Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:46 am

Seth wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Seth wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:YAY! Well-armed police managed to take out someone that should never have been judged fit to carry any kind of firearm in the first place! But checks on buying gnus is WRONG!!1!! :lay:
Er, problem is gun checks don't prevent criminals from buying guns because they don't buy guns from gun stores. Duh.

...or armored vans.
No. But they might prevent people with a history of mental illness, spousal abuse, alcohol issues, etc. from getting hold of them. Not to mention those too stupid to keep their children away from the gnus in their handbags!
Um, evidently not, since this guy was prohibited from possessing guns or ammunition because of three domestic violence convictions already. You see, a history in any of the categories you mention already disqualify a person from possessing a gun in the US. It's been that way since 1968.
But these only prevent that person from buying a gnu in a shop, not from a third-party. ie. his mate down the pub. It would be quite legal for him to do that, wouldn't it?
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:49 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Seth wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Seth wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:YAY! Well-armed police managed to take out someone that should never have been judged fit to carry any kind of firearm in the first place! But checks on buying gnus is WRONG!!1!! :lay:
Er, problem is gun checks don't prevent criminals from buying guns because they don't buy guns from gun stores. Duh.

...or armored vans.
No. But they might prevent people with a history of mental illness, spousal abuse, alcohol issues, etc. from getting hold of them. Not to mention those too stupid to keep their children away from the gnus in their handbags!
Um, evidently not, since this guy was prohibited from possessing guns or ammunition because of three domestic violence convictions already. You see, a history in any of the categories you mention already disqualify a person from possessing a gun in the US. It's been that way since 1968.
But these only prevent that person from buying a gnu in a shop, not from a third-party. ie. his mate down the pub. It would be quite legal for him to do that, wouldn't it?
Absolutely not. It's a crime for him to even attempt to do so, and it's a crime for anyone to sell him a gun knowing he's in a prohibited class. Both are federal felonies as well as state crimes.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:14 am

But... "Background checks are not required under Federal law for firearm transfers between private parties." So how is the guy selling the gnu to know?

Isn't it a little silly to have no requirement for making a background check when the seller could face jailtime if the buyer turns out to be a wife-beater? :dunno:
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by pcCoder » Mon Jun 15, 2015 5:11 am

I do to a certain extent think that gun laws are a bit off in who can own a gun and who can't. I'm in favor of background checks and perhaps periodic psychological checks, but they should be more relevant to the issue.

For instance, why should drugs be a reason to forbid gun ownership. Some drunks get more "out of it". And felons, many things could be felony that have nothing to do with guns or violence. Downloading a movie could be considered a felony. Also, hospitalization should be one of those things that are checked on a per-case basis instead of blanket bans. When I was young I lived with my mother in a not very good environment. I then moved in with my father and went through a brief temperamental period around 10 or 12 and was hospitalized. While I was there, I recall some people were hospitalized for what now seems to be crazy things. Bad cases of OCD hand washing, etc. About 10 years ago a friend invited me to go hunting with him, and I was getting all set to do so, but after reading up on some things, realized that I couldn't because of the hospitalization at 12. Also the people in there for OCD can't. Or those for depression (though that may be a good thing.)

It seems it would make more sense for something like psychological checks of a person before ownership and perhaps every so many years during, just to help make sure that some of the people who own guns don't express any unstable/violent tendencies.

I also think the same about things like student grants. Do drugs then get prevented from going to school and trying to advance yourself to a better position. I mean as long as there is satisfactory academic progress showing that they are progressing well, the drugs shouldn't have anything to do with it.

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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:10 pm

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:But... "Background checks are not required under Federal law for firearm transfers between private parties." So how is the guy selling the gnu to know?
He can demand that he and the buyer go to a licensed gun dealer and have a NICS check done if he chooses to do so. In addition, in many states the so-called "gun show loophole" does not exist in that the states require all gun show transactions to be subject to a NICS check, as is the case in Colorado.

Then again, research shows that criminals rarely buy their guns at gun shows anyway. They mostly get them by theft or by street sales from other criminals, which means that a requirement for a NICS check would be ignored anyway.
Isn't it a little silly to have no requirement for making a background check when the seller could face jailtime if the buyer turns out to be a wife-beater? :dunno:
Why should the seller be responsible for what the buyer may do with the gun? Should a car seller be responsible of the new owner gets drunk and kills someone with the car? Only if the seller KNOWS (or in the law's parlance "knows or has reason to know" ) that the buyer is disqualified does the seller commit a crime. The vast majority of individual gun transactions are between people known to one another, and law-abiding gun owners are just as interested in not selling guns to felons as you are.

The real problem with the NICS system is that ONLY licensed gun dealers can use it and ONLY if they fill out a federal form that is kept forever. What needs to happen is that the NICS system needs to be changed so that ANY private person can run a background check for a gun purchase by phone or computer without revealing the seller's identity or the make, model or serial number of the firearm involvede. The ONLY reason the government insists on having that information is to (illegally) create a database of guns and gun owners, whereas the point of the system is ostensibly to allow sellers to make sure the individual is not disqualified. In order to achieve the LEGITIMATE public purpose all that is required is the identity of the potential BUYER and a response from the NICS of either "qualified" or "disqualified" to the seller. And this entire system does not need to be mandatory, it can be voluntary because law-abiding citizens who care about the law will make use of it whereas criminals and those who don't care about background checks won't. Nor is it always necessary to run such a check at all. If I want to transfer a gun to one of my nephews, or to a close personal friend or family member whom I know is not disqualified, then why should I bother with a background check?

Your attitude demonstrates a fundamental mistrust of not only your fellow citizens but of your own character. I know when I need to take precautions in giving someone else a gun and I don't need the government to tell me that. At worst I need it to provide the tool I need to fulfill those precautionary measures but otherwise butt-out of the transaction because it's none of the government's business if it's a lawful transaction.

The reason that this common-sense solution has not been implemented is because the gun-banning Democrat party has a deeper agenda for the NICS system, which is precisely to create a traceable gun/owner registry. The BATFE has been caught TWICE feloniously keeping NICS transaction records that are, by law, to be destroyed within 24 hours. I'm quite certain they are still ferreting away "backup copies" of NICS transactions somewhere so that they can drag them out in the future.

Democrats don't want to make it easy or convenient for people to safely and lawfully transfer firearms, they want to make it as difficult, expensive and inconvenient as they possibly can as a back-door gun control effort. Which is why we law-abiding gun owners don't trust them at all. Not even a little.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:41 pm

Seth wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:But... "Background checks are not required under Federal law for firearm transfers between private parties." So how is the guy selling the gnu to know?
He can demand that he and the buyer go to a licensed gun dealer and have a NICS check done if he chooses to do so. In addition, in many states the so-called "gun show loophole" does not exist in that the states require all gun show transactions to be subject to a NICS check, as is the case in Colorado.

Then again, research shows that criminals rarely buy their guns at gun shows anyway. They mostly get them by theft or by street sales from other criminals, which means that a requirement for a NICS check would be ignored anyway.
Isn't it a little silly to have no requirement for making a background check when the seller could face jailtime if the buyer turns out to be a wife-beater? :dunno:
Why should the seller be responsible for what the buyer may do with the gun? Should a car seller be responsible of the new owner gets drunk and kills someone with the car?
Non Sequitur! If someone sells a car to someone that is disqualified, has convictions for vehicular homicide and has just drunk a full bottle of vodka, no legal action can be taken against the seller. In the case of guns, it is a federal offence to sell a gun to someone that is prohibited from owning one and yet there is no requirement (in some states) to enforce that the seller carries out a background check. That was the point I was making. A NICS check should be mandatory for all gun sales.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Svartalf » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:05 am

Well, there's the problem of allowing private persons to carry background checks on other citizens like that...
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:25 am

Svartalf wrote:Well, there's the problem of allowing private persons to carry background checks on other citizens like that...
The check is done by the FFL (Federal Firearms Licensing) on behalf of the seller - they come back with a yay or nay - usually instant but within a few days. Many states insist on this and you cannot sell a gnu without going through the process. Others don't, but the seller can still be prosecuted for selling to an unauthorised person. It should be a no-brainer.

You can't sell alcohol to anyone that looks even remotely like they might be under 21 without asking for ID, but you can sell them a gnu and just hope they are legal! WTF!
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by JimC » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:08 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Svartalf wrote:Well, there's the problem of allowing private persons to carry background checks on other citizens like that...
The check is done by the FFL (Federal Firearms Licensing) on behalf of the seller - they come back with a yay or nay - usually instant but within a few days. Many states insist on this and you cannot sell a gnu without going through the process. Others don't, but the seller can still be prosecuted for selling to an unauthorised person. It should be a no-brainer.

You can't sell alcohol to anyone that looks even remotely like they might be under 21 without asking for ID, but you can sell them a gnu and just hope they are legal! WTF!
The yay or nay only means no privacy breech, so I agree it should be a requirement.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Svartalf » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:23 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Svartalf wrote:Well, there's the problem of allowing private persons to carry background checks on other citizens like that...
The check is done by the FFL (Federal Firearms Licensing) on behalf of the seller - they come back with a yay or nay - usually instant but within a few days. Many states insist on this and you cannot sell a gnu without going through the process. Others don't, but the seller can still be prosecuted for selling to an unauthorised person. It should be a no-brainer.

You can't sell alcohol to anyone that looks even remotely like they might be under 21 without asking for ID, but you can sell them a gnu and just hope they are legal! WTF!
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:23 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Seth wrote:
Why should the seller be responsible for what the buyer may do with the gun? Should a car seller be responsible of the new owner gets drunk and kills someone with the car?
Non Sequitur! If someone sells a car to someone that is disqualified, has convictions for vehicular homicide and has just drunk a full bottle of vodka, no legal action can be taken against the seller. In the case of guns, it is a federal offence to sell a gun to someone that is prohibited from owning one and yet there is no requirement (in some states) to enforce that the seller carries out a background check. That was the point I was making. A NICS check should be mandatory for all gun sales.
And why should a driver's history check not be required to sell a car, or a sanity check be required to purchase a kitchen knife, or a test for alcoholism or drug abuse be required to purchase a beer?

The reason is that the number of people who would be "caught" by such measures is very, very small to begin with, and, like gun background checks, simple in the extreme to avoid. In other words, it's a useless exercise from the get-go that does very little more than infringe on the rights of the vast majority of law abiding citizens without providing any substantial objective evidence that it has any effect whatsoever on criminal access to guns.

The number of rejections by NICS is quite small to begin with. For example, in 2014 there were a total of 90,895 initial denials out of a total of 20,968,547 NICS checks. That's 0.4%, or four-tenths of one percent of the total number of gun checks in one year alone.

Of those initial denials, according to the FBI website cited above, out of 100 initial denials, 66 percent were allowed to proceed due to errors in the FBI's data and only 1.10 percent were finally denied after completing the entire process. It's interesting to note that while the FBI provides actual numbers for the number of checks and initial denials, it does NOT provide actual numbers for final denials, merely a "out of 100" approximation, which makes it impossible to tell exactly how many of their initial denials resulted in actual final denials. But using their figure of 1.1 percent of all initial denials, we can roughly calculate that only 1000 potential transactions through NICS were finally denied. Of the initial denials, 31,125 appeal requests were made. Of these, 4,411 denials were overturned in 2014 after an extensive appeal process by the citizen wrongfully denied his gun rights because of erroneous information in the FBI's records.

Worse yet, in cases were delays in NICS processing allowed the transaction to proceed without the check, where the check was finally completed at a later time, the FBI referred only 2,511 cases to the BATFE for potential gun recovery and charges. And to show you just how effective the system is, of that 2,511 referrals, the BATFE only acted on something like FIVE of them.

So as we see, the system, even working as intended, is incredibly ineffective, expensive and violative of the rights of literally almost every individual who participates in it by government mandate.

And there is ZERO objective evidence that any NICS denial, no matter how justified, has ever prevented a single violent crime, much less resulted in anyone being arrested, charged, tried, convicted and jailed for trying to illegally buy a gun using a NICS check.

This is, of course, because actual violent criminals who want to get ahold of guns do not participate in the NICS system. They simply steal their guns or buy them from other criminals who have already stolen them. And it's also because neither the BATFE nor the FBI nor the administration really cares about keeping criminals disarmed, they are only interested in obstructing the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights.

All that being said, the government would be wise and just to provide a VOLUNTARY system fully available to any person wishing to sell a gun to someone else giving them the necessary tools to make sure the individual is not disqualified. But when you place a penalty on a law-abiding citizen for failing to get a background check while legally denying him access to the system for doing so, all you do is encourage the average citizen to ignore the law entirely. Just like stop signs and other traffic laws, voluntary compliance is always the best way to deal with such things.

Your root assumption, which is that Joe Gunowner will knowingly and willingly illegally transfer a gun to a criminal because he's a "gun nut" is thoroughly flawed.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:27 am

Svartalf wrote:Well, there's the problem of allowing private persons to carry background checks on other citizens like that...
What problem? It's entirely voluntary. If you don't want the seller to run your ID, then don't buy a gun from him. All the seller gets is a go-ahead or don't, nothing else. It's up to him to say "Sorry, there's a problem with the NICS check so I'm not going to sell you my gun." Nobody's rights are being violated.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:35 am

Seth wrote:Your root assumption, which is that Joe Gunowner will knowingly and willingly illegally transfer a gun to a criminal because he's a "gun nut" is thoroughly flawed.
Where did I ever make that claim? :dunno:

The whole purpose of making such checks mandatory is to make them unnecessary! Only a complete idiot would attempt to buy a gnu, knowing full well that the NICS check will reject them. Of course it won't deter the hardened criminal - but it will deter the brother-in-law, the best mate, the bloke you know from the pub, etc., that is banned from owning a firearm for good reason, attempting to buy one privately. As you point out, where this system is in place, it is successful, so why the fuck isn't it in place everywhere?
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:36 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote: Others don't, but the seller can still be prosecuted for selling to an unauthorised person.
Not unless the prosecution can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the seller knowingly illegally transferred the firearm.
You can't sell alcohol to anyone that looks even remotely like they might be under 21 without asking for ID, but you can sell them a gnu and just hope they are legal! WTF!
No, only liquor licensees are required to check ID to sell alcohol. I can give beer to anyone I want, but if I provide it to underage persons illegally I can be prosecuted for doing so, but I'm not required to check anybody's ID. Nor can I sell a gun to "anybody" without using good judgment and prudence, for more than criminal penalty reasons. If I give a 14 year old a handgun and fail to supervise him while it's in his possession, if he does something bad I can be held civilly liable.

Then again, this whole issue of minors is just a smoke screen meant to obfuscate the issue. If I violate a state law with respect to liquor or guns, then it's a state issue. The federal government has no actual constitutional authority to regulate gun ownership AT ALL. Zero. Even the NFA rules and regs are TAX BASED regulations, and the government's ostensible control over gun dealers is due to the broad distortion of the Commerce Clause that has allowed the federal government to interfere unconstitutionally in literally every aspect of our daily lives.
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Re: Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

Post by Seth » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:10 am

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Seth wrote:Your root assumption, which is that Joe Gunowner will knowingly and willingly illegally transfer a gun to a criminal because he's a "gun nut" is thoroughly flawed.
Where did I ever make that claim? :dunno:
That was the collective "you."
The whole purpose of making such checks mandatory is to make them unnecessary! Only a complete idiot would attempt to buy a gnu, knowing full well that the NICS check will reject them.
Wrong! The vast majority of people who try to buy a gun who are denied by NICS were not aware that they were prohibited persons. You are precisely correct otherwise though. A known felon is not going to try to buy a gun from a gun dealer if there's a chance a NICS check will be done, therefore the NICS check does nothing to prevent them from getting guns illegally.

Of course it won't deter the hardened criminal - but it will deter the brother-in-law, the best mate, the bloke you know from the pub, etc., that is banned from owning a firearm for good reason, attempting to buy one privately.
Not if he wants the gun for some criminal purpose it won't. If he knows he's prohibited (from an ever-expanding list of reasons the feds come up with sua sponte and without Congressional approval of why a person should be disqualified...something the feds have no authority to do in the first place) and intends to use the gun for some crime, either he's suicidal (as in the case of the last dozen or so "lone wolf" shooters, all of whom obtained their guns legally WITH a NICS check) and doesn't give a damn because he doesn't expect to survive long enough to be prosecuted, or he doesn't just doesn't care if he is identified as an armed criminal.

If the bloke from the pub wants to take up a life of crime, he'll get his gun somewhere else.

On the other hand, the evidence shows that most "prohibited persons" aren't aware they are prohibited, or they are the victims of bad information in the NICS database, a problem so severe the government had to admit it and create an appeal system that allows wrongfully denied persons to prove they aren't the individual in the file and be issued a special personal identification number that they have to use whenever they go through a NICS transaction to keep them from being falsely identified by the FBI as disqualified because of a name and physical description duplication or near-miss.

The vast majority of those prohibited persons simply want to go target shooting or hunting or own a gun for self defense and they get caught up in a flawed and unconstitutional system for technical reasons.

But you support my point that the NICS check should be available to anyone on a voluntary basis. The control part is best left to the seller. If the seller is an honest person he will be sure that the sale is legal and there is no imminent danger involved before selling the gun merely because he's a law-abiding citizen who doesn't want his gun used to kill someone because he didn't take precautions. Somebody who doesn't care what happens to or with the gun won't go through the NICS check anyway because there is no way for the government to track the transaction in the first place, and therefore no way to prosecute him for illegally selling a gun. The risk he takes doing so is that the criminal who buys the gun rats him out to the police if and when he gets caught, which is a great deterrent to the law-abiding gun seller. I would NEVER sell one of my guns to Joe Somebody off the street. Ever. Unless I can first be sure the buyer is not a criminal intent on using my gun to commit a crime. All law-abiding gun owners likely feel the same, but ought to have access to the tools needed to confirm this.
As you point out, where this system is in place, it is successful, so why the fuck isn't it in place everywhere?
I pointed out no such thing. I pointed out exactly the opposite. The NICS system has never, in all it's years and in the more than 202 million total checks it's run, provably PREVENTED a criminal from obtaining a firearm and using it in a crime. Not once. It's all assumption and speculation based on what is largely a fallacy of composition created by those who favor gun control that a "disqualified" person will inevitably use a gun to commit a crime if he or she can get his or her hands on one. This is simply not the case most of the time.

For example, one of the disqualifiers is "The subject of a protective order issued after a hearing in which the respondent had notice that restrains them from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such partner." The problem is that there is no standard of evidence required for the issuance of such a protective order. In some states merely filing for divorce results in the AUTOMATIC issuance of such orders for BOTH parties. Judges will do this deliberately, knowing the impact on the individual's gun rights as an expedient that they hope will "prevent" problems by disarming both sides of the dispute. Problem is, that's an unconstitutional rationale.

Also, it quite often takes nothing more than an allegation of domestic abuse by one party to get a protective order issued which denies the other party, innocent or not, his or her fundamental rights. I'm am painfully and intimately familiar with this exact threat because that's exactly what my ex-fiancee tried to do to me. She was mad at me so she made a false claim that she was "afraid for her life" and that I had threatened her with my pistol. She did this after taking the time to collect $15,000 in 50-dollar bills scattered about her bedroom before "fleeing for her life" from the house. But she was not smart, which is ALL that prevented me from being arrested, jailed, and stripped of my gun rights, potentially permanently. She waited 10 days to report the "threat" and then screwed up her story and the police dismissed the complaint as unfounded. You see, in such cases the judge will most often issue a PERMANENT protective order, which means that even if I never see her again and we live on opposite sides of the planet I can't own a gun, without any real inquiry or due process involved.

I was talking with a client in my car recently and he told me that he too was dating a BPD nutcase. In his case she actually DID get him arrested, thrown in jail for three weeks, and subjected to a restraining order for the three years it took him to go to trial and prove that she was lying through her teeth just to get back at him for some perceived slight. Most men faced with this sort of deliberate plan simply give up and take some plea bargain that keeps them out of jail but, and sometimes unknown to them, permanently disqualifies them from gun ownership based on the woman's lies and the prosecutor's pressure and threat of long jail time if he doesn't plead to a lesser charge. If he's not told, or much later forgets that he was told he couldn't own guns because of his plea, which is quite common, the next time he tries to buy a gun he gets trapped by the NICS system and may face arrest again over something that was a lie all along.

So, the real question is who should be disqualified and why, and whose job is it to make that determination. It's not the federal government's job to do that. It's the job of the state courts after due process.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

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