OK, Maybe Biden Really Is Coming For Your Guns
He's expanding background checks like a public safety tyrant!
Republicans and right-wing media insist that President Joe Biden is scheming and plotting, while sundowning, to take away Americans’ god-given gas stoves, ceiling fans, alcohol problems, and their guns. This is all nonsense but maybe you should worry about your guns, especially if you are a threat to yourself and others.
The Biden administration has proposed a new regulation that would require thousands of gun sellers to register with the federal government and actually conduct background checks of their customers.
This is thanks to a small measure in the gun safety law Congress passed last year. Let’s pause to recognize that Biden signed the first major gun safety bill to pass the Senate in 25 years. (And while Kyrsten Sinema of the Sinema Party might try to hog all the credit, let’s also give a shout out to the gun violence survivors and advocates who wouldn’t let the NRA bully them into silence.)
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — just 14 House Republicans and 15 Senate Republicans voted for this, so the name is very generous — broadens the definition of “gun dealers,” thus reducing the number of sales that can bypass the existing background check system.
A canny Biden asked the Justice Department to craft the regulation so that the government could come “as close as we can to universal background checks without new legislation.”
Previously, only dealers actively “engaged in the business” of peddling weapons of death as their “livelihood” were required to register as federal firearms licensees. This exempted people who don’t make a living selling guns, such as “hobbyists” or other random weirdos you could find online. These “private” transactions were part of what’s known as the “gun show loophole,” and it was widening due to increased internet sales. Anyone who’s watched Taxi Driver could tell you how dangerous this lack of screening is.
“An increasing number of individuals engaged in the business of selling firearms for profit have chosen not to register as federal firearms licensees, as required by law,” explained Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steven Dettelbach. “Instead, they have sought to make money through the off-book, illicit sale of firearms. [...] This new proposed rule would clarify the circumstances in which a person is ‘engaged in the business’ of dealing in firearms.”
According to senior DOJ officials, the new rule would require that sellers obtain an actual gun license if they “devote time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms.” Sorry, even the loons who sit around reading Guns & Ammo while masturbating in their own feces would still have to register as gun dealers.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that the more expansive gun seller definition would affect somewhere between 24,540 and 328,296 currently unlicensed dealers.
Democrats still maintain universal background checks as a legislative goal, but Mark Collins, director of federal policy at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, believes the new rule “is a big step closer to it.”
During the Trump administration, the FBI had fallen way behind on completing firearm background checks. However, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act strengthened background checks for gun buyers under 21 by searching for past juvenile convictions that would block them from owning a gun. And it works! The Trace obtained FBI data that shows “enhanced background checks have stopped hundreds of young adults who shouldn’t have guns from buying them.”
Uncle Joe took your guns, dangerous people! You’d probably shoot us if you had a gun, but you don’t. So there.
[HuffPost / Reuters / Washington Post]
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If we could require gun owners to carry liability insurance the insurance industry would destroy the firearms industry.
OT but too funny not to share, from xtweet:
The Volatile Mermaid
@OhNoSheTwitnt
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