9 Aug 19
“Meaningful” Background Checks?
This morning DJT, responding to last weekend’s shooting incidences in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, called for “meaningful background checks” to be imposed at a federal level upon any American citizen who wants to make a retail purchase of a firearm.
As I listened, it struck me:
“Wait! We already have an instant background check system in place. Our NICS System has been in mandatory operation, nationwide, since 1998!”
Is our current NICS System suddenly “meaningless?”
Imitating his Democrat/socialist opponents, DJT never got specific, never told us exactly what he means by “meaningful” background checks.
Our current NICS System performs a thorough records check of a perspective gun purchaser’s criminal history.
Most felonies, particularly violent felonies, will instantly bounce the application, as will current arrest warrants and protection orders, and documented mental-health deficiencies.
We’re now left to wonder what additional information about an individual is to be added to the NICS-check, in an effort to make it “meaningful!”
Will we now include rumors, speculation, and supposition?
Will social-media presentations/opinions arbitrarily deemed “inappropriate,” (ie: politically incorrect) now bounce my application?
Will letters-to-the-editor of local newspapers containing “divergent” opinions, similarly veto my chance to be armed?
Will my membership in certain organizations, like NRA, GOA, RAC (Rock Against Communism), represent an automatic prohibition?
Will my use of certain non-government-approved language, like personal pronouns, or my occasionally thinking non-government-approved thoughts, do the same thing?
Gee Mr President, just how “perfect” do I have to be in order to exercise my Second-Amendment rights as an American citizen?
Just how do I go about “proving” to your satisfaction that I’m not mentally ill, nor in another arbitrary category of citizens whom someone has offhandedly decided “should not have guns?”
“Nipping in the bud shoots of arbitrary power is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.”
John Quincy Adams
/John
