Buying a long gun?

Never heard of such a thing in Maine. I walked into a sporting goods store a few months ago, bought a rifle and walked out. No hassles.

Are you talking about the form 4473? or the NICS process? both have been law for a long time.

Charlie, couldn't or wouldn't? I bought a rifle at Van Raymonds a couple of weeks ago, and even with the 4473 and NICS check was out of there in what seemed like five minutes.

Form 4473 requires the firearm seller to obtain from the purchaser the following information: name, address, date of birth, government-issued photo ID, National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background check transaction number, make/model/serial number of the firearm, and a short federal affidavit stating that the purchaser is eligible to purchase firearms under federal law

I take it your "friend" has a problem with the back ground check part of it ?? The form itself isn't much...Been that way for a long time...

I got my first Federal Firearms License in the mid/late 1980s and the Form 4473 was around long before that. Its been updated a few times but the basic information is the same. Not sure what your friend was expecting.

It was part of the Gun Control Act of 1968. If you watch the movie "Red Dawn" (1984), it is mentioned there. This form is very old. The only new part is the Instant Check. By now, it is only semi-new.

Most NICS disqualifications are valid, based on sttutory criteria. In my experience, there are two basic problems that "gong" most incorrect NICS inquiries. One is closely resembling the identity of one who IS a prohibited person. The other is a misdemeanor offense misidentified as felony.

I campaigned to defeat that act. I became a life member of the NRA in 1968. It cost $100 and that was a lot of money for me at the time. I hoped I'd live long enough to break even. I also bought a few firearms through the mail that year. You could do that back when we had freedom. Pick a rifle or pistol out of the catalog, send in your money and the packages arrive at your home. Now we do essentially the same thing at yard sales and gravel pits. Freedom works. We just need to adapt to make it happen.

Now we do essentially the same thing at yard sales and gravel pits. Freedom works.

Don't forget gun shows and flea markets. And about those guns that make it into the hands of criminals? Freedom works real well for them.

I don't suppose you subjected yourself to the tyranny of getting a drivers license, either.

francisz- are you suggesting that anyone too dangerous to be trusted with the full rights of citizenship should be locked up to begin with? Or that the rights of law abiding citizens should be infringed upon to accomodate them?

This is the text of the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Call me a strict constructionist but nowhere do I see language that suggests that the requirement for a fifteen-minute background check at purchase or exchange of arms to be an infringement on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Reading something else into it, LarryB?

A right is not subject to government scheduling, francisz. I can buy a very nice rifle art the local gravel pit. I can sell one too. Why should I have to wait if I want to buy the rifle at a business? It is restraint of trade and patently illegal.

Do the words bear and keep automatically imply purchase and exchange?

I do not see that they do.

There is no implication whatsoever. Bear means carry. Keep means own.

So, the opposition to background checks is not based on 2nd amendment grounds, but on the tenth, is this correct?

Tell me, in the gravel pit exchange - does it matter if the exchange, the sale is made to non-citizens?

Tell me, in the gravel pit exchange - does it matter if the exchange, the sale is made to non-citizens?

Say, of Saudi or Afghan descent? Who just moved here from "training" in the mid-east?

Roger:

Requiring a victualer's license is, by your standards, restraint of trade. I am no fan of "victim disarmament" as practiced in recent years. However, not every stupid, or ill - conceived law is illegal.

francisz. Is it truly possible that you cannot grasp how jumping through hurdles to buy a gun infringes on one's right to own one?

You seem like a petty smart cookie, I am surprised you are incapable of grasping the connection between purchasing and owning and the simple definition of infringe.

About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes. 42,636 people were killed in 2005. It's time to close the Car Show Loophole. If you want to sell a car you should pay a fee to a dealer and go through him. A background check should be done on every potential purchaser to ensure their right to operate is not under suspension and that their insurance is adequate and current. While there is a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, there is no constitutional right to buy and drive a car. Worse still; earlier "hot rods" had no disc brakes or air bags and are demonstrably unsafe. Surely, no reasonable person would be against guarding the safety of the Republic with this commonsense measure?

Its a simple matter being muddled greatly. Guns are a legal commodity that do not require Government approval to trade in. If an individual collects guns he can treade up or sell a piece to pay the light bill if so inclined. Gun dealers are treated different and have special rules as they are "in the business" of selling firearms. This is much like auto dealers. You can buy or sell a car to a friend with a simple bill of sale. A car dealer has a pile of hoops to jump through with warantee issues, title issues, liability issues, etc. Same thing. Dealers always have a greater burdon.

The bottom line is that those who want EVERY SINGLE transfer of a firearm recorded and stored have erroneous intensions. There is nothing to do with safety or legalities and safety from terrorism. That is all a smokescreen. Bad guys do bad guy things, no matter what the law is, and that is what makes them bad guys. If there is a new law that makes all firearms transfers go through a dealer and be entered into a database the bad guys will change nothing while only the good guys will have new concerns and regulations. Kinda like drugs. Last I knew there weren't rogue pharmacists selling pot from their apartment. It's not the legal guys. THAT is the bottom line.

On that note, since this is clearly a gun discussion Im moving it to the proper forum.

Gun owners have the lowest crime rate in the nation with the possible exception of clergy, many of whom own firearms. Gun owners have enough sense not to sell firearms to potential terrorists. Most private transfers occur between people who know each other. Even the Uncle Henry's type transactions must be comfortable for the seller.

More on the terror gap here: Mayors Against Illegal Guns

From it:

A 2010 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows that individuals on terror watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives 1,228 times during a six-year period (February 2004 - February 2010). On 1,119 occasions - 91 percent of attempts - the FBI was unable to block gun and explosive sales to suspected terrorists.

Link to GAO report here: pdf May 2010

Kind of smoky in here, can I buy anybody a drink?

francisz, if you truly believe as you say you do, try having a 10 waiting/cooling off period before making your next post, writing your next letter to the editor, or otherwise exercising your First Amendment rights. Something tells me you won't, but you expect others to be happy that you want to force that on them. In what reality does that make sense?

Francisz, you and the mayors are brilliant. Why, in places with stringent gun control, like Ireland, terrorists aren't able to acquire firearms, right?

To wit none of my blog posts, lttes, or published writings have killed anyone.

September 2010: Trace the Guns: the link between gun laws and Interstate Gun Trafficking

"To wit none of my blog posts, lttes, or published writings have killed anyone."

They haven't saved anyone's life, either.

That's what's known in the business as a non sequitur. And you can't possibly have read these reports (and the footnotes) that quickly, could you?

It's a non sequitur, when someone is portraying guns as dangerous, to point out that guns save lives? When you're trying, through your 1st Amendment rights to deny me my 2nd Amendment rights and make the statement that exercising that particular right never killed anyone through some misplaced feeling of superiority, you're somehow insulated from the fact that guns save lives? I can assure you I have no intention of spending time studying the lunacies you linked to. I have in the past and they've all been seriously flawed. I have no reason to believe these are any different. I grew up around guns and don't have an irrational fear of them. I have little regard for the opinions of people who do.

There is a strong association between a state's gun laws and that state's propensity to export crime guns.

Well, duh. Criminals tend to get guns from states where their purchase is easier.

What policies, if any, are suggested by this correlation? For example, would a more standardized national market - as urged by the report - be likely to reduce the incidence of gun crimes? How about reducing violent crimes generally?

Is there any evidence or logic that suggests that tightening gun laws in "exporting" states will change anything other than shuffle the black market in guns?

More to the point, is there any evidence that suggests that legal barriers to gun ownership - e.g. waiting periods, background checks, outright bans - actually reduce crime? A contrarian thought: reducing the incidence of legal gun ownership creates a greater incentive toward illegal gun ownership and a greater likelihood of violent crime.

Please define "crime gun".

If you're quoting the MAIG report, we need to make sure we're all on the same page with the terminology in use. If you look at the BATFE information in the data that MAIG claims supports their conclusions, they specifically say that the firearms they include in their data were not necessarily used in the commission of a crime, nor were they necessarily in the possession of a criminal.

For example, officials at several police agencies have dismissed the data because every firearm any officer comes in contact with and any firearm surrendered at a "buy back" is run through the eTrace system and classified as a "crime gun". Every firearm recovered after a burglary is a "crime gun". The statistics are wildly exaggerated in quantity and in their significance to any discussion of crime.

"To wit none of my blog posts, lttes, or published writings have killed anyone. "

Neither have any of my guns. What's your point, other than to admit that you have no intention to give up your Constitutional rights any more than I have?

BTW, you didn't wait your mandatory waiting period. You may now expect the literary version of the ATF at your door any moment now...