Posted on 05/16/2010 11:23:11 AM PDT by rellimpank
Yep. They need a system to do an instant check.
It's illegal for felons to rent guns.
>We already have a law preventing them from buying a gun. Why should they be able to rent a gun if they can’t buy one?
Why should I have been able to fire full-automatic weapons when it’s not legal for me to own them? The `68[?] Firearms law prohibits me from owning them, unless I get a Class III License, which I understands comes with a nice little waver against things like 4th Amendment rights.
I was in the Army [National Guard] for 9 years. Because it was the National Guard I was sworn to protect and defend BOTH the State and Federal Constitutions; because I am a programmer, I have little tolerance for inconsistently applied rules (especially those that violate logic).
You're not nearly as smart as your name would suggest.
It's already illegal for either of them to rent a gun under existing laws.
>>“If the woman had been determined to be mentally incompetent, why was she running loose? Ditto the felon.”
>
>I agree. They should be locked up. But they aren’t.
So then why do you not work to be rid of injustice in our Judicial system rather than rallying for more injustices to be perpetrated & perpetuated?
“Yep. They need a system to do an instant check.”
Keep in mind that they would have to do that to everyone who went to a range, even those who brought their own guns.
And they would have to include in the database everyone with an adjudicated mental disqualification, criminal record, criminal indictment and restraining order.
And the terrorist watch list.
You can imagine how fouled up that would be from the start. I’m not sure the return is worth the effort.
Hey, this is the logic that the NRA uses to justify their support for background checks for gun purchases. I agree with them, but who am I? Take it up with Charleton Heston.
>What makes you think I’m not working to keep them in jail?
That you give no thought to the justness of the laws that put them in jail indicates that you have not given in-depth thought to the situation. That you refuse to recognize the myriad ways the right to keep and bear arms IS restricted, even to those who haven’t EVER been convicted (domestic abuse CHARGES) indicates that you have little to no insight in to how these injustices can be expanded or extended... including into other rights. That you refuse to acknowledge that if someone who has served their legal sentence they should have their legal slate ‘wiped clean’ indicates that you give little regard to Justice.
>Believe me, I am not the one who’s letting these guys out.
But you ARE the one who is advocating that they who have been released should be stripped of their rights.
>But I don’t think that refusing to rent a gun to an insane person or a felon is an injustice.
Again you refuse to accept the fact that ‘felon’ is so pervasive and widespread that YOU are likely a felon; read “Three Felonies a Day,” “Constitutional Chaos,” and watch these: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865# & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE&feature=related
Book Links:
[ http://www.threefelonies.com/ OR http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002T1G8VS/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1594032556&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0WZFMD31F7K3DXWJER30 ]
[ http://books.google.com/books?id=Vag1adtWfDEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Constitutional+Chaos&source=bl&ots=rA1w4IE8Lg&sig=Wx2wmDjpTROI762YpQCDt3yMYPU&hl=en&ei=65PwS5GmOIzcsgPMpfDADw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false OR http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Constitutional-Chaos/Andrew-P-Napolitano/e/9781595550408 ]
>They can’t buy one. Why should they be able to rent one?
They, technically, aren’t allowed to have ammo...
>As pointed out by one poster, they can’t even “possess” one, so it’s already illegal for them to rent one. The issue is not whether they should be able to rent a gun, but rather it’s an enforcement issue.
Wrong. The issue is that we have created a whole CLASS of people who have NO 2nd Amendment Rights. Some of these prohibitions were retroactive, ex post facto; consider the felons who already “did their time” prior to the passage of the “ex-felons can’t have firearms law.” It certainly is a Bill of Attainder. And you have utterly failed to address the practice of “promoting” misdemeanors to felonies.
>Should the range be required to do a background check?
No.
>Actually, I would not even say that. Should the range be able to do a background check?
They can already do that, if they wanted to spend the monies to do so. {Private Investigators are an option.}
>Give the range the ability to require a background check, and I bet a buck almost every range would do so. Believe me, the range owner doesn’t want to rent guns to insane people or felons, either.
I’d take that bet; you fail to consider public and semi-public ranges.
>>“Yep. They need a system to do an instant check.”
>
>Keep in mind that they would have to do that to everyone who went to a range, even those who brought their own guns.
>And they would have to include in the database everyone with an adjudicated mental disqualification, criminal record, criminal indictment and restraining order.
>And the terrorist watch list.
>
>You can imagine how fouled up that would be from the start.
>I’m not sure the return is worth the effort.
They’d also probably want to do it all in Excel.
[/cynic][/sarc]
It doesn’t work either way. Background checks are a load of bullshit. I’m sick of paying for my respect because Doctor Puerile and Judge Stupid feel that the rights of citizens are less important than liberties for the certifiably insane. It’s bad enough that we have to keep one eye on our neighbors because one of them might actually be crazy. It is an intolerable insult that I must beg some cloistered government minister to let me play with a gun because he can’t keep track of the genuine fruitcakes he’s placed in my neighborhood.
There is no “tell” that can be seen before a person decides to off himself or his neighbor. We have two of them on video, plus the one at ShootStraight in Orlando. I sold ammunition to one of them. Nice, quiet man who asked for a second box of 9mm, left the rented pistol on the counter to go smoke a cigarette, then went back into the range, turned his head sideways so the shot would exit downrange, and killed himself. He even took a gun safety class a few days before he did it.
There are real crazies out there, often thanks to a judicial system that believes society is best served by people like Andrew Goldstein. I need a gun to protect myself from people like David Berkowitz and Charles Manson. I draw the line at convincing some government pinhead that I should be allowed to borrow one once in a while.
>Renting firearms to anyone that walks in the door just seems like a recipe for trouble.<
I’ll bet that you crap your pants thinking that in 1967 anyone could order firearms out of a catalog and have them mailed to their home.
The NRA doesn’t support background checks. If you continue to repeat that, I want to see a link.
If you want someone to take it up with Charleton Heston, it’s a sure bet you are NOT a member of the NRA.
They can put up all the signs they like, but that won't protect them in court, if someone they denied service to decides to sue them.
Personally, I would feel a bit safer in the range if I thought they had done a background check on everyone. And I don’t see what the civil liberties issue is, assuming that it could be done quickly.
Errr, the civil liberties issue is the very existence of the background check system, which is a government-controlled list of people the government has chosen to deny Second Amendment rights to. Among other government abuses, veterans who've simply asked for help managing their financial affairs, because post-service stress (often temporary) has rendered them unable to do it themselves, have been pretty routinely stuck on the no-guns list -- permanently. Other people have been put on it for petty violations of *other* countries' draconian gun (and ammo) laws.
The background check system run by the government is absolutely unacceptable. However, any private business should be free to deny service to anyone they don't want to serve, for any reason (including race, religion, disability, etc) -- just as free citizens have the right not to patronize any private business whose' policies they disagree with. I support the right of a restaurant to stick a "no blacks" sign on their door -- but they won't be getting a penny of business from pasty-white me if they do.
Likewise, I support the right of a gun range to make an on-the-spot assessment of someone, and deny them service for any reason, without being subject to expensive lawsuits by people claiming they were "discriminated against". As it stands now -- sign or no sign -- a gun range that denies service to someone they deem unable to handle a gun safely due to, say, a visible tremor, or inability to stand solidly without both arms on crutches or a walker, or inability to hear (i.e. inability to hear urgent warnings shouted by staff), can be sued under the ADA for discriminating against someone with disabilities.
When a gun range can freely set its own terms for service, there is no government infringement of 2A rights involved, and the range staff may well be able to spot people who would be truly dangerous who are not on any database that the background check system uses.
I don’t have a problem with felons legally owning guns.
If they have rehabbed, then they deserve one; if they haven’t then I’m assuming they’ll get one if they want one.
They’ve either paid their debt to society or they haven’t.
The court signs a warrant for an exam that can last no more than 72 hours.
That does not mean one is crazy. In fact, the exam probably proves they aren’t.
No, the premise is that INNOCENT CITIZENS ought not to be subject to a background check. The background check is government-run, and thus very much subject to government abuse. The chief purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable citizens to defend themselves *against the government* when the government steps beyond its limits. Obviously that's not possible if you've got the same government in a position where it controls whose names are on the no-guns list and fines and imprisons any gun dealer who sells a gun to anyone on the list.
The government puts people on the list based on the declaration of government-licensed physicians and government-employed judges that someone is "mentally ill". Do you know anything about the Soviet Union abused its psychiatric hospital system? People who were effective opponents of the Communist Party were declared "mentally ill" and locked up in the "hospitals".
As Condoleeza Rice has pointed out, this issue isn't just theoretical in the U.S. either. When she was growing up in Alabama, the state and local governments were largely controlled by people who were perfectly happy to break the law in order to keep black people controlled and subservient. She noted that a government requirement for registration and licensing of gun owners would have seriously impeded her community's self-defense against the law-breaking government officials and their law-breaking agents who were never prosecuted for attacks on black people. The men in the community took turns patrolling the neighborhood at night with shotguns -- sometimes their own, and sometimes borrowed -- and due to the lack of a registration/licensing scheme, the local officials didn't have a list of which blacks owned guns, and thus couldn't trump up charges against them to confiscate their guns and prohibit them from buying another.
The way to deal with dangerous felons is to keep them locked up. Not to let them loose and then use their presence in free society as an excuse to infringe the freedoms of all the non-felons in the country. If a felon has served a long prison term, and seems safe to be given another chance, they can be classified as prohibited to own a gun, and their name and photo put on a publicly accessible registry (like sex offenders) so that anyone who becomes aware that they have a gun can report them to authorities, resulting in their re-arrest and permanent imprisonment.
Do you not grasp how this can be and HAS BEEN abused? In Illinois, it's a felony to be in possession of a gun one day after your state permit to possess it has expired -- even if the state has simply failed to process your application for renewal within the legally mandated 30 day time period. And once you've been convicted of any kind of "felony" in any state, you go on the *national* NICS list as ineligible to purchase a gun.
It’s legal for anyone to hand their car keys to anyone without checking and confirming their driver’s license.
Funny, that’s a bigger problem (count the bodies), but nobody seems he11-bent on solving it.
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