Incoming House Dems Prep Ban on Private and Online Gun Sales Without a 'Background Check'

P. Gardner Goldsmith | December 19, 2018
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Hey! Collectivists in D.C. are readying another anti-Constitutional attack on rights that criminally-minded people won’t bother abiding!

As the Democrats prepare to roll their tax-and-spend gravy train into the House of Representatives, numerous high-profile donkeys have readied a repeat of stunningly dangerous legislation they proposed last year. It’s a mandate that no gun sale can be private. According to the resurrected Dem bill, all firearm sales and transfers, be they face-to-face or online, may only be conducted after a federal background check (which places the purchaser on a wonderful federal database).

And the Democrats have been such dedicated supporters of the Constitution and Bill if Rights! How chagrined one is to discover they not only don’t care, but are openly hostile to the very document they swear to “protect and defend”. It’s almost as if that “Constitution” is either meaningless, or was never designed to hold back the wolves…

As AWR Hawkins (gotta love that nom de plume) writes for Breitbart:

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) is spearheading the current gun control push through “universal background” legislation. Such checks criminalize private gun sales, making it illegal for a neighbor to sell a firearm to his neighbor, a friend to his lifelong friend, and even a father to his son.

Of course, this unconstitutional attack on private exchange and contract, this insulting assault on the right to keep and bear arms, has already been tried in California, where it has not stopped criminally-minded people from obtaining firearms.

Under the Democrats’ plan, a background system like that in California would require a gun seller to seek government permission for any sale or transfer of a firearm. Such a system was put in place in California in the early 1990s and has failed to prevent some of our nation’s most heinous mass public attacks.

But that has not stopped the “unbiased” reporters of Politico from assuming the bill, if passed, would be salutary and see angels sing lovely pop songs of peace.

On December 17, attorney and Brietbart contributor Joel B. Pollack noticed this cheery characteristic of Politico’s “journalism,” tweeting:

Note that @Politico assumes whatever legislation Democrats propose to control guns will also curb "gun violence." The reason #2A advocates have objected to past efforts is that there is no cause-and-effect.

And Second Amendment advocates adhere to principle, a principle stated in... the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Any government mandate or “regulation” is an infringement. If politicians don’t like that, and they want to swear oaths to that Constitution, at least they could propose amendments to it. At least they could to that…

Hawkins warns us that NY Democrat Jerry Nadler -- the great mountain of Constitutional savvy and respect himself -- is ready to run with the bill. He’s just waiting for the starter’s gun to sound.

Incoming House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has already assured his colleagues that he will move the bill “very quickly” once it is introduced.

Of course, it’s for show. Everyone knows that the GOP-held Senate will not pass an equivalent attack on the right to keep and bear arms, and President Trump would veto one if it did pass. And, of course, it won’t stop mass shootings, either. Notes Hawkins:

The criminalization of private gun sales would not have stopped a single 21st century mass shooting, as nearly every mass shooter bought his firearms at retail via a background check. The exceptions to this norm are the two or three mass shooters who stole their guns.

But regardless of whether the bill could pass, and regardless of the fact that people with murderous criminal intent don’t care about “gun control” statutes and “regulations,” collectivist mules like Nadler are champing at the bit, eager to carry into Congress more attacks on rights. Clearly, rights mean nothing to them, and neither does reality – the reality that in the US, higher gun ownership saw decreasing violent crime, while in England, Canada, and Australia, gun “control” saw increasing violent crime, including gun crime.

Heck, part of their “rationale” for "prohibiting" private arms sales without the Panopticon Eye of the government seeing all is that, they say, online sales of firearms are a big threat to the well-being of Americans.

The only problem is that, as the General Accounting Office noted, when federal agents tried to buy guns sans background checks online last year, in 56 of 72 attempts, they were turned down.

Meanwhile, the US government sells or “donates” arms across the globe, with the full support of people like Nadler, the Dems, and many Republicans in DC.

One wonders if “background checks” were conducted…

This kind of public-display, nonsensical, obnoxious showboating is sad, and yet it can act as fuel to the fire for those of us who adhere to principle and want to let our neighbors live in peace.

The final irony of the timing Nadler et al show us is that this proposal comes just days after the anniversary of the adoption of the Second Amendment.

Seriously. As Hawkins notes:

Ironically, the push comes nearly 227 years to the day after private gun ownership was hedged in by the Founding Fathers via the Second Amendment, which was ratified on December 15, 1791.

As the old TV hero McLeod used to say, there ye go.

The Dems must know the bill won’t pass. But they intend on using GOP resistance to what the collectivists will call “common sense gun restrictions” as weaponry itself. Political weaponry to gain more power.

It’s all about increasing government power… Which is why the Founders wrote the Second Amendment – to try to check it, and insure that we could fight back.

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