state + local

So-called universal background checks are the same thing as registration. Registration leads to confiscation, always and forever. Minnesotans should not be fooled by these heart-wrenching stories, the banners have but one aim, one single goal, and that is to place you at the mercy of all the thugs who don't follow the laws. I feel sorry for all the victims of violence, I truly do, but disarming me and mine isn't going to happen. Not ever.

It has never been explained how background checks between private individuals would be enforced. One person sells a gun to someone else, how does anyone know whether a "check" was performed or not? It will of course be only voluntary and won't be anything close to "universal" as many (including all criminals) won't participate. Just another meaningless piece of legislation that solves nothing.

Once AGAIN, a Strib article that repeatedly fails to convey that the "internet sale" they are referring to in this article was between two private individuals. It is misleading the public to let them think that one can blithely buy a firearm from a legitimate dealer, through the internet, without a background check. NOT SO! In order to legally buy a firearm from a legitimate gun store via the internet, the buyer must first have it shipped to a federally-licensed dealer (FFL) near them. There is NO door-to-door direct shipment! The buyer MUST present themselves in-person to the local FFL and go though the *same* federal and state paperwork and background checks that are applicable in that particular locale. Sheesh, you haven't been able to buy a "mail order" firearm from a legitimate dealer since the days of Lee Harvey Oswald! Get the details right, STRIB!

Multiple violations of restraining orders, yet she is still free to walk the streets. The problem isn't availability of guns, the problem is people who are mentally ill and are allowed to walk among the victims. No law would have stopped her, she had a history of ignoring the law.

So. It has come to this. The inane has officially evolved into the ludicrous. In this bluest of blue states, and despite the avalanche of hysteria on the part of The-Sky-Is-Falling crowd eagerly fueled by their Fourth Estate stooges, even this incredibly watered-down attempt to limit freedom stands little chance of becoming law. Why? Where have all those grandiose dreams and goofy legislative bills addressing clip size, gun shape and carry limitations gone? Answer: nowhere. And there are two reasons. First, none of this addresses the real problem. The vast majority of crime is criminal-on-criminal and no amount of limitations to the rights of the law-abiding has or can address that. Second, people are seeing this precisely as what it is: an effort to control people by limiting a right. This is not nor has it ever been about The Childerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn. There have been precisely 60 school shooting deaths since 1990. In that same time period there have been approximately 184 THOUSAND gun deaths in other venues, and the vast majority of those have been criminal-on-criminal, gang- or drug-related, inner city deaths. In other words, deaths that this current gun-control hoopla wouldn't, and couldn't, address. Less than one one-hundredth of the gun deaths in the past 20-odd years have been Childerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn dead in school shootings and yet this is the banner being waved so frantically the left. Bottom line--thinking Americans know when they're being sold a bill of goods. Give it up, lefties. You're embarrassing yourselves.

I guess my assumption is that the person that makes the private sale (without following the new rules of the background check) would in some way be held responsible (i.e., prison time)should it be used in a crime. In some, not all I realize, it would help drive some enforcement to the new law.

Yet another story claiming background checks can be expanded, without the necessary details concerning civil rights protections. Will that story ever be reported, the “how” of the process? We can’t have legislators passing laws that violate our civil rights, because those laws cannot legally be enforced and add to society’s distain for the law, and the legislature. You can’t charge a fee for this background check between individuals. You can’t create a registry of firearms held by private individuals. You can’t open up the federal background check system to non-licensed commercial interests. So what are you planning on doing, creating a new, wasteful level of state government to oversee something Canada even tossed away as unworkable? What are we talking about here? Background checks says nothing.

It makes sense. No one is going to take your gun away unless you prove to be a threat to society. If you register your gun and then sell that gun to your neighbor or anyone else without going through the proper channels, you would probably be held partially responsible for any wrong doing with your gun since you were the last person that it was registered to. If it is stolen, you would have to report it.

They can enact all the laws they want, but in order to be effective they have to be enforceable. So who is going to enforce this one? I can tell you this right now, even as a former police officer I wouldn't abide by it.

Fear of gun crime has led to an unreasonable and unfounded fear of hundreds of thousands of legal gun owners. It leads to uninformed legislation, such as Minnesota Senator Latz's bill, SF458, and Representative Paymar’s bill, HF237, which is pointed at the wrong people, 10% of law-abiding people transferring firearms between neighbors. 90% of firearm transfers go through a Federally Firearm Licensee such as myself. Representative Paymar’s and Senator Latz's bills demonizes law-abiding gun owners that transfer a firearm to their neighbor and puts onerous constraints and additional fees on them to do so. It does not address holes in reporting mental health commitments or criminal convictions to the reporting system. Neither SF458 or HF237 address the core issues leading to gun crime, implementing effective legislation aimed at bolstering information submitted to the NICS system and addressing recidivist criminals that commit the overwhelming majority of gun crimes and are in illegal possession of firearms. HF 1325, Representative Hillstrom’s Alternate Bill, has bi-partisan support of over 70 coauthors and the input and support of law enforcement and county attorneys. Senator Ortman has also authored a companion bill, SF 1359. This legislation has "teeth" and would have stopped sales to Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech perpetrator as well as Christian Oberender, a local convicted felon, from legally purchasing firearms. Representative Hillstrom's bill targets improved reporting to the NICS system and illegal gun purchases, including straw purchases. It also goes after felons that are illegally possessing firearms. Often the question "what if we could just save one life" is offered as the reason to support "something" to deter gun crime. HF1325 and SF1359 would save countless lives as it addresses the core issues of gun crime. It's robust legislation, not the watered down, ineffective political expediency found in Senator Latz's and Representative Paymar's bills.