun” organizations (NRA), is that they are a diversion thrown in to get ill-informed and under-informed citizens to support such an amendment. Look at who gets to oversee all of the gun culture in the country under such a bill. The Feds. State oversight and rights get chipped away a little more. The Senate cannot pass a bill that would create a registry or confiscate guns now, but they can slowly take more oversight, control, and power from the states. Someday, it will be easy for the Feds to implement a registry and then confiscate guns from Americans. That is, unless we fight like hell to keep our Constitutionally protected rights.

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