Right off the bat, let's establish that this has no chance of actually becoming law. The President has vowed to veto it and there isn't enough support in the house to override a veto, but even that is irrelevant, because it will probably never see the light of day in the Senate, and even if it did, it would be voted down. But hey...we're not here to craft law but to talk about it, so let's talk.On Wednesday, for the first time in a generation, the U.S. House passed new gun control legislation, by a vote of 240-190.
The legislation — and another bill scheduled for a vote — reflects a confluence of events, including a newly empowered House Democratic majority, the apparently diminishing clout of the National Rifle Association, and the activism of a generation of young Americans following years of deadly school shootings.
The House bill would require background checks on all commercial gun sales, including those at gun shows and over the internet. The bill also had five Republican co-sponsors, led by New York Rep. Peter King, who had tried — and failed — for several years to advance the bill while his party controlled the chamber.
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That bill would close the so-called “Charleston loophole,” which allows the sale of a firearm to proceed if a background check is not completed within three days. It’s a loophole that allowed Dylann Roof to obtain his weapon with which he murdered nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Had the FBI background check been completed, he would have been blocked because it would have been revealed that he had previously admitted to drug possession.
As a liberal who has no particular problem with guns, I don't really mind expanded background checks, although as always, the devil is in the details. It's fine to say that I need to do a background check on Antiboyscout before I sell him a gun, but you also need to give me a reasonable way to do that as a private citizen. Fortunately, this is a problem that modern technology SHOULD be able to solve. It should be feasible for the Feds to set up a website where I can enter in ABS's info, and it can run a scan of all relevant databases before giving me the green light. Email me a certificate or something saying he's clear so I have something to print or save for my own records. Basically an electronic version of the 4473 form. Frankly, it's been overdue for some time now.
However, I'm very leery of closing the so-called "Charleston loophole." The system has to be fail-open, otherwise, you're just setting it up to run afoul of the Constitution. The first time someone's purchase gets held up indefinitely because somebody at the FBI loses the paperwork, we're going to see a court challenge and the government will lose, assuming the 2nd Amendment is still around. Removing that loophole also means you're setting up a de-facto gun-ban, and that isn't going to fly with anyone on the right, which means your odds of getting this passed fall dramatically. That doesn't mean we have to leave things as they are...if 3 days isn't long enough, maybe we could extend that to 5, or maybe we could allocate some money to hire some more agents to process this paperwork, or maybe we could write some automated system that would greatly speed up turnaround...any or all of these things would probably work, but at the end of the day, you have to leave the system fail-open.
