by John Boch
Maine is the latest state of see a referendum put on the ballot with Bloomberg’s money. The gun-grabbing group Moms Demand Action seek to end private transfers of firearms with this new proposal, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the final referendum read very similar to Washington State’s referendum passed in 2014.
In Washington State, it’s illegal now to even handle another person’s firearms, with a few very limited exceptions. You can’t borrow a friend’s gun while hunting without running them through a background check. In Washington State, you can’t even hold someone else’s gun while they cross a fence-line while hunting. It’s illegal to let a friend shoot your firearms, even on your own property. You can’t handle or use loaner guns during classroom / range training courses.
Then there’s the de facto registration that “universal background checks” implement.
Universal Background Checks are gun registration
Yes, “universal background checks” is gun registration and I’ll tell you why… When you buy a gun and a check is made under current law, a record is kept. For instance, if John Boch buys a gun from Liberty Guns in Homer, IL, the Illinois State Police have a record of the time and date of the background query, along with the type of gun (long gun, handgun, or other). At this point, there’s no formal registration list, but the ISP maintains a database of every query.
If the Illinois State Police want to convert their database info into a hard registration list, here’s how it works:
To create a list of guns John Boch owns, the ISP merely goes back through their records, identifies the dates and stores that made a call-in on a purchase for Mr. Boch, then they contact those gun stores and ask them to fax or email the Form 4473 from each sale to them. With the Form 4473s, they can create a list of guns I should have. If I don’t have them, then I better have the disposition information of whom they were sold to and on what date.
I saw it happen when a former employee had sold a couple of guns to friends without FOID cards back around early 2000s. One of the guns ended up at a crime scene. The cops swooped in to my then-workplace with three vehicles, literally like it was an episode of America’s Most Wanted. As I recall, there was an ATF agent, three detectives with the Chicago Anti-Gun Enforcement unit, one or two people from the Cook County Sheriff, two state police detectives and a local Urbana cop. Nearly ten cops.
Nearly ten cops… for a misdemeanor investigation. Does that seem a little like overkill? Especially when there are countless unsolved shootings and homicides in Cook County?
They had a list of about eight guns this guy had purchased and they wanted him to take them to his house and show them the guns. Right then. But first, they frisked him in the parking lot and then handcuffed him and searched his car top to bottom (to the point of taking out the spare tire) while his fellow employees watched through the window.
He was back about three hours later, with a notice to appear on the misdemeanor charge of failing to keep a record of the transfer.
What’s more, while they were interrogating him, they wanted to know what was in my fanny pack. He told them (a Glock). They then said I’d face arrest if they caught me with a gun in that fanny pack. You can guess how that went. I mailed said detective a terse letter urging him to carry out that threat as I always wanted to see the federal courthouse in Urbana from the plaintiff’s point of view. Guess what? Mr. Bloviator never returned and he and his friends never came back to arrest me.
And back to our referendum story…
Bloomberg has gotten nowhere at the federal or state level passing gun control since immediately after the Newtown killing spree by a social misfit.
But Bloomberg did win a victory in a ballot referendum in Washington State in 2014.
It’s the ONLY place he’s gotten results.
Look for more of these ballot referendum schemes as 1) he’s got lots of money to hire people to circulate petitions and 2) it’s the only place he’s had any luck passing any meaningful gun control.
Until we kick him in the teeth on one or more of these appeals to the low-information types, we’re going to see gun control by ballot referendum with greater and greater frequency.
Here’s the upside of the Maine announcement: It will galvanize gun owners and conservatives to the polls, ensuring the Bernie Sanders useful idiots are badly outnumbered.
AUGUSTA (Press-Herald) — Maine election officials are verifying petitions for a ballot measure requiring criminal background checks for all private gun sales in the state.
The group Maine Moms Demand Action submitted petitions to the Secretary of State’s office Tuesday. Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn says the group claimed it has more than 72,000 signatures certified by cities and towns.
If certified for the Maine ballot, the campaign to expand Maine’s background check requirements is expected to draw considerable interest – and money – from gun control advocates and gun owners’ rights groups in Maine and around the country.
I hope the good guys win this one.
We should work on public education more.
There are plenty of badge heavy cops and posturing prosecutors who talk tough but are all hot air when you know your rights.
This validates the statement that gun control is actually about people control.
Ten cops for a trivial gun case downstate? Sure, why not.
Policing in Englewood can be dangerous!
Yeah, coming downstate on a gun sale case looks like hard work. It might even feel like hard work. Just don’t step in it.
Wake up before they bring this to Illinois!
Thank you for bringing attention to this deceptive attempt by Bloomberg to implement gun control in Maine.
A massive educational effort will be required to defeat this proposal, but we can do it. Consider that many Mainers were initially opposed to Constitutional Carry – and yet Mainers were able to learn about the virtues of CC and pass it.
That same CC coalition can defeat UBC in Maine.
Below is my attempt at a “cliff notes” listing of why Bloomberg’s UBC gun control should be OPPOSED by Maine voters (in no particular order):
1. Practically all the recent mass killers either passed a background check and/or stole the weapons they used. The background checks proved to be useless.
2. We can be assured that the criminal element will “universally” not subject themselves to these background checks, and yet still obtain whatever weapons they want.
3. The Universal Background Checks can only be implemented with Universal Gun Registration (which history shows ultimately leads to Universal Gun Confiscation).
4. This proposal is deceptively “sold” (and polled) as coming into play during the PURCHASE (i.e. change of ownership) of a firearm, however, the actual details of the proposal also affects the POSSESSION of firearms (e.g. loaning a gun to a hunting buddy for hunting season / transfer of a gun during a self-defense scenario).
5. Universal Background Checks result in a de facto a ban on handgun ownership for 18 to 21 year olds since Federal Law prohibits a Federal Firearms Licensee to transfer a handgun to anyone under the age of 21.
6. There is something inherently wrong in requiring citizens to obtain prior permission from the government before exercising U.S. Constitutional Rights.
7. The UBC proposal is being driven and financed by out-of-state interests (read: Bloomberg). As a general rule, Mainers DO NOT appreciate being told how to live their lives by outsiders.
8. The UBC proposal is in violation of the Maine State Constitution; “Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms and this right shall NEVER be questioned”.
9. Mandating that citizens of a large rural state travel far distances to meet up at a Federal Firearm Dealer to get approval for a firearms transfer is an unfair burden on the exercise of their 2nd Amendment civil rights.
10. Maine is one of the safest states in the nation, there is certainly no need for additional criminal checks on the citizenry.
11. This proposal is just another burdensome regulatory requirement and taxation. Instead, we need to be reducing regulations as Maine successfully did with Constitutional Carry.
12. The ATF recently announced that it is already struggling with the current volume of gun background checks due to very high gun sales. The ATF also announced that there will be delays in the appeals process for those citizens denied gun purchases. Adding more background checks will only make these two situations worse.
Final Note: This whole issue reminds me of the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” whereby the general public’s confusion between full-auto and semi-auto was used to ban military-style rifles with certain cosmetic features (this law “sun-setted” 10 years later in 2004). One can only hope that the Maine people will be smart enough not to fall for this UBC deception.
Thank you. Good points, sir!
John
The FBI just announced they have stopped processing appeals of NICS denials. If you are denied, there is no recourse.
In the mean time, Obama works to add more and more reasons for denial into the NICS system (returning vets with PTSD, social security recipients with a financial fiduciary, unspecified “mental illness”, name on the terrorism watch list).
In addition to being default gun registration, universal background checks are a path to total gun control. They just need to keep adding reasons to deny purchases.
The NICS system is nothing more than a means to avoid due process.