Senator Kneepads: You can be a felon, or you can be a felon

Delusional presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has a plan that makes me wonder if there’s a federal prosecutors union backing her campaign.

Earlier this year, the habitual liar said she would issue an EO fiat making anyone who sold more than five guns in a year a dealer, requiring an FFL. Apparently she’s upped her game by changing the threshold to four.

This gets interesting because she also wants mandatory “buybacks” of so-called “assault weapons.”

If you’ve bothered to read any of the pending “assault weapon” ban bills, such as HR 1296, you’d know that they cover an awful lot of different firearms. While I can’t speak of what they currently own, I’ve known a lot of people with more than four of the firearms HR 1296 would ban.

Couple a four gun sales limit with mandatory sales of more than four guns, and gun owners are presented with an interesting dilemma: Be federal felon as an unlicensed dealer, or a federal felon for not complying with the ban/buyback? An idea that surely delights federal prosecutors intent on racking up an impressive conviction tally for their political aspirations.

There’s always option 3, which — I swear to Bog — I’m beginning to think these idiots want.

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FFLs for Everyone!

Senator Kamala “Kneepads” Harris has apparently decided to court the gun owner vote.

Kamala Harris promises swift executive action if Congress doesn’t pass gun control legislation
Harris’ pledge lays out four points. The first would mandate what the proposal calls “near-universal background checks by requiring anyone who sells five or more guns per year to run a background check on all gun sales.” The target is to classify that seller of more than five guns as a dealer of firearms.

Thanks, @KamalaHarris. Gun owners have been trying to get the ATF to quantify “dealer” since Bill Clinton’s ’90s purge of FFLs. They always refused, because setting a definite threshold reduces their ability to harass and arrest honest folks.

See, we used to have 286,000 FFLs, mostly small volume types & hobbyists. Billy Jeff didn’t like that and took away 142,000 FFLs from exactly the people Kneepads is trying to “force” to get licenses.

So… Thanks. Now we can get our FFLs and start interstate mail ordering our firearms again.

Like most ignorant victim disarmers, Harris didn’t think that one through.

When idiots try to figure

Mapping the Sale of Firearms vs. Frappuccinos
In their analysis, Beltz and colleagues found that there were six gun dealers in the U.S for every Starbucks (of which there are 10,843, according to 2013 data). Gun sellers also outnumber grocery stores (37,716 in 2014), McDonald’s (14,350 in 2014), and total coffee shops (55,246 in 2016) in the U.S. If gun collectors, manufacturers, and importers were all counted as gun dealers, the total number balloons to 138,659—far more than, say, the number of public schools in the country (98,328 in 2011-12).

Tanvi Misra, girl geniusmoron, thinks there 318 gun shops in DC. The last I heard DC only has one authorized gun broker: CS Exchange.

The other 317 “dealers” she thinks she sees are security companies (security guards, armored car transport, bodyguards). Pretty much what you’d expect in a town thoroughly infested with paranoid politicians and bumbling bureaucrats, all in need of (machine)gun-toting protection, 24/7.

If you take a look at the ATF’s spreadsheet of FFLs, you’ll find that there are several listings for the same place of business, so simply taking raw numbers doesn’t tell you much about how many gun shops there are.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

My first reaction to seeing someone blame gun dealers for a death is to call, “Bulls**t!”

Straw Gun Sales Blamed for Oregon Slaying
Vivian Englund sued World Pawn Exchange and online gun broker J&G II dba J&G Sales on Jan. 7 in Multnomah County Court. She also sued pawn shop owner Richard James Sinatra, and Diane Boyce, the mother of Jeffrey Boyce, who killed Englund’s sister, Kirsten.

But keep reading.

“She came in and said the gun was for her,” Reed said. “We said OK, we can’t prove her wrong. And her background check cleared. Then when the incident happened, the ATF investigated and cleared her and us.”
[…]
Englund says the pawn shop let Jeffrey Boyce pay for two of the guns with his credit card. The shop’s invoice for one of the guns states: “SOLD TO: JEFFREY BOYCE FOR TRANSFER,” according to the complaint.

According to the law suit, Boyce was a convicted felon. If I’m reading this right, and the allegations are true, it sure looks like they knew Boyce’s mother wasn’t the actual purchaser. It’s tagged for him and he paid, but they ran the NICS check on mommy?

J&G Sales should be dropped from the suit. They correctly transferred the firearm to an FFL: World Pawn. World Pawn is the one who screwed up, and apparently documented it. I am curious about the pawn shop’s statement that the ATF investigated and cleared them, though. Given the ATF’s willingness to imposed sanctions and lift licenses for any number of minor violations, I have to question the accuracy of the suit’s claims.

Feel free to dispute whether any such laws should be. But if someone chooses to be an FFL and agree to those rules, they bloody well should make some effort to follow them.

I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this suit.

EO: Licensed Dealers

Actually, there’s still no EO published.

But the ATF has released new “guidance”. Sort of.

DO I NEED A LICENSE TO BUY AND SELL FIREARMS?
Guidance to help you understand when a Federal Firearms License is required under federal law
The guidance set forth herein has no regulatory effect and is not intended to create or confer any rights, privileges, or benefits in any matter, case, or proceeding, see United States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741 (1979).

That translates from the Bureaucratese as, “Follow these instructions, and when we bust you anyway, you can’t use us as an excuse. Eff you.”

From what I can tell, nothing has changed. My guess is that someone pointed out that federal law already is very specific as to what constitutes being engaged in the business of selling firearms. But Barrycade had already spouted off so much that they released something “new” to cover his ignorant ass.

Behind the scenes you can expect the ATF to run more gun show stings, bust people who clearly are not engaged in the business, and simply destroy them financially with malicious prosecution. It happened before, and seemed to have tapered off. Expect a major ramp up again. Jarret and Lynch gave the tip off when they said selling even one gun can make you a dealer despite the clear language of 18USC912: “repetitive purchase and resale of firearms”. Be careful out there. They don’t have to win in court; just destroy you. And that appears to be the plan.