Second Amendment March

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

Greetings, all -- I was at the March, yesterday. That is, I was at the real one on the Mall, not the spinoff across the river.  A week or two ago, in a discussion of Tea Partiers, I had a brief dialogue with squidb0i  about the 2A March. He said that in the absence of credible threats to gun rights, the 2A March was simply a front for "teabaggers".

With that in mind, I kept a conscious eye out for TEA Party type signs, pamphlets, handouts, etc.  Attendance was in the high hundreds, maybe over a thousand. I wandered around and saw most of the crowd at one time or another. There were 2-3, maybe 4 signs that could be interpreted as TEA Party related.  There was one sign for the John Birch Society, back in the back. There was one religious nutjob, and a couple of Third Way whackos. That's it, out of a LOT of people. Everybody else there was attending to promote gun rights.  

There was a certain amount of mockery directed at outfits like the SPLC, mostly by people like Nicky Stallard of the Pink Pistols, and Kenn Blanchard aka Black Man With A Gun(tm).  The SPLC had apparently labeled a number of the organizations there as "hate groups", including Oathkeepers.  Nicky pointed out that it was pretty stupid to call 2A advocates racists or homophobes, considering that she and Kenn were speaking.  All in all, a good time was had by those attending, and I got to see and meet some of the icons of the gun rights movement.  I even got to give Dick Heller one of my empty-holster flags: an L-shaped piece of red posterboard, with a sticker showing the DC flag and "Disarmament Without Protection". He was amused.

Comments

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

Straw purchases, however, aren't legal ones. They're illegal ones that are gotten away with, in the short term. If a legally-purchased gun finds its way into the black market, it's usually a long time after the legal purchase.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Actually, straw purchases are legal. They are done with licensed gun dealers by authorized customers within the letter of the law. The transfer afterwards is illegal, but without registration requirements, there is little hope of prosecuting them.

I have no idea what you are talking about with legally purchased guns finding their way into the black market. If you are talking about stolen guns, I've already refuted that in a prior comment.

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

Nope, straw purchases are NOT legal. The first question after name, address, date of birth, etcetera is:

12. Answer questions 12a through 12l by writing “yes” or “no” in the boxes to the right of the questions.
a. Are you the actual buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring
the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to
you. (See Important Notice 1 for actual buyer definition and examples.)

That's a copy-and-paste from an actual 4473.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

As I said, the sale is legal. The dealer is selling and distributing the weapon in good faith to the customer. The law is violated when the customer transfers the gun illegally. The dealer has no way of determining the intention of the customer. Since tracking essentially ends with the customer without registration, the dealer cannot be held accountable.

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

The dealer's not held accountable, unless it's obviously being done as a straw purchase, right under his nose. However, it's an ILlegal sale, as the purchaser commits the crime by checking the "yes" box on the form. Marking that checkbox is the criminial act.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

But not prosecutable. You are basically advocating the work-around that the criminals use. Since you would have to prosecute the intention of the buyer at the time of the sale, you would have to be a mind reader. This could only be done with proper gun registration, and even at that, it would be dicey.

Without tracking after the sale, disposal of the weapon becomes impratical. The buyer can claim that it was lost, stolen or even given as an afterthought gift. We track our cars better than we track guns.

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, it IS prosecutable. People get nailed for it fairly regularly. A buys a gun. A few days later, B gets caught with it. A goes to the clink.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Fairly regularly or occasionally. Law enforcement has identified this as a major stumbling block to prosecuting gun crimes. Our prisons are hardly filled with straw purchasers. Chicago is a major crime area. Law enforcement doesn't have the resources to manually track gun ownership and possession in this area.....or Washington DC.