Tuesday, January 05, 2016

President Vs. Those Baaaad Guns

     So far, the score is zero and the audience -- other than ABCNNBCBS and their piping offspring -- is having trouble staying awake.

     The Administration's big-chance, don't-mess-it-up Executive Order on guns says, "What you've been doing?  Yeah, continue to do that." It didn't even make anything illegaller.

     They are going to do what crazy old Uncle Wayne LaPierre keeps saying at press conferences: enforce the laws already on the books.  How crazy does he look now?

     There's an Indy 1500 Gun Show coming up* weekend after next and it will be interesting to see the effect of the "And this time, we're serious!" Executive Order on attendance and on the two or three multi-table hobby traders I see at the shows.

     The frog-boiling side of this goes back to the Clinton-era crackdown on "kitchen table gun dealers," in which Federal Firearms Licensees who did not have a brick-and-mortar business establishment found themselves getting ratted out to zoning boards and otherwise having their business activities made more difficult.  This shut down a lot of the small-time dealers, who were (among other things) going to gun shows and running Federal background checks on prospective buyers as required of FFLs no matter the venue in which they are trading; they got out of the business, scaled way back and stopped turning a profit, and/or went with Collector Curio & Relic FFLs, a hobbyist-level license.  This was hailed as a great victory over the Forces of Evil.

     It's a new day and the Administration wanted a new great Victory.  Knowing the media know slightly less about firearms laws than pigs,† they went with a restatement of existing law and a square-jawed resolve to go enforce the laws already passed.  Oh, and they're planning to expand the FBI background check center to a 24/7 operation.  On cue, the Major Media are cheering their bold new steps...marching in place.

     All right, then, get to it.

     Throw us back into that briar patch!
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* This morning, McAfee Site Advisor has blocked www.indy1500.com: "High Risk: Weapons, Malicious Site."  Yeah, there's malice, all right -- on the part of whoever flagged it, unless the Indy 1500 site has been hacked, which I doubt.

† You can read that sentence two ways.  They're both correctly descriptive.

8 comments:

Countglockula said...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Move along folks, nothing to see here...

Raz

rickn8or said...

Is Teh iWon going to reverse the Clinton-era "Kitchen Table Dealer" purge ya think? (Keep in mind the Obamas and the Clintons are not the best of friends.)

I'd happily trade my C&R for an 01, except for that zoning ordnance thing.

Looking to see if there is going to be a knee-jerk spike in gun an ammo prices for the next couple of weeks...

batchainpuller said...

If background checks are so important, then why are individuals prohibited from running checks on themselves?
(the system returns a simple "approved" or "denied" and requires no description of the firearm)
How easy would it be to run your own computer check, print out a certificate and present it with your government picture ID to your favorite uncle/occasional gun seller? You could voluntarily, you know, show that you were legal to own a firearm and your uncle/occasional gun seller could feel all warm and fuzzy about not selling to a crazy, drug addicted felon.
I'm sure we could spiff up the FBI computer system with Obama's $500 million request so that it works as good as the Obamacare system..
I guess this would be too easy and empowering.

rickn8or said...

batchain, or how about a Federal pre-approved Good-Guy ID that was permanant; to be all-inclusive, we could call it a "Firearm Owner ID" card. This could be used for all transactions and as a carry permit.

The only downside is that it gives the Federales a handy-dandy list of gun owners, and by linking it to purchase records an even handy-dandier list of gun owners and firearms and ammo inventories...

Forget I said anything.

Roberta X said...

So, when did you guys get elected to Congress?

Please don't make the mistake of assuming this exercise is anything but sending fell-good signals to the base. The man even spoke of the "gun show loophole" as if such a thing existed.

rickn8or said...

I can't run for Congress Roberta; I promised Mother I wouldn't deal in sleazy enterprise.

But a dog-and-pony show for sure. Just hope it doesn't spur Congress to "do something to cover our phoney-baloney election-year butts" and pass something beyond Barry's wildest dreams.

Roberta X said...

Doesn't the GOP still hold the majority in Congress? This is one of the times when the knee-jerk reactions of the two parties to one another can pay off for Us Common Citizens: if one side of for something, the other is against it.

batchainpuller said...

I forgot to get elected to Congress, but I have the ear of someone in the NRA-ILA and we know that they make Congress dance like trained monkeys. So, wish me luck. ;-)