Doomsought
Well-known member
Except here people are being deprived of their rights after the trial by an act of congress, not via a trial.
Gun Political Issues Megathread. (Control for or Against?)
- Thread starter Free-Stater 101
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Terthna
Professional Lurker
You're arguing with a guy who seems to believe you don't have any rights the government does not explicitly grant you. I doubt he cares.
An act of congress sets the penalties for every federal crime, and a number of non-federal crimes, and many of those penalties include a lose of property, rights or liberties. Felons being barred from owning guns is no different.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Only the wording establishes it as prior convictions of misdemeanor domestic violence automatically being increased to felony, if it's just a change to the sentencing standards for future cases then it doesn't trip the 5th at all.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
It still violates the 2nd, and if they're that dangerous then I'm with Captain X; they should never be released from jail. Because once they're out, it doesn't matter what restrictions you put on them; they will get whatever firearms they want whether they're allowed to by law or not. And if they're not too dangerous to be let out of prison; well, I'm of the opinion that the way we treat people who have already paid their debt to society is unconscionable as it is. I'm not exactly in favor of making things even worse for them.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Beyond the 2nd, the problem is that if the crime is already committed, changing the penalty afterwards makes it an ex post facto law, specifically forbidden in Article 1 Section 9. Not an amendment at all, one of the most foundational bits of the Constitution written by the founding fathers themselves.
Personally I hate how we do things if someone pays their debt to society then they should get their rights back this red letter shit we do sucks.
bintananth
behind a desk
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 does give Congress the power to regulate privately owned weapons. The 2nd Amendment removes most of it.
Dunno if anyone has posted this here, but I think this would be a fine, legitimate compromise:
Personally, I feel like this version of the universal background check compromise isn't as good as the "decouple Social Security Numbers from their role as personal IDs, use those personal IDs to run NICS checks via a free app" idea I've had for a number of years now, but it's something I could live with.
The main problem would be making sure the Democrats don't poison pill anything in such a bill.
Article: What a genuine compromise looks like is that each side gives some things, and each side gets some things. And both feel like they net-benefitted.
Ok, so what would that look like?
(I should note that this give-and-take idea isn’t an argument for how things ought to be, it’s a description of how things are. Because of the incentives here, this is the only way a major gun law for either side can pass at the federal level. There is an outside chance that given the right emergency, a one-sided law could pass by force. But that could — for these same game theoretic reasons — set off a chain-reaction of backlash that gets arbitrarily bad. Like anywhere from Waco bad to civil war bad.)
For the gun control side: Swiss-style universal background checks
Yup, the big enchilada. Gun rights people often worry that UBCs will turn into the government tracking (and later confiscating) everybody’s guns. Statistically, most of the states that have created a registry have indeed gone on to use their registry to ban certain guns (specifically: California, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York), so this system prevents that while still mandating that every gun purchase goes through a background check. It’s modeled closely on Switzerland’s system. Here’s how it works:
This has a number of things going for it. First, it hands gun control groups the item at the very top of their wishlist. A background check on every single gun sale in the country. It opens up NICS to private individuals, which gun owners have long wanted — it’s nice peace of mind to be able to run a background check if you’re selling a gun to someone you don’t know well. And it does all of that in a way that preserves family transfers, respects temporary loans, and makes a registry technologically impossible.
- Any gun buyer can log into the NICS background check system and enter their personal information. The system gives them a check number that expires in 1 week. (For reference here is ATF Form 4473, the background check form.)
- The buyer can then buy firearms from any legal seller. They have to meet face-to-face (or ship the gun to a licensed dealer for the buyer to do the check with), and the buyer shows the check number. The seller verifies the buyer’s ID, enters the check number into the NICS system, and the system returns just one word: “approved” or “denied”. If the check is approved, they can proceed with the sale.
- The system doesn’t collect any information at all on the item(s) being sold/transferred (type, make, model, quantity, etc.) — its only job is to check on whether the buyer is legally allowed to purchase firearms. After one week, when the check number expires, the system doesn’t retain any records. (That information is already archived for 20 years on the Form 4473 for all gun shop sales.) The system collects no information about the seller, as it’s designed to work without even knowing the seller’s identity.
- Transfers between family members are exempt. Firearm loans of up to 14 days are also exempt — this is to accommodate a situation where, say, two people are on a backcountry hunting trip and one needs to lend the other a gun during the trip. They need some way to do that without committing a felony.
For the gun rights side: reform Depression-era laws on barrel length and silencers
Because of an 85-year-old law (the National Firearms Act, or NFA), rifles and shotguns in the US must have a minimum barrel length (16″ and 18″, respectively). So you can go to the store, pass a background check, and buy a rifle with a 16″ barrel. But possessing that same exact rifle with a 15″ barrel is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
To buy a short-barreled rifle or shotgun (SBR or SBS) legally, you pay a $200 tax to the ATF, and then you wait. Currently the average wait time is 11 months. Many people incorrectly believe that the long wait is for some kind of James Bond background check that takes 11 months to do. It’s not; SBRs/SBSes are subject to the exact same background check as all firearms are. The 11-month wait is literally just for the ATF to get through its paperwork backlog. Also, if you loan your SBR to a family member, that loan is a felony punishable by 10 years in federal prison. To stay out of jail, you’d have to do the $200 tax + 11-month wait again just to loan the gun to your dad. Then when he gives it back to you? $200 tax + 11-month wait again. All NFA items have to go through this same process. Legally, an SBR is treated identically to a grenade launcher.
As an illustration of how arbitrary that is, a well-meaning gun owner who cut his gun in half as a form of renunciation unknowingly broke this law — his video shows him red-handed doing what the NFA describes as “illegally manufacturing a short-barreled rifle”. For the harmless act in that video, he can be jailed for 10 years.
Contrary to popular belief, the barrel length law has nothing to do with dangerousness; the shorter the barrel on a rifle or shotgun, the less powerful and less accurate it is. The law is actually an interesting relic of how the NFA came to be. The first draft of the NFA included all handguns — in 1934 the $200 tax was equivalent to $3700 today, and it was designed to effectively ban all handguns.
The bill’s writers added the barrel length rules to stop people from buying a rifle, cutting down the barrel and the stock to make it almost as short as a handgun, and then saying, “It’s a rifle, not a handgun.” There was only one problem: there was no political support to include handguns in the NFA. The law wouldn’t pass in that form. So the writers removed handguns from the NFA, but they never removed the barrel length rules that were only there to close the handgun loophole. That is why today a 16” barrel is fine while a 15” barrel is 10 years in federal prison.
Also because of the NFA, silencers, aka suppressors, are currently in this same legal category. What do suppressors do? Well, apart from an explosion or a rocket launch, a gunshot is quite simply the loudest sound you will ever hear. It is deafeningly, dangerously loud, around 165 decibels. Decibels are a logarithmic scale, so every 10 dB is 2x as loud. A jackhammer is 115 dB. A jet airplane taking off 25 yards away is 130 dB. The OSHA standard for sound that will instantly damage your hearing is 140 dB. Guns are another 4-6x louder than that OSHA cutoff.
A silencer lowers a gunshot to about 130 dB. That’s still 3x louder than a jackhammer. Extremely loud, but just quiet enough to not instantly damage your hearing. Gunshot detection systems like ShotSpotter still pick up silenced gunshots, because they listen for sound signature in addition to volume. Silencers are the only way to avoid hearing damage in situations where there’s no chance to put on hearing protection — that’s why in countries like Norway, silencers are completely unregulated and it’s considered unsafe to hunt without one.
(We have an in-depth article about silencers if you’d like more details on them.)
This is a proposal to remove short barrels and silencers from the NFA. Instead of putting them in the same category as grenade launchers, treat them like any other gun — available to adults who pass the background check, denied to those who don’t.
Personally, I feel like this version of the universal background check compromise isn't as good as the "decouple Social Security Numbers from their role as personal IDs, use those personal IDs to run NICS checks via a free app" idea I've had for a number of years now, but it's something I could live with.
The main problem would be making sure the Democrats don't poison pill anything in such a bill.
Doomsought
Well-known member
The compramises have all been moving in one direction for the past century. No more compromise.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
If you are sane enough to be able to drive a 2 ton pile of metal at over 100 kmph then you should be sane enough to own a gun for personal protection.
TBH anyone who is over the required age and has been able to function in society for a few years, perhaps with a background check applied and proof that he or she doesn't have any severe mental diseases like schizophrenia should be able to own a gun for personal as well as property and family protection.
Gun laws did not stop Breivik, they did not stop Eastern Europe's mafias from using RPGs and claymores to go against each-other, they do not stop the new "Swedes" from killing each-other with knives and grenades, and they sure as hell won't stop determined nutjobs that can just use some gasolene and fertilizer or a stolen dump truck to go on a rampage.
TBH anyone who is over the required age and has been able to function in society for a few years, perhaps with a background check applied and proof that he or she doesn't have any severe mental diseases like schizophrenia should be able to own a gun for personal as well as property and family protection.
Gun laws did not stop Breivik, they did not stop Eastern Europe's mafias from using RPGs and claymores to go against each-other, they do not stop the new "Swedes" from killing each-other with knives and grenades, and they sure as hell won't stop determined nutjobs that can just use some gasolene and fertilizer or a stolen dump truck to go on a rampage.
Of course there is a high chance they would poison it, or outright openly refuse for "not going far enough".
After all, if it passes, what else are they going to put as the reasonable "face" of their next "common sense" proposition?
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Shall not be infringed.
I'm willing to compromise in the following way:
All unconstitutional laws restricting gun ownership and carrying are repealed, and we don't put the people who implemented those laws up on charges for deprivation of constitutional rights.
That sounds like a good compromise to me.
As much as I would like that, there's no fucking way it's going to happen unless there's some how Republican super majorities in the House and Senate, and you sweep out all the RINOs, and you convince all the Republicans that this won't give their opponents leverage against them in the next election.
The Open Source Defense proposal at least has the ability to get passed in a scenario where the RINOs are still around and strategically hobble the Democrats by kicking out their biggest talking point.
Don't get me wrong - I'm for sweeping away the dumb restrictions on guns. I just think it's smart to have a solution in your back pocket for when you can't get everything you want.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
The thing is, the Republicans have been playing the 'let's try to compromise and both get something we want' with Democrats for longer than I've been alive.
And every time, the Democrats just immediately renege on their side of the deal, or else immediately start putting on the pressure for a new compromise, that will push things even further left.
There are some subjects it's worth considering compromise on, because the costs of playing all-or-nothing are not worth it. Gun rights is not one of those subjects, and what is to be gained is nothing or next to nothing, while what is to be lost is the continued slow erosion of a constitutional right.
And that's before we even get into the issue of how destructive being willing to undermine the rule of law is in the first place.
You can't negotiate with bad faith actors.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
No it doesn't. I mean, it's a decent enough compromise, assuming the Democrats are actually being honest about their motives in pushing gun control legislation; but they're not. They want to take your guns because they don't want you to have any ability to resist them when they fully dismantle our system of governance in favor of one that basically turns us into their slaves.
It's not an ex post facto punishment. That's not how that works, like at all. The punishment is known about before the crime is committed: if you get convicted of any felony, you lose voting and gun rights.
Now if it wasn't the case, then they changed the law to say that, and people who had already done the crimes were held to that, that would be an ex post facto issue. But it isn't the case.
I disagree with all background checks. You have a moral right to own the best self defense option you can get, regardless of if you are a felon or not.
.... They were tried. And convicted. It's literally no different from you saying Congress deprived them of their right to freedom after a trial, because they were sent to jail in accordance with the law Congress wrote. When you are convicted of a crime, you are deprived of rights.
As for the agreement, I'd consider it, but it's not gonna happen.
They've also been the party of talking big and not really delivering on basic things for just as long.
I'll give them props for trying to get the Hearing Protection Act passed twice. But they still came up short, and that was when things were far more in Republicans' favor.
I'm not the biggest fan of gun rights compromises, but I'll take the victories that are achievable over grandstanding that'll do nothing but maintain the shit status quo.
No, you can't negotiate with them, but you can exploit their need to be seen doing something, and the OSD proposal lets you do it to politicians on both sides, which is something most attempts to make gun legislation (for better or worse) don't do.
The problem the pro-gun movement has had for decades is that while they've been slowly building momentum on the state and judicial levels, they've just been getting jack shit done on the federal level. The most they've done in a positive capacity is pass some NICS improvements and get the Hearing Protection Act up for consideration.
Unless the decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen straight up declares all 2A restrictions unconstitutional, which I doubt, even if Based Clarence Thomas writes the opinion, or there's a Constitutional amendment that wipes all previous legislation off the table, that means the only way to unfuck things is to pass laws repealing the existing restrictions. Aka the thing Republicans are shit at.
As far as I can see, the OSD proposal is one of the best shots to gain that federal level pro-gun momentum. Everything else relies on some magical "we win big and the Republicans pull their heads out of their asses" thinking, and we've seen that fail far too many times to expect big, sweeping victories.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
And do you know why they haven't been able to get anything done on the federal level? It's because the entire system is a sham; Republican politicians by and large are Democrat politicians, except with an "R" next to their names instead of a "D". They both want the same exact things; it's just that the former group is feeding you a different set of lies to try and fool you into thinking there are two options, instead of just one.
We cannot vote our way out of problems like that as things are; not until we get the majority of people currently in office out, and replaced with people who aren't career politicians. Because almost all of them want you either dead or in chains; Democrats and Republicans alike.