Joe Biden sign executive order
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
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Anxious to vote and get the hell out of Washington, DC for their scheduled two-week break (and before the city burns) the House of Representatives quickly rubber-stamped the Cornyn-Murphy gun control bill today after it cleared the Senate late last night. Much like the Senate, 14 Republicans voted for the bill in the House (15 GOPers voted yes in the Senate).

The Do Something Gun Control Bill of 2022 — actual name: the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — is a vaguely written, ill defined hash of measures that throws money at states ostensibly to fund mental health programs and to encourage them to enact due process-free gun control laws.

The bill also subjects adults under 21 years of age to a higher degree of scrutiny during the background check process. And as Reason’s Jacob Sullum makes clear, much like the rest of the bill, the “enhanced background check” process is poorly and dangerously written.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act not only blocks gun sales to young adults with disqualifying juvenile records. It permanently strips them of their Second Amendment rights, adding the phrase “including as a juvenile” to the list of criteria that make gun sales to certain buyers illegal. Current law makes it a felony for “any person” to transfer a gun when he knows or has “reasonable cause to believe” the recipient is disqualified. As amended by this bill, that provision would prohibit transfers to people with disqualifying juvenile records, even after they turn 21.

That means a teenager who is convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration would not be allowed to buy firearms as an adult. Likewise for a teenager who is subjected to involuntary psychiatric treatment, provided that happened “at 16 years of age or older.” Those changes magnify the irrationality and injustice of the current rules, which criminalize firearm possession long after a conviction or commitment order, regardless of whether a would-be gun owner has ever done anything to suggest violent tendencies. It is especially perverse to deprive adults of their constitutional rights based on what they did (or what was done to them) when they were minors.

Even the NSSF’s President and CEO Joseph Bartozzi, who supported large sections of the bill, ultimately concluded that “the ambiguity over state records, the lack of clear definitions, and unaddressed due process concerns prevent us from supporting this legislative package as presented.”

None of that really matters, though. The Cornyn-Murphy bill, rushed through both houses of Congress after a massacre in an election year, was never intended to make our communities safer…or anything even approaching that. Literally everyone involved knows that, but continues to spout the requisite platitudes, happily keeping the kabuki going.

Now that it’s cleared Congress, someone will soon steer President Biden to a desk with many pens on it where he can sign the bill into law and robotically hail the first gun control legislation in three decades as a momentous achievement in bipartisan compromise.

The Federalist’s David Harsanyi probably put it best . . .

In the end, though, nothing will change in our political environment. Today, the corrupt corporate media and Democrats will herald the law as breaking a “logjam,” the first gun “safety” law in 30 years. This is untrue. Congress has passed numerous gun laws. Thousands of gun laws and regulations exist in the United States. No right has ever been more regulated. And, in a few days, Democrats will return to accusing Republicans of supporting terrorism and abetting child murder. Senators like Murphy will be back to demanding bans on semi-automatic rifles and arguing for backdoor national registries. Within weeks, if not earlier, the media will tell us that the bill was a mere, tiny, first step in bringing the United States in line with other civilized countries. For one side, the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” will be a fleeting win, for the other, an incremental step in a crusade to limit national gun ownership.

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82 COMMENTS

    • Hey mitch mcconnell aka “the turtle”…History confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is rooted in racism and genocide…That historical fact alone makes you and your beloved democRat Party colleagues sicko waterboys for the third reich and the kkk.

  2. Neither party can be trusted with ANY Constitutional Right. Power is an insatiable hunger and an extremely addictive drug. The struggle continues.

  3. As I understand it, the provision criminalizing a private sale for more than one paid for it is attackable.

    Even if a gun just sat in your safe for 20 years, simple inflation will make the sale price higher that what you paid for it…

    • Yeah, right, I paid $160 for a shiny new 4″ Python in 1970, shot the billy hell out if it for several decades before selling it for $600 (since it needed a new barrel and I had another essentially unfired one) circa 2000. Now I hear it would go for thousands. So the govt will have to shoot me? Because I certainly will NOT ask their permission to sell any such gun.

    • That’s why we have cash (for now). Also, if you sell a car, let the buyer fill out the price on the title.

  5. I really expected the news on Bruen to address how that would affect this stupid bill, but not a word. I have not seen one positive result this bill will provide to gunowners, and until I do Cornyn need not expect my vote ever again, for any position.

    • Hmm 27th and 24th districts for NY and on either side of but not including Rochester, more Walter Beverly’s region (may not be his district) so don’t know much about these two.

    • GUESS how much NegotiatingRightsAway PAID to pass this BS??? Answer:$43000000…

      • NRA opposed this but didn’t really lobby against it. They’re spending $48M a year on outside attorney Bill Brewer III trying to keep Wayne from going to jail. They don’t have the money to lobby for or against this.

  7. If you want it here it is come and get it. If you want it anytime I can give it but you better hurry cause I’m shooting fast. You better hurry cause the lead won’t last. Traitor Joe gives taliban helicopters but gonna take my carbine. How bout you try it yourself pussy joe

  8. Seems unfair to have to fight these legislative battles of attrition since the gov is using our money to fight for their side and we’re using our money to fight for our side.

    Something not quite right about that.

    • Really? Try the fact that when they run out of our money, they will simply print more! (HINT! We don’t get to do that.)

      • When they really run out of money the value of your money approaches zero one way or another.

        Over $3 trillion in pensions wiped out in a week. Only .gov can accomplish such a feat.

  9. The major failing was that they did not pass Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage laws. Without these laws criminals and lunatics can buy all the firepower they want as this is their primary source of weapons and every sane person knows it. Every civilized nation on earth has such laws and their lower mass murder and homicides with firearms prove these laws work and work well compared to our complete lack of such laws.

    • @dacian

      “The major failing was that they did not pass Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage laws. Without these laws criminals and lunatics can buy all the firepower they want as this is their primary source of weapons and every sane person knows it. Every civilized nation on earth has such laws and their lower mass murder and homicides with firearms prove these laws work and work well compared to our complete lack of such laws.”

      That is 100% false.

      1. Its is not a “major failing … they did not pass Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage laws.” – it is an intentional omission. These would have been immediately rendered unconstitutional and would have gutted the entire bill the moment it was passed due to the now law of the land Bruen decision.

      You apparently don’t know anything about the Constitution, nor do you respect it.

      Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage laws are, at their core, based upon the premise that a government can decide what a person does with their property or if a person can own/posses/use their property, which in this case is firearms, with restrictions or in other words with government permission based requirements.

      The Constitution codifies an individuals right to own/posses/use/sell/buy property as they see fit without burdening government restriction/infringement. A ‘Universal Background Check’ check means, basically and includes, a person who owns a gun and is selling has government imposed requirement they must run a background check on a person who wishes to buy that gun – this is an unconstitutional requirement as it treats the right to as if it is a privilege decided by government. When it comes to a right it means the government being able to treat a right to own/posses property as not a right but rather a privilege granted by government based upon completion of a requirement, in other words, basically, what is broadly called a ‘second class right’.

      In addition, basically, a ‘Universal Background Check’ is a registry system, in this case for firearms, because it means the government will have established a system that allowed them to track a persons property ‘use’ (in terms of selling/buying) their personal property to disallow or allow such ‘use’, in other words a ‘registry’ of ‘use’ that burdens the right of a person to own/posses/use/sell/buy property as a person sees fit by the government being able to impose their ‘permission’. This again goes back to treating the Second Amendment as a ‘second class right’ privilege. Its the same for ‘safe storage laws’.

      Regarding a ‘Universal Background Check’ and ‘safe storage’ context, as I posted, other countries, ‘civilized’ or not, do not have our Second Amendment – therefore your assertion that it was a “major failing … that they did not pass Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage laws” is not only grounded in ignorance but is also 100% false.

      They knew SCOTUS was likely going to rule the Second Amendment was not a ‘second class right’, in other words government can not treat it as a privilege for the basic right to own/posses/use/sell/buy property as a person sees fit. Its the same for ‘safe storage laws’.
      In short, they new ‘Universal Background Check’ and ‘safe storage’ in the bill would have gutted the whole bill as unconstitutional because they built a monolithic bill that needed to stand as a whole when it was passed (and later to be ruled unconstitutional for its individual parts if that’s what happens) and one hint of ‘second class right’ privilege would have rendered the whole thing unconstitutional upon passage due to the Buren decision they knew was coming.

      In the specific of what you posted:

      “Without these laws criminals and lunatics can buy all the firepower they want as this is their primary source of weapons and every sane person knows it.”

      100% false. There is zero proof that without such laws “criminals and lunatics can buy all the firepower they want as this is their primary source of weapons” – this is not a primary source of weapons for “criminals and lunatics” in terms of ‘Universal Background Check’ and ‘safe storage’.

      “Every civilized nation on earth has such laws and their lower mass murder and homicides with firearms prove these laws work and work well compared to our complete lack of such laws.”

      As I pointed out above, this is 100% false.

      Yes yes I know you might come back and post ‘boogerbrain but but but…’ or similar and start posting all that BS debunked study statistics here and there stuff you usually do… go ahead, I don’t mind seeing a person who disrespects and is ignorant of the Constitution flounder around proving their ignorance and disrespect of the constitution as its a great source of amusement.

      • Booger your brain is filled with boogers.

        quote—————-100% false. There is zero proof that without such laws “criminals and lunatics can buy all the firepower they want as this is their primary source of weapons” – this is not a primary source of weapons for “criminals and lunatics” in terms of ‘Universal Background Check’ and ‘safe storage’.——————quote

        Now booger brain tell us , just where do criminals and psycho’s get their weapons? Do Klingons beam them down from the planet Krypton? We will wait for your depraved answer. It will never come because you have no sane rebuttal.

    • dacian, the Dunderhead. Again, you keep pushing that “Universal Background Checks” nonsense. The Background check system is 1) not a background check at all, but a check to see if the purchaser has a criminal record; 2) is inaccurate and lacking much of the information required as many courts do not forward the dispositions of many criminal cases which have been adjudicated.
      There are parts of this new “gun control” law is at best arbitrary and capricious.

      • To Walter the Beverly Hillbilly

        It never occured to you that we can make background checks far more thorough than they are now. That takes time and the longer the check the more information we can uncover. The success of the NFA background checks have already proven it but what would an uneducated Hillbilly like yourself know about history. Answer: Zero.

        Give up Jediah you are out of your league.

        • dacian, the Dunderhead, you have never made any reference to making the background checks more through. There have been so many failures of the NICs system, I haven’t got that many finger and toes to be able to account for all of them. Out of my league? Dunderhead, you are not even in my league.
          Your NICs checks are a fraud and all you have talked about is making each and every sale go through them. The purchases of the AR-15 type rifles by those two kids is more than proof of that. The FACT is that mental health information is not allowed in NICs unless the person has been adjudicated by a court of law. The fact is that the NICs system is a BUST nd a fraud. The real deal is you want to eventually show that even with these “checks” people who want a gun will still get them. And tell me, how are you going to shut down the Black Market? Tell us that the real deal is not establish a gun registry, Tell us the real deal is you want to take away our right to bear firearms.

  10. “That means a teenager who is convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration would not be allowed to buy firearms as an adult.”

    So youthful offenders who actually have turned it around are now disenfranchised. Any guess as to which demographic/racial group will be the most impacted by this?

    C’mon. You can say it. We already know.

    • They just can’t stop with the Jim Crow, be it practicing it or accusing us of doing it.

    • So SCOTUS overturns States with Jim Crow gun CCW laws, and then Congress creates a new Jim Crow gun law! Where’s the Democrat’s cry of racism now?

      Oh and commerce laws, can’t sell my property that appreciate in value?

      Congress must want us to have access to cheeped guns, right?

      Maybe I’ll get an antique NFA for Less than cost!

    • Welcome to Pennsylvania. State police have been doing this for 8 years here.

    • Shit back when I was a little thug that could have been for the right amount of pot if the tyrant’s hit you with intent to distribute along with it. Not sure what it equates to now days, but like any justice system failure, I’m sure there are some that don’t deserve it. I did some dumb shit, and I plead for a bootcamp that allowed me to get my GED, community service and fines with a year probation… And I was 16 but it was non violent. Not even sure they offer that to kids now days.

  11. Make us safer what a bunch of bull crap. How about make kids safer. Why did the Rino’s agree to these provisions that do not address making kids safer. One little section for the kids in our schools is all we get from this. What a disgrace and give the commiecrats what they have been wanting on their wish list for years so they stop talking about gun control I guess the Rino’s thought. They will never do it until they can control us all and eliminate our firearms. Vote these Senators and Representatives out of office.

  13. RINO’s in the G O P just stabbed the people who understand the constitution, in the back again.I actually expected it to happen.
    McConnell ( being a flip flopping RINO’s himself) is a absolute tragedy for the G O P. He cannot control his own party.
    No wonder the Democrats always get what they want.

    • McConnell seemed to be the issue, he ordered Cornyn to make a deal with the devil in response to the shootings, McConnell seemed happy to promote and sign on with it. It’s actually strange that both of my Florida, proud red flag supporting senators didn’t vote for it, since they both loved the Parkland Florida red flag laws and have been trying to pass an actual federal law since then.

      You would think if Republican leadership was all for this then pretty much all of them would have voted for it. I am guessing the idea was to let the bill pass with the likes of Toomey, Romney, Collins, Cornyn, etc, so they could seal the deal, show Republicans care to the middle but the other senators can run home and say they opposed it and stood up for your rights. The house wouldn’t have been able to stop it anyway so their leadership could denounce it as well.

      So do we blame just the “traitors” heading into midterms or is the whole GOP leadership who orchestrated it and sacrificed them to blame? It’s not like the GOP said no, the Dems decided to put up a plan for a vote, and a small number of traitors crossed the aisle.

  15. After 2020 do you really still think your vote counts traitor joe just announced another pandemic is a comin time to decide die on your feet or live on your knees

  16. Next stop for this abortion of a bill, the federal courts who must determine its constitutionality according to the now law of the land Bruen decision standard. It will probably not survive that encounter intact as it is now in the end.

        • I did read the piece. And I think McConnell’s political calculations are correct. These mass shootings are occurring in major cities. In major metropolitan areas. They are not occurring in the rural parts of the United States. If they happen they are rare.

          But McConnell is very stupid. Because he still believes that the national media will give him credit for trying to stop “gun violence”. They will never give him any credit. For anything.

          But I also think the GOP establishment wants to lose. Just as they wanted to lose even though they had a Republican President Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump is a nationalist. But the GOP establishment is internationalist. Which is why GOP legislators never submitted pro-gun legislation to Trump for his signature.

          Even after a republican baseball team was attacked and one of its members nearly killed. And when an AR-15 was used to stop a mass shooter in a Texas Church. The GOP establishment never used the attacks as a reason to support armed self-defense for everyone. They never submitted National reciprocity, or the hearing protection act, or anything that have would have gotten our civil rights back.

        • Uvalde is a major metropolitan area? Chris must be smoking some of those drugs he is always complaining about.

  18. This is the result of Americans allowing election fraud.

    You can choose your actions but you can never choose your consequences.

  19. Thousands upon thousands of police officers have quit. All across the United States. The people who hate the police, and say you can never trust the police, have gotten their wish. The police are starting to disappear everywhere. So I have no idea who was going to be enforcing these new laws.

    I suspect that the goal of the people who hate the police, want law enforcement in the United States to be nationalized. That’s going to be rather difficult when the sheriff is enshrined, I think, in every States Constitution.

    The cops that are still around are dealing with the “Ferguson Effect”. So I fully expect this law will be enforced very unequally.

    • They have our money and they can write a blank check to Boston Dynamics for as many police robots as they want…

      • No joke. There will never be a shortage of bootlickers. Hell, half the people calling themselves patriots support oppression in one form or another. Just today an operator type on YouTube released a video about “patriotism”, while training his no knock types and running ops for the CIA…
        *Salutes with a middle finger

    • I would imagine a “social justice police” using ANTIFA and BLM members. Much like foxes guarding the henhouse.

  22. @Chris T in Ky
    “I did read the piece. And I think McConnell’s political calculations are correct”

    One puzzlement….would it be wise to forfeit the entire Repub agenda because the Repub elites/establishment are squishy regarding 2A?

    • What great agenda are they planning that would be worth any sacrifice on any front? More do nothing nonsense? Maybe some hearings on Hunter Biden? LOL. No, sorry, don’t care.

      Yeah, McConnell sold you out… on a pipe dream. You’ll get screwed now and then again later when this doesn’t pan out the way he hopes. I mean, if this guy’s done enough lines to think for a microsecond that suburbanites are going to flock to the GOP over this stunt then he’s more gone than Biden.

      I’m honestly not sure how getting fucked twice by people who didn’t even offer to buy you dinner the first time is a good deal.

      If the GOP wants someone like me to take them seriously they basically need to gut their own party and rebuild it from the ground up with people who are younger by about 30 years (which is like 50 at this point), smarter by about 50 IQ points and transparent about somewhere around a zillion things that the current GOP is intentionally opaque on.

      Then they need to set things up to prosecute, yes prosecute, people in both parties for corruption while doing the same for quite a number of bureaucrats and eliminating whole departments.

      For instance, I’d like to hear their plan for $259 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities and an explanation/plan to deal with how in the fuck it is that your average American pays 55% of their income every year in taxes and fees yet the government still manages to spend trillions it doesn’t fucking have.

      I’d also like to see some rational planning for getting off the CCP’s teet when it comes to critical stuff like semiconductors and precursor chems for just about everything.

      Then perhaps they can address the overall precarious state the petro-dollar finds itself in. Or will they wait and pretend their surprised to wake up in Zimbabwe?

      Following that can we do something about the surveillance state and restoring government respect for the BoR in general?

      When we’re done with those issues we can move on to about 20 other pressing items that threaten the continued existence of this country none of which anyone wants to talk about.

      Until then, McConnel can fuck right off with his political “strategy” because from where I sit he’s just another geriatric trying to protect special status for himself and his cronies a little bit longer the country falls apart.

      The fact that, as the article you linked states, more than 2/3rds of Texas GOP members like Cornyn isn’t a rave review of Cornyn. It’s a damning indictment of the Texas GOP.

      Quite frankly, that stat shows without a doubt that the Texas GOP has a majority of stupid, narcissistic, myopic, shallow, single-layer thinkers who pay approximately zero attention to… anything that matters. But honestly, I’d say that’s the majority of both parties and Independents at this point which is why this country is totally boned in the short to medium term and it’s going to take going to (or past) the brink of legitimate collapse before these people either wake up or die off in sufficient numbers that anything useful can be done to fix the issues we have.

      • If 2A is the only thing that matters, we might as well cut to the chase, and dissolve the Repubs, and settle for single-party, Dem, rule.

        • I didn’t say that the 2A is the only thing that matters, I’ve never said that. In fact, I’ve been beating the “interconnected” drum for how long?

          We already essentially have single-party “Dem” rule because the GOP does nothing to stop the Dems in most cases, nearly never reverses what the Dems do and, mostly, won’t even speak out against what’s going on. Both parties have been moved well to the Left of where they were just 10 years ago. Compared to 1990? HFS, the Overton Window hasn’t shifted, it’s been teleported halfway across the galaxy.

          And what of the list I propose? I ask again, where is the GOP proposal to even begin discussing any of that? The truth is that they don’t have one on any of those topics. Mostly, they won’t even acknowledge that the topics exist.

          They have a reelection strategy and nothing else because they are politicians, not statesmen/stateswomen. Actually running the country in a viable way isn’t even on their “to do” list.

          Both parties remind me of Splinter in the original TMNT movie (without bothering to edit the entire thing for syntax): “The [political party in question] uses you. He poisons your minds to obtains for that which he desires. He cares nothing for you or the people you hurt.”

          If both parties are broken to the degree that they demonstrably are then you have three choices. Rebuild one of them from the ground up, start a third one that can actually win or watch as the country slowly devolves into an actual civil war.

          Given that it seems no one really gives a shit about #1 and no one believes that #2 is possible we are left with a really rather nasty future that no one should want. The talk of “national divorce” is straight-out childish nonsense. Such people speak of things they comprehend at the same level fish comprehend flying.

          You are rapidly headed towards the point where the people who say “This is the best country on Earth” are living in the past. Where moving to some place like rural Brazil actually is objectively better in most regards.

    • The 2A was the only concrete difference between the two major national parties. The real difference is now at the state level. It was state level republicans who got half the country with constitutional carry. The republicans are still your best bet for Liberty. But you need to weed out the RINOs at the state level. The democrats will always trade your guns for legalized drugs. And drugs will always come before guns with the Libertarians. Same for the Liberals and the Left.

      • We’ll see how the LP changes now that the Mises Caucus has completed a hostile takeover. I expect that to get nasty and many of the progressives to eject themselves from that party.

        Of course, it doesn’t much matter outside maybe a state like NH.

    • Mississippi, we all know cream rises to the top. But so does pond scum and raw sewage. Which explains the stench last time I was in DC.

  24. I read the bill when it was published. Not 1 item in it will prevent the next deranged or angry kid from shooting up a school or theater. Or some PO’ed former employee from going postal.
    Every thing being clamored about in the “Red Flag” laws is already available in most, if not all states with the benefit of due process. Next, is how many kids under 21 actually have a juvenile record? Likely a fairly small percentage of the 18 to 21 year olds have a serious record.

  25. I guess if you’re going to have unconstitutional background checks, I don’t object to juvenile records being considered until you’re 21, but that shouldn’t follow you around after that. Keep your nose clean for 2 years and you should have all your right in adulthood.

  26. @alien
    “Oh, wait — they took away our ability to read the comments, didn’t they?”

    Don’t know. Not a frequent visitor, so wasn’t thinking about commenting.

  27. @Dave
    “If that analysis is true, then what’s the plan to get suburbanites to understand the importance of 4A, 5A, 6A, and of course 2A?”

    Very minor detail, considering McConnel announced a coupla months ago the the Republicrats will announce no agenda for after winning in 2022.

  29. @strych9
    “I didn’t say that the 2A is the only thing that matters, I’ve never said that. In fact, I’ve been beating the “interconnected” drum for how long?”

    Kinda thinking a statement along the lines of “2A is the only difference between the parties” (or words to that effect), implies that every other political consideration is of less import, to the point of being inconsequential.

    There seems to be vanishingly little hope that a viable national third-party can develop in the US. And, as you and I have been saying all along, a “two nation solution” is impossible to design and/or implement.

    The future, without some intervening catastrophic event, appears to be a contest between two national parties, with power flowing to whichever party can produce the most votes, by any means necessary, on any issue. The “arc of history” shows us that life tends toward government superiority over any group of peoples.

    The founders gave the nation an avenue of possibility, not a promise of destiny.

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