Tuesday, January 12, 2021

If you need a gun, time may be running out to buy one without problems

 

I've posted many times in these pages about firearms, security and self-defense.  Fortunately, many of my readers already understand these issues, and others have come to do so through the discussions we've had here.  Over the past year alone, I've helped more than 20 people upgrade existing firearms or buy them - sometimes multiple firearms.  Over the more than two decades since I came to this country, I daresay I've helped over 500 people in that way, plus taught at least as many disabled and/or handicapped people to shoot defensively.  I'm quietly pleased about that.

However, the time when you're able to buy a gun without jumping through impossibly onerous hoops - and be recorded in a government database for your trouble - may be getting very short.  Ammoland reports that the following bills have been pre-filed in Congress:


  • H.R. 130: To require the safe storage of firearms and ammunition, and to require the investigation of reports of improper storage of firearms or ammunition.
  • H.R. 135: To require the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to report to the Congress semiannually on the number of firearms transfers resulting from the failure to complete a background check within 3 business days, and the procedures followed after it is discovered that a firearm transfer has been made to a transferee who is ineligible to receive a firearm.
  • H.R. 121: To provide for the hiring of 200 additional Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents and investigators to enforce gun laws.
  • H.R. 127: To provide for the licensing of firearm and ammunition possession and the registration of firearms, and to prohibit the possession of certain ammunition.
  • H.R. 125: To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for a 7-day waiting period before a semiautomatic firearm, a silencer, armor piercing ammunition, or a large capacity ammunition magazine may be transferred.
  • H.R. 167: To prohibit the transfer of a firearm at a gun show by a person who is not a federally licensed firearms dealer.
  • H.R. 30: To increase public safety by punishing and deterring firearms trafficking (which almost certainly means no more private, unrecorded firearms and/or ammunition sales from person to person).

I'd like to know how they intend to check on your firearms and ammunition storage facilities if no crime has been committed.  A search warrant is normally issued only when there is probable cause to believe that it will uncover evidence that may be used in a court of law, or lead to further evidence ditto.  Are these bills going to embody a no-search-warrant-required, no-probable-cause-required clause to allow ATF agents to enter your home and search it?  That's flatly unconstitutional, but as we've discussed earlier this morning, our constitutional protections are likely to be worth only as much as the powers that be will allow.

Friends, if you don't already own a firearm or firearms suitable for your defense, buy them NOW, before such legislation - or executive orders from the incoming Biden administration - make it impossible or unreasonably difficult to do so.  If you can't afford them, find the money somehow, even if it means going into debt.  Do the same for ammunition, both practice and defensive.  Don't limit yourself to one firearm if you can afford more than one - you undoubtedly have friends and family who might need one.

Finally, if you're worried about your firearms being declared illegal or subject to registration and licensing, consider the example of New York and Connecticut firearms owners.  We discussed it recently.


3.  The incoming Biden administration has promised to ban, confiscate or tax AR-15's.  Doesn't that mean it's not worth buying one?

I'm not going to tell anyone to break the law.  That's a personal decision each of us has to make.  However, I'll point out three things.

  1. For almost as long as the USA has existed, and particularly during the Civil Rights era, civil disobedience became part of the American political and legal lexicon.  Laws were deliberately defied if they were seen as oppressive or discriminatory.
  2. When New York passed its "NY SAFE Act" in 2013, requiring the registration of all so-called "assault weapons" (including AR-15's), civil disobedience was - and remains - massive.  "Based on an estimate from the National Shooting Sports Federation, about 1 million firearms in New York State meet the law’s assault-weapon criteria, but just 44,000 have been registered. That’s a compliance rate of about 4 percent."
  3. When Connecticut passed new gun control legislation in 2013, the same thing happened.  "The governor's new gun law is a dismal, unmitigated failure.  According to figures recently released by the state police, approximately 50,000 out of an estimated half-million "assault rifles" in the state of Connecticut were registered under the new gun law.  That is a compliance rate of only about 10 percent ... The figures are even more acutely low for large capacity magazines. The compliance rate for large capacity magazines appears to be considerably less than 1 percent of the estimated number of affected magazines."

Does anyone expect a national ban or registration requirement to be any more successful?  I certainly don't!  Furthermore, the number of gun owners I've heard loudly lament the "terrible loss" of all their so-called "assault weapons" and large-capacity magazines in an "unfortunate boating accident" must surely mean that the bottoms of most US dams, lakes, rivers and streams are now several feet deep in firearms!

I'll also point out the well-known proverb from the days of the Old West:  "I'd rather be judged by twelve (i.e. jurors) than carried by six (i.e. pallbearers at my funeral)".


Each of us will have to make up our own mind about that issue.  Frankly, if push comes to shove, I predict the most widespread and comprehensive civil disobedience in US history - and I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the average cop asked to investigate it.  In fact, if I were such a cop, I'd be inviting the politicians who passed the law(s) concerned to show me how it's done, while I hang back at a safe distance and watch.


(Banging on door)  Open up!  OPEN UP!  This is the [insert party name] Congressional caucus!

(Voice from inside)  Bubba, break out more ammo!  We done got us a target rich environment!


Heck, I might even sell tickets to the show on pay-per-view!


Peter


12 comments:

Sam L. said...

Greatly amused, am I!

rognuald said...

The ruling class seems determined to turn many average citizens into criminals. I predict unnecessary bloodshed over this.

Antibubba said...

They'll have to define it to ban it. We Californians have invented a workaround for everything they've thrown at us. American ingenuity is awesome to behold.

Old NFO said...

Yes, they want ALL of us to be criminals, and you can bet they WILL prosecute us to hell and gone.

stencil said...

The critical point is going to be the composition of the "they." Federal law enforcement depends very heavily on State, county, and municipal assistance. It may well be that the peace is broken first by the peacekeepers.
.

boron said...

This is not the country to which my parents arrived from eastern Europe and for which some 35 years later I volunteered my service in the U.S. Air Force

Jimmy the Saint said...

@rognuald: "I predict unnecessary bloodshed over this."

Doesn't seem likely - the government is pretty much signalling that they think shedding our blood is very much necessary and indeed much desired, and there are no indications that there are any citizens rising up in righteous fury, just as there haven't been for about 150 years or so.

Jimmy the Saint said...

@OldNFO: "Yes, they want ALL of us to be criminals, and you can bet they WILL prosecute us to hell and gone."

Kind of - from their perspective, it's better simply to have the ability to prosecute the bejesus out of us. Turn everyone into a criminal, and you can have a lot of fun with who and how you prosecute stuff. Plus, having some nice "firearm enhancements" to tack on to charges gives DAs/USAGs the ability to turn people rat against their neighbors. "Looks like you've got an AR-15, huh? Well, now...you can do 10 years in the can for it, or...not. Know if any of your neighbors have illegal guns? Co-workers? Friends? Family? No? Shame....10 years is a long time, and you don't look like you'd fare too well on the yard. So, again...."

dogsledder said...

Yes, I know that you are from the government, and you are here to help me. But please stand over that tarp while you are 'helping' me...

Beans said...

Ten to One, any penalty of any of the above measures is an automatic felony, thus giving them the ability to seize any guns, ammo, knives, hammers, tools, chuncks of steel or ceramic, machine tools, etc.

This isn't about guns. It is about overt complete control of all aspects of our lives.

And with them in control of the media and the internet, getting the message about Mr. Smith on 123 Drive in Magacourt, Georgia, going down in a hail of fully auto .50cal and the authorities finding an arsenal of illegal unregistered weapons (a Lorcin .25ACP that's rusted shut, a Springfield trapdoor that's even more rust in percentage than the Lorcin and a BB gun or Airsoft pistol) will be controlled. Info on the seizure of weapons? Aye. Info on the death of Mr. Smith, his family, the surrounding neighbors, the fires, not so much.

Seriously, who didn't see this coming? And I don't expect the Supremes, after their cowardly showing in the last month, to defend any part of the 2nd Amendment, or the 1st, or the 4th, or the rest of them.

As of November 3, 2020, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are on life support, if not completely dead.

John T. Block said...

It's not hard to develop black market contacts. And "the more you tighten your grasp, the more systems slip through your fingers." Sic Semper Tryannis.

Paul said...

Almost too late to be buying anything. Guns are gone as well as bullets. Grab some if you can find it. But wal mart is getting out of the business on the sly so you know it will be party time soon