On the gun control front, what rights are being given up with universal background checks?
I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!! I would like to add to your knowledge, which you prolly know already, why I am against UBCs, and why others should be too. I'd like to open up and state/remind that I am open to banning private sales of firearms between two parties, without FFLs.
Some UBCs can be written so badly that me handing my pistol over to my girlfriend at the shooting range, would be illegal unless I run a background check on her, and then she'd have to run one back on me when giving me back the gun. That is a terribly stupid written law. But not a major point of my opposition.
We already have a NICS. The NICS is a national background check that everyone that purchases firearms through a gun shop, has to pass. Gun Shops have to have a FFL. The FFL is the Federal Firearms Licence. Shops and people that get FFLs go through some background checks as well, to get their FFL. So really, a Universal Background Check would aim at private individual sales. Straw Purchasing, where someone with a clean record, goes to buy a gun for someone else, mostly for criminal reasons, is already illegal. I would love to make that more illegal. But to REALLY stop private sales, you would have to register every firearm. So when you stop John and he has a gun that doesn't belong to him, it's registered to Tom, Tom will also go to jail. I don't disagree with the "John AND TOM going to jail" bit, I have serious fear, and everyone should, of a National Gun Registration.
Why we should be very afraid of that, is a bit contentious. I won't say "NAZIs registered guns!" because it's not exactly true. The German government, before the full rise of the National Socialist power, gave out permits to carry guns in public, as well as a registry of who owned guns. Now I an't say that they had ill intent for this. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that had no malicious intent and was purely for the safety of their people. Now when the party in control switched to a very different and evil sort of power, they already had the tools in place, to know WHO had guns, and know exactly WHERE to look. So what did they do? They raided houses of people with guns, with this nice helpful database, and confiscated them. They disarmed their citizens.
We saw what happened in one example there of registering firearms lead to terrible consequences of people disarmed and left unable to fight back against the tyranny of their government. We should not be handing over that much power to the government. We now have in some states, laws stating rifles with a made up term of "assault weapon" have to be registered. Chanti you may have heard something similar to this, but first they'll go with the semi auto rifles. Then they will go for the semi auto pistols. Then they will go with the shotguns and revolvers. That is absolutely terrifying, and what's worse is Americans disarming other Americans based on misinformation and ill intent by those in leadership.
The facts show that murders by rifles are far lower than those by hand guns. These big high profile killings, while terribly tragic and horrifying, are statistically rare, unless you start fudging numbers so that theres, say 300 mass shootings a year. Far more people are killed with hand guns. Why is there more outcry for the scary rifles than what is doing more damage and death, hand guns?
All this type of gun control boils down to me, and others I know, as badly motivated actions, on the backs of tragedies. I don't know what the solution is, but I know this isn't compromise either. This is bullying gun owners. One side straight up bulling gun owners. And those supposed gun owners that want UBCs, are being led around like sheep, and it's because they don't know better. They don't know the repercussions of the actions they would send their representatives to vote on, to strip away Constitution protected rights.
I don't know what the answer is to all this terrible news the news fixates on, but I know without a doubt, UBCs and Gun confiscations ain't it chief.