The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Biden’s Gun Control Policy Won’t Work

Posted on | April 13, 2024 | Comments Off on Biden’s Gun Control Policy Won’t Work

Most media accounts of what Joe Biden did this past week assert that his administration has “closed the gun show loophole.”

Except, of course, there was no such thing as a “gun show loophole.” It’s a propaganda phrase invented by the anti-gun fanatics who want to prevent law-abiding citizens from defending themselves.

“Every year, thousands of unlicensed gun dealers sell tens of thousands of guns without a background check, including to buyers who would have failed one — domestic abusers, violent felons, and even children. This single gap in our federal background check system has caused unimaginable pain and suffering. Today, as the head of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, I am proud to say that all gun dealers must conduct background checks no matter where or how they sell.”
— Kamala Harris

Who are these “unlicensed gun dealers,” ma’am? Here is a brief explanation of what the so-called “loophole” is:

To sell guns commercially, whether from a store, at a gun show, out of your house or out of the back of your van, you need to be federally licensed as a dealer. This sales permit is called a Federal Firearms License, or FFL. Any sale an FFL holder makes must be to someone who passed the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check on the day of the sale, and that is true whether the sale is in a store, at a gun show or out of the trunk of a car.
To buy a gun from a licensed dealer, regardless of the setting, you have to show a government-issued photo ID, you have to fill out a form that requires your identifying information, and you must answer a series of yes/no questions about your criminal background, whether you are the actual buyer and your citizenship status. The dealer will then call NICS to process your background check, which normally takes 10 to 90 minutes, depending on request volume and whether you have a common name. . . .
If you go to a gun show, basically all of the tables showcasing guns are manned by FFL dealers who have to process background checks, as they are “engaged in the business of dealing guns.” If you are commercially selling firearms, you are “engaged in the business of selling guns,” and if that’s the case, you’re a dealer and therefore need to be licensed. So, in practice, there isn’t much of a gun show loophole — at least not the way gun-controllers want us to believe.
If you are engaged in the business of selling lots of guns without an FFL and without background checks at a gun show or online, that isn’t a loophole; you’re committing a federal crime.

What the “loophole” rhetoric is actually about is an attempt to classify almost any person-to-person transfer of a weapon as a transaction requiring a background check, and essentially classifying people as criminals for selling a gun to their friend, relative or neighbor. In other words, if I’ve got a rifle and need some cash, while my buddy has $400 and wants to buy my gun, I would have to go to a licensed dealer and get him to do a background check on my buddy. The Biden rule would classify all firearms owners as potential weapons dealers and make it a federal crime for you to ever sell your guns to anybody.

Meanwhile, however, the Biden administration isn’t prosecuting actual criminals who violate existing federal law:

A 2022 report indicated that 42 percent of rejected firearms background checks were denied due to prior felony convictions. The report also indicated that in 2017, 12 of 12,000 people denied a gun purchase were prosecuted. It is a federal felony for a prohibited person, like a convicted felon, to attempt to purchase a firearm – and yet, in the most recent year for which data is available, the federal government prosecuted 0.1% of the attempts. That’s a bad joke.
In this, as in so many things, the Biden administration is indulging in a useless, ineffective virtue signal. This law and this rule will have no visible effect on crime . . .

This is what Democrats and their media friends will never tell you — they are against putting criminals in prison. They want to put Donald Trump in prison, but they don’t want to put criminals in prison, because most criminals are Demorats (which is why most Democrat-controlled states allow convicted felons to vote). Why is violent crime out of control? How are convicted felons getting guns? Is it because, as Vice President Harris would have you believe, “thousands of unlicensed gun dealers sell tens of thousands of guns without a background check”? Or is it because criminals steal guns? Anybody can research this question, but journalists employed by the liberal media won’t do that, for some reason.

Who is shooting whom? Simple question — how many shootings are there in America every year, and who are the perpetrators? Are most shootings committed by Trump voters and NRA members? Is it because of the “gun show loophole” that these criminals are armed? Or is it because the criminal justice system is a revolving door that keeps putting repeat offenders out on the street? As I say, anybody can research these questions, but nobody at CNN is ever going to do that work.

‘He’d rather be dead than
go back to prison,’ says mother
of man killed in Sparks standoff

Anthony Wade was 34 when he died March 29 in Sparks, Nevada, after shooting a cop who pulled him over for a traffic violation. Police on Friday released video of the incident, during which Wade fled after shooting the cop, crashed his car, ran on foot, broke into two different homes where he attempted to hide out, and ambushed police when they came after him. Anthony Wade was a convicted felon who, as such, was prohibited from owning firearms. He’d been a criminal his whole life:

Wade’s criminal history started when he was a juvenile, according to court documents.
Those records are sealed, but were referenced when Wade pleaded guilty in 2009 to burglarizing a house when he was 18. The 16- to 72-month prison sentence was waived as long as Wade kept out of trouble.
But five months later, Wade was found drinking in a downtown Reno motel room with other underage kids. He was arrested under the alias Jamal Jerome Smith. During the arrest, he assaulted a police officer.
Wade pleaded guilty and his probation was revoked. He was sent to the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City to serve out the original burglary sentence of up to 72 months plus six months for the assault.
Jamal Jerome Smith again shows up in arrest and court documents in 2020 for a 2015 armed robbery at a Sparks nightclub. That case was eventually dropped, with prosecutors citing a lack of admissible evidence.
There may be other cases where Wade was a suspect and a criminal record that spans other states, according to Kendall Holcomb, public information officer for the District Attorney’s Office. . . .
Debra Wade said she knows the investigation will show her son was at fault for firing first. But she saw in her son a man trying to get his life back together so he could have a better relationship with his three children.
He was living with her and collecting disability.

“Collecting disability”? What disability did he have? But never mind that. Instead, we need to ask, where did Anthony Wade get that gun? Did he save up his disability checks to make that purchase? Did he buy it through the “gun show loophole”? Or is it more likely that Anthony Wade, the convicted burglar, stole that gun during a burglary?

You won’t see this story on CNN. They’re not going to ask questions that undermine the narrative about “Gun Violence Prevention.”



 

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