You Ask, We Answer | Shall Not Be Questioned
So here’s my question to you pro-gun folks: When you sell a gun to a private buyer you don’t know, how do you know the buyer doesn’t fall into one of those categories? Do you care at all if you may be unknowingly abetting a shooting crime?
I’ve sold one or two guns through a private sale to friends who are also gun people, and I know can pass a background check. I’ve bought several guns at a private sale from people at my club. All long guns, since handguns have to go through an FFL or a Sheriff in Pennsylvania.
There is nothing magical about firearms. They are tools. And there is no moral opprobrium in buying and selling them. Period.
Whether you know the buyer or seller or not.
About Bill Quick
I am a small-l libertarian with conservative leanings on most issues, except on many traditionally conservative social issues, where my stance would be regarded as hopelessly liberal by most social conservatives. My primary concern is to increase individual liberty as much as possible in the face of statist efforts to restrict it from both the right and the left. If I had to sum up my beliefs as concisely as possible, I would say, "Stay out of my wallet and my bedroom," "your liberty stops at my nose," and "don't tread on me." I will believe that things are taking a turn for the better in America when married gays are able to, and do, maintain large arsenals of automatic weapons, and tax collectors are, and do, not.
Here’s my question to you service station attendants: How do you live with yourselves, selling gasoline to strangers, never knowing if they’re going to use it to burn down an orphanage?
Here in Fairest Canuckia the Long Gun Registry (rifles and shotguns, primarily) is finally on it’s way to the happy hunting ground. This means that there will be no requirement to forward any purchase info to the Feds. But, the interesting part is the way the Feds worded the new regulations.
They say, to paraphrase, that the seller only has to see that the buyer has a valid firearms acquisition license ( as in a sale from a gun store) OR BELIEVE THE BUYER HAS A VALID LICENSE ( as in the case of internet sales). This means that the estimated 7+ million long arms currently in the registry will effectively disappear about 5 seconds after the law is invoked, and there is no actual future onus on the seller to verify the buyer.
I think we’re winning.
I should also note that while there may be 7+ million registered long guns, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that there are two or three times that many that have never been registered. Which will all become legal. That , combined with the still registered rifles (shorties, scary black guns, etc.) and handguns, makes a pretty convincing argument for at least one firearm for every citizen of the realm.
And you thought we were disarmed.