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7 Comments

  1. Joel
    Joel January 22, 2015 6:53 am

    I have often said the NRA is to gun rights as Jesse Jackson is to race relations. Actual victory would threaten their meal tickets. By that reasoning, Alan Gottlieb is, heaven help us, our Al Sharpton.

  2. Matt, another
    Matt, another January 22, 2015 7:44 am

    I really don’t know Alan Gottleb. But I would guess that his actions aren’t so much wanting to keep himself in business, but wanting his ego gratified as being a major driver for firearms “reform” in Washington and other states. He wants the credit, name in lights etc. Having to trample others in search of this is just collateral damage to his ego.

  3. Paul Bonneau
    Paul Bonneau January 23, 2015 11:12 am

    Claire, in our discussion on that piece you wrote, you twice ignored my point that we already have all the registration that the government really needs in NICS (which makes Gottlieb’s support of the same thing kinda moot). I really am interested in what you think about that. Am I full of baloney, or missing the point, or something along those lines?

  4. Claire
    Claire January 23, 2015 11:25 am

    Didn’t mean to ignore that point, Paul. Just got pretty overwhelmed with commenting yesterday.

    Of course, you’re right that even the existing half-assed system is a form of registration. IMHO, it’s just that UBCs will be vastly worse because they’ll make it illegal to avoid registration, whereas now in most of the U.S. you can avoid registration with private sales and still consider yourself the proverbial “law-abiding citizen.”

    Gotta run now. Will check in now and then over the weekend.

  5. RW
    RW January 23, 2015 11:42 am

    NICS is only relevant for registration if you buy from a dealer and a good reason not to, but then you can’t buy some of the new models you might like. UBC’s are infinitely worse since then all are tracked(registered) and private sales, gifts, inherited pieces, whatever would be tracked, limited, and prohibited. Currently if you buy from a dealer and sell/gift to an individual you are out of the loop and its not tracked afterwards. Support of UBC’s is nothing short of treason to liberty and 2A.

  6. Paul Bonneau
    Paul Bonneau January 25, 2015 7:40 pm

    [you can avoid registration with private sales and still consider yourself the proverbial “law-abiding citizen.”]

    Except for those 3 felonies per day everybody inadvertently commits…

    [UBC’s are infinitely worse ]

    No doubt they are worse – but infinitely worse? Hardly. If they decided to confiscate, they already know who the gun owners are, to a very large extent. The rest can be picked up by the usual threats to known gun owners if their friends are not turned over, so buying only outside of NICS will not save you – and what good is that gun anyway, buried in your garden, with the rest of America disarmed?

    No, it can never get that far. It can never get to the point where buying outside of NICS actually delivers some benefit for you, because by then the benefit is moot. We have to go to war long before that.

    The other thing is that even with UBC, the law will be ignored by the vast majority. Somebody (I forget who at the moment) did a story in Reason about gun control laws – it turns out these are ALWAYS ignored by the majority of the population. Look at the NJ “assault weapon ban”, where the compliance rate was about 10%. All gun laws that are significant impositions turn out similarly.

    In my view Bloomberg, far from being on a winning tack, has simply found an elaborate way to throw away his money. I don’t fear UBC because it will never be universal after all, not even close to it.

    I always wonder about people who get worked up about these things. Is it because THEY intend to follow the law in question? Why?

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