Hi, BJ…

You wrote:

So at that point, you can set it up however you like. You can set it up with a registry, or without a registry. It could be “I log on and print out a gun buying license to show to people” and that’s that, for instance. Just because existing UBC laws have been formulated one way does not mean that that’s the only way to formulate them, to achieve the efficacy Siegel identifies in his studies.

But that’s the whole point. The intent isn’t to facilitate transfers, it’s to make them more cumbersome, thereby discouraging them. It also makes them more expensive. Transfer fees here in Texas run about $25-$40 per transaction. However, they can run a hundred dollars or more in other areas. This can be a burden for those with limited means and is proportionately a greater burden on people of color than for whites.

And what’s so great about background checks, anyway? They are touted after every mass shooting, yet 536 people have been murdered and 1,031 have been wounded by shooters that passed one or more background checks. Those figures are based the the mass shooting incidents recorded by Mother Jones.

The denials to which gun control advocates proudly point are another sham. They don’t exclude those denials that are reversed because they were based on faulty information, referencing the wrong name, and other errors. In other words, they aren’t net denials.

And how well do background checks work to stem the flow of guns into the hands of those who shouldn’t have them? Not particularly well for the simple reason that criminals don’t get their guns from sources that obey the law.

Looking once more at the Mother Jones list, we find that out of 124 mass shooting incidents in the past 40 years, 71.8% of the killers had obtained their guns legally. Only about 16.9% had obtained their guns illegally and there wasn’t any readily available information about 11.3% of the shooters.

When pressed on the issue of the enforceability of universal background check law during legislative hearings, Both Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Giffords Law Center, and William Rosen, an attorney for Everytown for Gun Safety, dodged questions about the effectiveness of the law without requiring universal registration. Ms. Thomas said that HR8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, prohibited a registry; Mr. Rosen said that the idea was not to enforce the law but to use it to “create a culture of compliance.”

Dr. Greg Ridgeway, deputy director of the National Institute of Justice, advised then-President Obama that registration was a necessary component of background check laws in January 2013.

Is there really anyone out there credulous enough to believe that when the background checks don’t produce the promised results (because they can’t deliver the promised results) that the gun control advocates won’t be back excusing the failure on the grounds that a national registry really is needed and this time, they will work for sure?

Yes, there are people that credulous — because nobody has ever told them the truth.

How about assault weapons bans? That’s clearly a major public heath issue, right?

The AR-15 and AK-47 rifles are inextricably linked to mass shootings in the minds of the American people.

Let’s look at some numbers. According to the firearms industry, Americans own about 17 million of these rifles. How many have been used in mass shootings?

Going back to that Mother Jones list and counting every single AR, AK, and any of their variants, we find a total of 68. That includes the 22 stockpiled by the Las Vegas killer; the two used by the murderers at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino; the two each possessed by Alvin Lee King, Michael McClendon, Eduardo Sencion, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, and Kevin Neal; and rifles that were there but not used by Kyle Aaron Huff and Chris Harper Mercer. So that’s 68 rifles over a period of 40 years.

To put it into perspective, the percentage of these rifles used in mass shootings is only about twice as high as the percentage of all 2008 or later Dodge Challengers used to ram into crowds of demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The FBI reported that rifles of all types were used in 297 murders in 2018. More killers used their bare hands.

Has anyone ever told the American people that the use of rifles in murders has been declining for years? How about the fact that the average rate of rifle use in homicides was nearly 20% lower in the ten years following the end of the Assault Weapons Ban than it was during the ban’s ten-year run?

While we’re on the subject of rifles, there was a big push to raise the minimum age to buy a rifle or shotgun to 21. Apparently, after Parkland it was clear that about 12.7 million young American adults weren’t to be trusted with them.

How many people under the age of 21 have ever used a legally purchased AR-15 in a mass shooting? One. How many people under the age of 21 have used any type of “assault rifle” that they had purchased themselves in a mass shooting. Three: Dean Mellburg in 1994, Nikolas Cruz in 2018, and Santino Legan in 2019.

Incidentally, has anyone told the American people that the commission created to investigate the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School didn’t blame the gun, gun laws, Sunrise Tactical, or Smith & Wesson for the incident? They said Cruz was to blame for the killings but that he was aided by the Broward County Schools, the high school’s administration, and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. The commission also said the incident was the most preventable mass shooting in history.

Who got more airtime: David Hogg or the findings of the commission?

Time for another visit from Factman:

Here’s an idea for a good gun control law: Hold online brokers responsible for verifying that all transactions comply with applicable state and federal laws. Most of the more reputable ones, such as GunBroker.com, already require it. All firearms sold on GunBroker must be delivered to a person with a federal firearms license, either a dealer license or a Curio and Relics license, which applies only to old guns. Armslist.com maintains that it bears no responsibility because it is only a broker.

Armslist was the brokerage used by a man in Wisconsin, who sold hundreds of guns, including one that a four-time convicted felon used to murder Chicago Police Commander Paul Brauer. The route was indirect, but Armslist is where it started.

Incidentally, the man in Wisconsin is currently serving a three-year term for failure to obtain a license as a dealer.

In 1938, Congress passed a law restricting interstate commerce in firearms to persons and businesses licensed by the federal government. There are licenses for manufacturers, dealers, collectors, importers, and exporters. How much trouble would it be to create a new class of licensee?

Want to tighten the “gun show loophole” even though it’s mostly a myth; gun shows are a source of only a very small percentage of crime guns. Congress could pass a law redefining the very nebulous term “in the business” that currently offers a six-lane highway to avoid licensure.

Seen any legislative action on either of those ideas? Neither have I.

That’s because the entire gun control legislative agenda is focused on law-abiding gun owners. The intent is clearly to make it more difficult to acquire and own firearms. Not to make firearms more inaccessible to criminals; to make firearms more inaccessible to people who pose no threat to anyone.

Gun control advocacy has secured an almost total monopoly of mass-media communications. Contrasting viewpoints are virtually never heard, even when they can show that the claims of gun control advocates are false.

Is it any surprise that so many Americans support the agenda? After all, most of them don’t know any different.

As George Orwell said in 1984,

Shannon Watts formed Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America right after the 2012 Sandy Hook murders. They immediately embraced a set of legislative initiatives that had been hanging around for a decade or more.

There’s only one problem with this: none of the new proposed laws would have made any difference. Not in the fact that it happened; not in the number of innocent children, teachers, and school staff who were killed. Let’s look at them:

1. Background checks: Adam Lanza took a gun legally owned by his mother who had complied with all existing Connecticut state laws and federal laws.
2. Assault rifle bans: Lanza was actually fairly knowledgeable about firearms. Had the Bushmaster not been available, there were multiple alternatives that weren’t included in the original ban and haven’t been included in any of the proposed bans since.
3. Magazine restrictions: Lanza reloaded magazines before they were empty.

About a year and a half after Sandy Hook, Mark Glaze, who had recently stepped down as executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety, was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Lamenting the difficulty in attracting support for the group’s agenda, Glaze said:.

“Is is a messaging problem when a mass shooting happens and nothing we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting? Sure, it’s a challenge in this issue.”

In recent times, the campaign against military-style rifles (or at least some of them) has been expanded to semi-automatic rifles in general. They are described in varying lurid terms and various commenters have said there is no sporting reason for them. Various old farts have opined that a decent hunter would need only one shot.

The first semi-automatic rifle produced in the U.S. was introduced by Winchester in 1903. By 1911, Remington had introduced a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable box magazine that would exceed the proposed 10-round limit.

The Winchester and Remington rifles were marketed solely to American hunters. They were not originally intended for police use and the military had no interest in semi-automatic rifles until nearly 20 years later.

The rifles proved popular with hunters. More than 80,000 Model 8s were sold between 1911 and 1936, when the Model 8 was replaced by the Model 81.

Why should we believe the claims about guns made by people who obviously don’t know anything about them? Or about hunting, for that matter.

The point of all this is rather simple. Why would anyone who is fairly knowledgeable about guns and is reasonably conversant with reality not believe that gun control advocates are coming for their guns?

This is the reason that gun owners are not only reluctant to engage in discussions, they have no interest in engaging in discussions. There’s nothing that benefits them.

They know that gun control is based on three lies:

1. There is an “epidemic” of gun violence;
2. Gun owners are the source and cause of the problem;
3. Gun control laws work.