McCain emerges as key senator in expanding background checks Read more: http://thehi

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/2...ground-checks-


McCain and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) are at the top of a list of Republicans considered most likely to sign on to legislation expanding background checks after talks with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) stalled earlier this month.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has signaled he will likely support the yet-to-be-finalized proposal he negotiated with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to expand background checks to cover private gun sales, according to Senate sources.
The proposal includes modifications to attract Republican support. One would let rural gun owners conduct background checks from their home computers. Another would give military veterans who have been declared mentally unfit to own a gun a process for appealing that finding.



I don't trust McCain at all.

Why wouldn't you trust a member of the Keating Five, who lobbied FDIC directly to protect a major donor?

They need to make the system voluntary, where you can go to a dealer and have the check done, but not mandatory. Right now it's illegal for a dealer to do that for someone. Make it voluntary, which would get little objection IMO, and see how it goes.

I hope the NRA targets these Senators in their next election, but McCain is old enough he may be eying retirement. The good news is it still has to pass the House, which is unlikely. Not even sure they'll get to 60 even with McCain and a few other Republicans. There are some Dems from very pro gun states that don't want to be on the wrong side of this in an election run.


FWIW I'm all for more background checks, but yes I do see this as a key step to gun registration. Feinstein and others have as much as admitted it outright, and the DOJ's own report says it will take registration for it to be effective. when you look at the UN's Small Arms Treaty, which also includes registration as a goal for signing nations, I get really nervous.

Universal checks will fail to do much of anything to keep guns out of criminal's hands, and will for sure do nothing to keep them out of the hands of people like the shooters in Aurora and Va Tech b/c they PASSED those checks. So we'll have a system that was supposed to keep guns away from criminals, and when it fails the anti-gun people will come back and say "we need to strengthen the background check system" but this time with registration. Will it win out? I don't know, it will be a tough fight, but having an ineffective law that people will think needs "fixing" will make it all the easier.

Great example -- Kentucky seat belt laws. Pro-seat belt forces couldn't get an outright seat belt law requirement passed in Kentucky, so they got it passed as a secondary offense. You couldn't be pulled over for it but if you were pulled over for other things you could be cited for it as well, with a minimal $25 fine. Once that passed, it took ONE YEAR for that law to be changed to where you could be pulled over for it.

Passing that first step makes the 2nd one easier. It's a fact of political life and human psychology. Knowing that the anti-gun forces want far more than universal checks, and will gladly use that law to push for even more restrictions, and knowing it won't have much impact on criminal access to guns, I have to be against universal checks.

Feinstein and the Brady Campaign have said they want registration and registration is the key to the long term agenda of bans. It was the key in every other country that has had a ban, and is the nightmare scenario for the 2nd Amendment. It's too important to risk with a law that won't do much of anything.

Make it voluntary and you'd be surprised how many people would do that check. Gun owners don't want to sell guns to criminals. Even a voluntary system will risk them coming back to "fix it" and make it mandatory, but that's a bigger hurdle than letting it be mandatory from the start. If the anti-gun people would drop their religious assault on guns we could have universal checks and I'd be fine with it, but knowing they want a complete ban (Feinstein said it AGAIN in this round of gun control) I don't see it as a good idea to give more than the tiniest bit as they march down that road.

Their zeal keeps us from having "common sense" gun control. It's like the Native Americans signing a peace agreement with the US government in the 1800s. Might as well use it to start your fire b/c you'll be signing another one in a year after they break this one and take something else. I'm sure as the chiefs sat around their fire discussing the agreements where they a chunk of land a few would say "it's not a bad deal, we can live with this", not acknowledging that it was just a matter of time till the next agreement was in front of them taking another piece of territory.

Of course the obvious solution, addressing the fundamental crime problem in this country, isn't even on the Senate's agenda and the Judiciary Committee didn't look at a single aspect of the crime problem such as the drug wars and how they create the vast majority of it.