House Democrats push new bill to criminalize private gun sales

Admin Fri 08 Feb 2019, 7:54 pm

House Democrats push new bill to criminalize private gun sales
February 7, 2019
https://www.conservativeinstitute.org/conservative-news/democrat-gun-control-bill.htm?utm_source=aimtell&utm_campaign=automated_push&utm_medium=push
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The Democrats wasted no time after taking back the House in getting started on their radical gun control agenda. While their goal is plainly confiscation, the Democrats’ strategy involves starting off with modest-sounding proposals to whittle away at the Second Amendment.

Shortly after her party took back the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed HR 8, a gun control bill that would criminalize private gun sales. The bill headed to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Dems criminalize private gun sales
The benignly labeled “universal background check bill” calls for all gun sales and most gun loans, gifts and transfers to go through a licensed dealer for a background check. The plain text of the bill, proposed by California Democrat Rep. Mike Thomas, claims that it does not authorize the creation of a national gun registry, but the innocuously named bill is laced with legal traps that could jeopardize law-abiding gun owners.

In effect, the bill would criminalize private gun sales. With few exceptions, simply loaning a gun without going through a dealer could land law-abiding gun owners in jail. The bill lists certain exceptions, such as loaning a gun to a family member, but the scope of the bill is broad.

More concerning is that the bill could set the stage for a confiscation push by keeping records of all private gun sales and transfers. The bill would require the same record-keeping for private sales and transfers as if the transaction went through a vendor, essentially setting up a universal gun registry.
The bill makes an exception for self-defense but only in cases of imminent danger. Common sense would dictate that most life-threatening danger is unpredictable. This is a clever way of essentially rendering gun owners defenseless..

As David Kopel at Reason notes, the bill could also indirectly ban handguns for persons under 21. 18 to 20-year-olds are not prohibited from possessing handguns in most states, but dealers are prohibited by law from selling them to persons under 21. By making all gun sales go through dealers, the bill could impose an indirect handgun ban.
To top it all off, the bill establishes that there’s no cap on licensing fees from dealers for all the extra trouble it imposes on gun owners.