Originally Posted by
DylanClarke
Costless government services are like green energy; they don't exist. They're still using your tax money to pay someone to do the background checks and either raising taxes or reducing spending on something else to do it.
Convenient background checks will still be a way to fuck with law-abiding gun owners. Right now, my wife and I own a number of guns. On paper most of them are mine, a couple of them are hers. When one of us wants to go shooting or carry a particular gun, we pick it up and take it. When my wife wants to carry the Glock 26 that I bought, from a legal point of view I give that gun to her, she possesses it while she's out carrying it, then when she comes home she gives it back to me. Under "common sense gun laws" that's two background checks required or we're technically breaking the law - which is fine unless she uses that gun in self defense and then we both get charged with firearms offenses. Her self defense claim is probably voided by carrying an "illegal" gun as well.
So, what would we do under these laws if we wanted to stay strictly legal? We do the background checks and divide our guns into mine and hers based on who uses them, with no overlap other than maybe some range use where we're both there. The next hurdle we hit is the requirement that we store our guns securely so that no-one else can get access to them. That's pretty reasonable, and all we have to do is put them in our gun safe. Except we don't. I have to put my guns in my gun safe that my wife is unable to access, and she has to put hers in her gun safe that I am unable to access. Not only do we have to buy a new safe, but if one of us goes out while the other is at home, the one going out can't leave their safe keys at home with the other one.
Of course all of this could be avoided by specific provisions in the laws to exclude people in the same household from having to perform background checks to transfer firearms - but that doesn't seem to be included in any of these proposed laws.
Isn't it curious that almost everyone who wants more gun laws believes that free voter IDs are a bad idea because of the hypothetical person who has no ID and is too busy working to go and get one to vote?