ACLU: Unhappy with Background Checks in Potential Reid Gun Control Bill

The ACLU talks some sense about gun control, civil liberties,
and privacy, as
reported by Daily Caller:

As Senate Democrats struggle to build support for new gun
control legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union now says
it’s among those who have “serious concerns” about the
bill....

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist
for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun
bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested
lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant
concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

While not against background checks in all cases, Calabrese
says:

“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a
way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard,
we think the current legislation, the current proposal on
universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he
went on.

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases
very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers.
Under existing law, most information regarding an
approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed
seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System]
check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed
within 90 days.”

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s
record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the
White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a
registry could be “a second step.”

He notes that government databases sometimes stretch in use
beyond their original intent.

Calabrese says that [Nevada Democratic Senate leader Harry]
Reid’s legislation fails to include...“privacy best practices.”

“Contrast this with what the existing [Reid] legislation says,
which is simply that a record has to be kept of a private
transfer,” Calabrese highlighted, “and it doesn’t have any of the
protections that we have in current law
for existing licensees.”

“We think that that kind of record-keeping requirement could
result in keeping long-term detailed records of purchases and
creation of a new government database.”

“And they come to use databases for all sorts of
different purposes,” Calabrese said. “For example, the
National Counterterrorism Center recently gave itself the
authority to collect all kinds of existing federal databases
and performed terrorism related searches regarding those databases.
They essentially exempted themselves from a lot of existing Privacy
Act protections.”....

Reid’s legislation is hauntingly vague about who would
physically keep information about American gun purchases, but it’s
crystal clear that records will be kept.

While I'd rather the ACLU consistently take on gun laws head-on
as restrictions on an explicit constitutional civil liberty, it's
nice to see they care.

Read More

4 More Ways Obama's Gun Control Speech Sows Mistrust

As I
noted earlier today, President Obama professes to be worried
about a lack of trust and empathy in the gun control debate, even
as he accuses his opponents of blocking life-saving legislation out
of sheer partisan perversity. Here are a few other ways in which
Obama's speech in
Denver sows mistrust:

He conflates a failed background check with stopping a
criminal from obtaining a gun.  "Over the past 20
years," Obama says, "background checks have kept more than 2
million dangerous people from buying a gun." That claim is based on
two faulty assumptions: 1) that everyone who fails a background
check is dangerous, which plainly is not true, given the
ridiculously broad categories of people who are legally barred
from buying firearms, and 2) that a criminal intent on obtaining a
weapon will give up if he cannot get it over the counter at a gun
store, rather than enlisting a straw buyer or turning to the gray
or black market.

He falsely equates "assault weapons" with military
guns. Obama inaccurately calls one of the guns used
in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, massacre an "assault rifle," which is
a military weapon capable of firing automatically. He calls the
guns he wants to ban "weapons of war," again implying that they
fire continuously, when in fact they fire once per trigger pull,
like any other semi-automatic firearm.

He says there is no logical connection between
"universal background checks" and gun registration. "We're
not proposing a gun registration system," Obama insists. "We’re
proposing background checks for criminals." But there is no way to
enforce a background-check requirement for every gun transfer
unless the government knows where the guns are. Federally licensed
gun dealers are readily identified and can be required to keep sale
records. Individual gun owners who might dare to sell their
property without clearance from the government cannot be identified
unless the government compiles a list of them. Hence Obama's
assurances amount to saying, "Don't worry. We will make a big show
of passing this new background-check mandate, but we won't really
enforce it."

He pooh-poohs the idea that there could ever be anything
adversarial about the relationship between Americans and their
government:

You hear some of these quotes: "I need a gun to protect myself
from the government." "We can't do background checks because the
government is going to come take my guns away." 

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you.
(Applause.) They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am
constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders
put in place. It's a government of and by and for the people.

One of the constraints on the federal government is the doctrine
of enmuerated powers, which says every act of Congress must be
justified by a specific constitutional grant of authority. Where is
the clause that empowers Congress to say how many rounds you can
put in a magazine or whether your rifle can have a barrel shroud?
Furthermore, as Obama surely has heard by now, there is this thing
called the Second Amendment, and it is hardly frivolous to argue
than an arbitrary and capricious piece of legislation like the
"assault weapon" ban Obama supports would violate the
constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Yet to Obama's mind,
anyone who makes such an argument is one of those "people who take
absolute positions" and therefore can be safely ignored. After all,
the government is us. 

Read More

ACLU: Unhappy with Background Checks in Potential Reid Gun Control Bill

The ACLU talks some sense about gun control, civil liberties,
and privacy, as
reported by Daily Caller:

As Senate Democrats struggle to build support for new gun
control legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union now says
it’s among those who have “serious concerns” about the
bill....

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist
for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun
bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested
lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant
concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

While not against background checks in all cases, Calabrese
says:

“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a
way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard,
we think the current legislation, the current proposal on
universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he
went on.

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases
very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers.
Under existing law, most information regarding an
approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed
seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System]
check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed
within 90 days.”

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s
record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the
White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a
registry could be “a second step.”

He notes that government databases sometimes stretch in use
beyond their original intent.

Calabrese says that [Nevada Democratic Senate leader Harry]
Reid’s legislation fails to include...“privacy best practices.”

“Contrast this with what the existing [Reid] legislation says,
which is simply that a record has to be kept of a private
transfer,” Calabrese highlighted, “and it doesn’t have any of the
protections that we have in current law
for existing licensees.”

“We think that that kind of record-keeping requirement could
result in keeping long-term detailed records of purchases and
creation of a new government database.”

“And they come to use databases for all sorts of
different purposes,” Calabrese said. “For example, the
National Counterterrorism Center recently gave itself the
authority to collect all kinds of existing federal databases
and performed terrorism related searches regarding those databases.
They essentially exempted themselves from a lot of existing Privacy
Act protections.”....

Reid’s legislation is hauntingly vague about who would
physically keep information about American gun purchases, but it’s
crystal clear that records will be kept.

While I'd rather the ACLU consistently take on gun laws head-on
as restrictions on an explicit constitutional civil liberty, it's
nice to see they care.

Read More

4 More Ways Obama's Gun Control Speech Sows Mistrust

As I
noted earlier today, President Obama professes to be worried
about a lack of trust and empathy in the gun control debate, even
as he accuses his opponents of blocking life-saving legislation out
of sheer partisan perversity. Here are a few other ways in which
Obama's speech in
Denver sows mistrust:

He conflates a failed background check with stopping a
criminal from obtaining a gun.  "Over the past 20
years," Obama says, "background checks have kept more than 2
million dangerous people from buying a gun." That claim is based on
two faulty assumptions: 1) that everyone who fails a background
check is dangerous, which plainly is not true, given the
ridiculously broad categories of people who are legally barred
from buying firearms, and 2) that a criminal intent on obtaining a
weapon will give up if he cannot get it over the counter at a gun
store, rather than enlisting a straw buyer or turning to the gray
or black market.

He falsely equates "assault weapons" with military
guns. Obama inaccurately calls one of the guns used
in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, massacre an "assault rifle," which is
a military weapon capable of firing automatically. He calls the
guns he wants to ban "weapons of war," again implying that they
fire continuously, when in fact they fire once per trigger pull,
like any other semi-automatic firearm.

He says there is no logical connection between
"universal background checks" and gun registration. "We're
not proposing a gun registration system," Obama insists. "We’re
proposing background checks for criminals." But there is no way to
enforce a background-check requirement for every gun transfer
unless the government knows where the guns are. Federally licensed
gun dealers are readily identified and can be required to keep sale
records. Individual gun owners who might dare to sell their
property without clearance from the government cannot be identified
unless the government compiles a list of them. Hence Obama's
assurances amount to saying, "Don't worry. We will make a big show
of passing this new background-check mandate, but we won't really
enforce it."

He pooh-poohs the idea that there could ever be anything
adversarial about the relationship between Americans and their
government:

You hear some of these quotes: "I need a gun to protect myself
from the government." "We can't do background checks because the
government is going to come take my guns away." 

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you.
(Applause.) They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am
constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders
put in place. It's a government of and by and for the people.

One of the constraints on the federal government is the doctrine
of enmuerated powers, which says every act of Congress must be
justified by a specific constitutional grant of authority. Where is
the clause that empowers Congress to say how many rounds you can
put in a magazine or whether your rifle can have a barrel shroud?
Furthermore, as Obama surely has heard by now, there is this thing
called the Second Amendment, and it is hardly frivolous to argue
than an arbitrary and capricious piece of legislation like the
"assault weapon" ban Obama supports would violate the
constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Yet to Obama's mind,
anyone who makes such an argument is one of those "people who take
absolute positions" and therefore can be safely ignored. After all,
the government is us. 

Read More

Mark Kelly: Background Checks Are Crucial, But NRA 'Right' On Mental Health Records

Legislation that doesn't address universal gun background checks would be a "mistake," Mark Kelly said Sunday on Fox News, adding that efforts should also be made to keep guns from the mentally ill.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) is crafting a bill that wouldn't include such background checks, but Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), expressed skepticism.

"I think any bill that does not include a universal background check is a mistake," he said. "It's the most common sense thing we can do to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from having access to weapons."

Read More...
More on Jared Lee Loughner

Read More