TexasCHLforum.com

cb1000rider wrote:

Stupid wrote:How about making this a lot simpler: people who aren't eligible to purchase firearms should remain locked up in prison.
If we don't trust them with firearm, why should we trust them with other hundred thousands of things that they can use to murder us?

Meaning we lock all felons up indefinitely? Outside of the Wall-street guys who aren't currently in prison, I definitely don't agree. Why not?

1) We already lock more people up per population than any other civilized country. I'm not sure that it's working beyond feeding companies that live off the prison system and creating media bullets for politicians that are "tough on crime". Sure doesn't seem to be deterring anyone in Chicago.

2) I don't want to pay for it personally. Or, in reality, I don't want my kids to pay for it. Figure out a way for it to finance itself and I'll object less. We're already spending a bunch of money that we don't have doing things enforcing laws that aren't working.

3) The reality of our legal system affords people with wealth much better outcomes than those without. I don't think that's the way our founding fathers intended it to work. Were you prepared to mount a reasonably financed legal defense when you were 20 years old? I know I wasn't. That's easily taken advantage of and manipulated.

4) Statistically are non-violent felons really that likely to murder us? (You're talking about all felons)

5) I think this idea is a nod to the theory that our prison system doesn't rehabilitate. Agree with you there, if that's part of what you're saying.

You missed a big one....an important aspect of our legal system is the notion that punishment is fashioned to fit the crime and proportional. Many non-violent crimes are felonies. You can be convicted of a felony for lying to the government. If every penalty means life long incarceration then a law breaker may as well go all out and not limit the extent of his criminality. Why leave a witness after a robbery for instance?

Furthermore, why should someone who has never acted violently against another person be denied the right and means to defend himself and his family? I don't even agree that all felons should be denied the right to own guns....certainly the violent ones but there are lots of felonies that don't include any kind of violent act or show any propensity to violence.

The failure to distinguish between different acts of criminality isn't the rule of law, it's tyranny, the absence of the rule of law.

cb1000rider wrote: I'll trade someone knowing my name/address in order to make sure I'm not buying a stolen gun and as a seller to know that I'm not selling to someone who is on the naughty list.

You can do that right now by only selling to those with a CHL or someone known to you. On the buying side how are you going to know a gun isn't stolen without checking the serial number? Even then you'd only know if that gun had been reported stolen and the serial number recorded in some database.

cb1000rider wrote:Consider today - if I roll up in the Walmart parking lot and do a transaction, all you need to do is get my license plate and look that up via a VTR-275 form. If you don't want to wait, you can use one of the private DBs (like Publicdata.com).

Maybe you're so authorized but most people aren't. The only way I could do it is by lying and committing a 3rd degree felony. I read the form....personal data is only given to permitted users and seeing someone's license plate in the Walmart parking lot doesn't qualify as a permitted user.

cb1000rider wrote:

bnc wrote: What piece of information do you guys think the citizen accessed background check system should be based off of? I'd rather not give random person my SSN in order to buy a gun privately, but to be a national system I don't know if they could use something issued by the state like a DL. There are other identifiers, like full name and DOB, place of birth, etc, but all of these are PI that can easily be abused in the wrong hands.

Lots of sellers ask for CHL. I agree though, SS# is probably too much. How about DL? That's pretty much public info these days..

So you want them to have your name and address? In some states, like Oklahoma, your DL number is your SSN (used to be you could refuse use of your SSN if you knew that option existed, but I don't know if that's true in other states that use your SSN). I'm reminded of a line in Ronin where some illegal guns were about to be purchased and the buyer tells the seller...just because we're buying guns doesn't mean we don't have any.

Where is the DL public info database....I'd like to look some up?

cb1000rider wrote:

parabelum wrote: Maybe under different administration I'd feel more at ease, but this one, no sir.

I completely understand unease and distrust. I'm there with you. I'm quite willing to say "do nothing" though, although I understand why many people are.

canvasbck wrote: If your looking for compromise, here is my idea of compromise, and one that may make a difference in gun crimes:
1. Develop an online background check system accessible by citizens, straight up yes or no. No details

100% agree with you - I believe I've proposed the same sort of solution. It's a good idea. Red light / Green light. That's all you get. I'd add the ability to "clear" firearm serial numbers. Make it a requirement for a private sale. If you sell to a "red" guy, you're liable criminally. If you sell to a "green" guy - you indemnified civil/criminal.

canvasbck wrote: 2. Require the background check be done for all sales at gunshows and internet gun sales, face to face individual sales not subject to background checks.
(anti's should love 1 and 2)

Politically, I'd position this differently. I'd agree to background checks for "all transactions" and ask for something in return. Essentially, if we require private parties to clear the person they're selling to and require all other ypes of transactions to be FFL, that covers all the cases. We can call it "universal background" or whatever. It really changes very little, other than closing the private party loophole - in return you protect buyers and sellers. Even if I got nothing in return, I'd want to be able to validate who I'm selling to.

canvasbck wrote: 3. Repeal the NFA (no need to restrict access to class III weapons for citizens who have been background checked)

Honestly, I don't care... Probably politically untenable currently, but I'd take it if I could get it. I'd like a silencer for the backyard, without having to spend $900 on a 10/22 after your done with all the NFA drama. Class-3 stuff is cool - but again, it's touchy.

canvasbck wrote: 4. Increase mandatory minimums for crimes committed with firearms

Don't agree with mandatory minimums - they get used for purposes and cases that they don't fit and take away judges ability to use their brains. I also don't think they dissuade criminals. If jail terms reduced crimes, we'd have cranked 'em up already.

canvasbck wrote: 5. National shall issue concealed carry

100% onboard...

What administration is currently in power is irrelevant to "trust." Even if you could trust the current administration everything could change with the next....with a pen and phone.

Online background check without details....I assume this means details in and yes or no out. Any online system like that is subject to being hacked. OPM can't even keep their employee information secure. I just don't have that much "trust" since the Feds have already proven they can't keep private information secure.

Background checks on all transactions....how are you going to prove you sold to a "green light" for this hypothetical indemnification unless a record is kept of every transaction, including the serial number of the gun? And what's the point...since only those who obey the law will use the system in the first place? Criminals aren't going to be doing background checks. Is the seller then going to be responsible for determining the validity of whatever ID is presented....seems like that would have to be a requirement for indemnification.

NFA....silencers are legal and cheap and available without restriction in many of the liberal anti-gun utopias so why should repeal of that be "touchy?" Seems to me you're just admitting that the anti gunners are not going to give ANY ground so real compromise is not possible.

Mandatory minimums...I'm not necessarily for them, at least in some cases, but the problem being addressed isn't judges using their brains or ruling in accordance with the particular circumstances, it's liberal judges who pass out light sentences in furtherance of their "social justice" agenda.

Serial numbers passing through any government agency = registration.

National shall issue carry....never going to happen on any terms that would be acceptable, and would be a dangerous precedent for federalization if it did.

myntalfloss wrote:

cbunt1 wrote:

myntalfloss wrote:Does anyone else think we're kind of expressing a cognitive dissonance? We have insisted for years that 'guns don't kill people, people do',(which I firmly believe) and yet when Obama, (sorry, Satan) suggests checking out the people, not the guns, we get our panties in a wad. Is there anything that we law-abiding gun owners will accept without defaulting to the ‘black helicopters’ scenario?

Well, using the term "black helicopters" to marginalize the position doesn't do much to move me away from my personal conviction of "No compromise."

Being "reasonable" means that I have to go toward the other side, but with no expectation of the other side coming my way. We've seen how that has worked out for us.

Don't forget that all this will be regulated by an agency who has managed to deem a keyring and a shoestring an illegal weapon in certain circumstances.

The time for compromise is in the past. That got us the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban. Some of us remember how certain representatives and senators sold us down the river back then, and a president who canceled his NRA membership over unpopular but accurate statements.

Lessons learned.

Sorry about offending you with the black helicopters but that's kind the response that I've been seeing on this board. (Not from you, mind you.)

And, reasonable to me infers reasonable on both sides. You seem to see reasonable as acquiesence.

Boy, if you're speaking of the TSA, you've got it right. The Thousands Standing Around are the most incompetent gov't agency around and that's a high mark to reach.

As to regard to compromise, compromise is the basis of civilization. If you're looking for a 'my way or the highway' culture, I'm not sure where to go.

Both sides....are you kidding? You see reason from the other side?

I don't think you know what the word compromise means. It's not a compromise if I have a cake and you tell me that you're taking half of it. It's not a compromise if someone sticks a gun in my face and says if I hand over my wallet he won't shoot me....it's a mugging. Every battle over gun rights at the national level is either a mugging and ends with us losing more rights, or a stalemate. So just how do you think you're going to get a "compromise?" The ONLY place where this isn't true is at the state level...in SOME states, like Texas.