Rhetoric aside, there is one point that needs to be made in re background checks, from no less a source than the feds: "Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration and an easy gun transfer process."
So this isn't about siding with either group, or pointing out flaws, or questioning motives, or effectiveness, or tactics, or anything else--plenty of other places will host that conversation. The discussion I'm inviting here centers on that core point.
Is it debatable?
[Via several of you]
UPDATE: Dave Workman goes into detail in "Gunfight: War of words erupts; ‘aid and comfort to enemy?"
UPDATE TWO: Here's the NAGR piece.
3 comments:
I somehow got on the NAGR email list a few years ago.
NAGR was pushing folks to send money to stop some international small arms treaty, which, at the time, this site stated was a dead issue.
I also emailed Dudley Brown requesting clarification regarding some statements made in some emails.
My view, is, right or wrong, NAGR is mainly interested in obtaining funding.
How effective they are is another matter. I removed myself from their email list after they failed to clarify some allegations they advanced in their emails.
I'll go with trustworthy sources.
As for the matter at hand, Gottlieb, unfortunately, IMO, invited the controversy.
Background checks MIGHT be "effective" in identifying certain prohibited individuals from purchasing guns on the open market... but I've never seen anything that backs up a claim for effectiveness in preventing crime - no matter what they do with it, including full registration and tracking.
People who actually want to hurt others don't worry about any of that. And never will.
There is no rational excuse for this tracking and checking if preventing violence is the goal.
I'm mildly conflicted. On the one hand, from dealings with Brown (mainly an attempt to involve RMGO in a pro-RKBA action ten years ago) convinced me he only wants to promote himself.
On the other hand, I do think Gottlieb screwed up big time. When he came out in support of universal background checks for Washington back in February 2013, I wrote to him, first to confirm he'd actually done something so stupid, then to critique his effort: first step in setting up backdoor registration (which he admits in that NAGR video), restrictions on transfers, and the precedent of a nationally prominent "pro-RKBA" figure flipping and suddenly supporting UBC, which I correctly predicted the media and gungrabber groups would take and run with.
So just imagine my lack of surprise when Gottlieb first supported Manchin-Toomey (with all its flaws aside from just the UBC itself), then publicly claimed to have helped write it. Picture my further lack of surprise when the media and gungrabber groups pointed to "pro-RKBA" Gottlieb's support. As predicted.
Yeah, Gottlieb has beeen involved in a lot of good work. In the past. The problem is, when someone of his prominence flips to back a rights-violation of that magnitude, it lends aid and support to the enemy. Gottlieb knows better. In our correspondence, he defended himself by noting: "The fact is in the 1960's I was in Tennessee fighting for civil rights for African Americans. I was even helping to arm them so they could protect themselves from the Klan. " (emphasis added-cb)
I responded, "So where did you go wrong? How many of those people you armed could afford and _pass_ -- in that prejudiced time and place -- a background check? Did you get the local sheriffs' permission to arm them? "
Gottlieb "compromised". When was the last time "compromising" and yielding on Constitutionally-protected rights turned out to be a good thing? In the NAGR video, Gottlieb rationalizes that "we" have to write a background check bill, or someone else will write a worse one. That was exactly the rationale the NRA offered we they helped write the Columbus "assault weapon" ban. It was the same rationale that the NRA offered when they killed constitutional carry in New Hampshire.
UBC is the foot in the door of registration. Whether it's done by fax/paper, telephone call, or blind "BIDS", the government gets a report that identifies a specific person as a gun owner. You can write laws that say the feds can't save those records and set up lists... just like you can pass laws that the ATF can't collect active FFL 4473 data and build lists. But it will (and does) happen. Even BIDS: the web server will keep it's own log of every HTTP transaction; all someone has to is archive the logs (a normal process, even on my own little web site), then parse them later to extract the desired seller/purchaser data.
Gottlieb knows this. He knew this before he went public on "Gottlieb-Manchin-Toomey". But he still did it.
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