U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is hoping to pass a firearm-licensing bill that will significantly rewrite gun-ownership laws in America.
Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner’s address in America.
It also forbids the transfer of “qualifying firearms” to anyone who is not a registered and licensed gun dealer or collector. What makes a “qualifying firearm,” you wisely ask? “[A]ny handgun or any semiautomatic firearm that takes an ammunition clip.” So basically… everything except revolvers or single shot weapons. I knew I liked those wheelguns for a reason.
Three guesses as to what his justification is for this travesty.
“to protect the public against the unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with the unrecorded sale or transfer of firearms to criminals and youth.”
For the chidren! As long as you can somehow tie it back to that, any violation of rights or liberties is justified – at least in the mind of your average politician. The bill even starts off with a tragic tale of a boy who used his body to shield a girl in the line of fire of a lunatic who decided he was going to shoot up a bus. Unfortunately, even had this law been in effect, the result would have been the same. Why? Because criminals don’t obey laws. This is a crucial cognitive disconnect present in nearly every member of congress, and especially the Democrats – these sort of registries and transfer penalties and fines and fees do not work on those who ignore the law. The only people who this kind of legislation affects are the law-abiding ones who don’t need to be tracked in the first place. It makes it even more inconvenient to buy or own a firearm, which means those aforementioned law-abiding citizens will be less likely to have one, which in turn means that when the aforementioned law-ignoring citizens decide they want a crack at his home theater system, he is left helpless – or even dead.
Self-defense is a basic human right, outlined and explicitly declared in the Constitution of the United States. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” it says – and this law seeks, yet again, to infringe on that right. It seems so absurdly obvious that this would be the case that it never ceases to raise frustration levels in people like myself, Rott, and others – namely, people with basic cognitive skills who can recognize simple truths about reality. Unfortunately, very few of these sort of people get elected into public office.