{"id":35393,"date":"2013-03-26T08:46:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T13:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35393"},"modified":"2013-03-26T08:46:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T13:46:45","slug":"universal-means-universal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35393","title":{"rendered":"Universal Means Universal<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Taranto notes that while “Universal Background Checks” will have no effect on crime – serving as they do only to further harass and hamper the law-abiding, and price more low-income shooters out of the market – they\u00a0will\u00a0<\/em>infringe on peoples’ privacy rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Currently, Federal Firearms License (FFL)-holding dealers perform these background checks online or via phone. \u00a0FFLs, by the way, are pretty tightly regulated; it’s not something you get for the asking. \u00a0On the other hand, Universal Background Checks would require all private transfers to get the background check.<\/p>\n

And that means\u00a0everyone<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Currently access to the FBI’s background check system is limited to licensed firearms dealers, who have an incentive not to abuse it lest they lose their license. If it’s opened up to all prospective sellers of guns–that is, to everybody–what’s to prevent someone from abusing it, say by requesting a background check on [Anti-gun WaPo columnist] Greg Sargent, who presumably has no interest in acquiring a gun?<\/span><\/p>\n

The system only gives a yes-or-no answer as to whether the putative buyer is eligible to own firearms under federal law. But if you’re looking to dig up dirt on someone, a “no” answer on a firearms background check would give you a nice clump of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’d put a big info-trawling tool into the hands of the unethical.<\/p>\n

Think that won’t get abused?<\/p>\n

Look at the last ten years in the history of Twin Cities’ leftyblogging and ask if you want that crowd to have access to a “there’s trouble here!” flag on every man, woman and child in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Taranto notes that while “Universal Background Checks” will have no effect on crime – serving as they do only to further harass and hamper the law-abiding, and price more low-income shooters out of the market – they\u00a0will\u00a0infringe on peoples’ privacy rights. Currently, Federal Firearms License (FFL)-holding dealers perform these background checks online or via […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,22,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-victim-disarmament","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35395,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393\/revisions\/35395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}