Oppose the Toomey / Manchin Gun Legislation

After a detailed analysis of the gun bill authored by the Republican Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, multiple aspects of its language raise serious and urgent concerns. On the one hand, the Toomey / Manchin bill dangles multiple carrots at America’s gun owners and gun rights activists, with the apparent hope of gaining their support for its enactment. Upon further reading however, the Toomey / Manchin gun legislation contains the same unacceptable flaws, draconian problematic clauses, and onerous firearm transaction procedures that exist in Senator Harry Reid’s gun bill, S. 649.

The Toomey / Manchin bill’s language contains problems that should alarm anyone who reads it and considers all of its many implications. Some of the most alarming aspects of the Toomey / Manchin bill include:

• The Toomey / Manchin bill uses the terms “mental illness” and “mental health records” in an incorrect, reckless, and cavalier manner, which could lead to either unintentional negative implications, or the language was inserted intentionally and has malicious implications. The federal firearm statutes have never included “mental illness” generally as a prohibition against gun ownership. The standard for such revocations of gun rights is and always has been: “mental defective” or “committed to any mental institution”, as stated in 18 USC § 922(d)(4) and 18 USC § 922(g)(4). A bill sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham does not contain this sloppy language. The intent of Senator Graham's bill, S.480 (full text at link), is to clarify the definition of who is prohibited from purchasing, owning, or possessing firearms due to: mental defect, mental incompetence, involuntary psychiatric commitment, a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and so on.
  
• The Toomey / Manchin bill contains the same consignment procedure masquerading as a background check process for sales of privately owned guns, that appears in Senator Harry Reid’s S. 649 firearms bill. In other words, the seller of a privately owned gun doesn’t just go to a retailer and have the buyer background checked, the private gun seller must turn the gun over to the licensed retailer and consign it to the licensed dealer during the sales process. The firearms consignment process implied by the language in both these bills has multiple onerous implications. Either Senators Toomey and Manchin performed a mere copy and paste of this language from Harry Reid’s S. 649 (and from Senator's Schumer's similar firearm purchase background check bill), or they all know the negative implications embodied in the gun consignment process within this aspect of their bills’ language, and included this language for some yet to be explained reason.
• The Toomey / Manchin bill also contains conflicting language and clauses regarding the federal statutory prohibition against the creation of a national firearms registry. The use of the word “notwithstanding” within the bill in reference to creation of regulations separate from the statutory language in the bill, opens the floodgates for the U.S. Attorney General to sidestep the statute and implement a national firearms registry despite the statute's other clauses, as noted by more than one mass media author. Senators Toomey and Manchin must change this language in order for their bill to have any chance of garnering acceptance from even a portion of the U.S. gun rights activism and defense population.
  

In the alternative, the Toomey / Manchin bill contains multiple provisions apparently intended to attract gun rights supporters. For example, there is language that exempts gun sales, gifts, and transfers, between family members, including aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, from the onerous consignment and background check process the bill requires for other firearm transactions between private citizens. The Toomey / Manchin bill also exempts holders of valid state issued concealed pistol licenses or concealed carry weapon permits, from additional NICS background checks when buying firearms from an FFL gun retailer. There are also additional clauses within the Toomey / Manchin bill that were apparently included to attract: gun rights activists, federally licensed firearm dealers, and the firearm manufacturing industry; in a variety of ways, including the legalization of types of interstate firearms commerce that is currently illegal.

Gun rights erosion has already begun.

However, the Toomey / Manchin bill does not exempt firearm sales between private individuals when the buyer, or both parties, hold a valid state issued concealed pistol license / concealed carry weapon permit. Any gun legislation the Senate considers should include this exemption, first because such a buyer would already have been subject to a thorough background check, and secondary, to assure the public that elected officials do not have some nefarious intents to require that all firearms transactions be processed through FFL firearms retailers, creating a record of all such transactions that under current federal statute are maintained for twenty years. Legislators must explain why they want every gun transaction between private citizens in America to be processed through a federally licensed gun retailer, even when the buyer already holds a valid state issued concealed pistol license / concealed carry weapon permit that provides proof of thorough background checking. Members of the U.S. Congress need to explain how any of these changes to federal law would have prevented or deterred the perpetrators of the mass shooting tragedies in Connecticut, Colorado, Arizona, and elsewhere, from occurring, and specifically how they would prevent similar future massacres. The fact is that not one single clause in any of the gun legislation before Congress would have prevented any of those tragedies.

Despite this bill's potentially attractive clauses, as described in the preceding paragraphs and various other similar clauses in the Toomey / Manchin gun bill, the three primary problems with the bill that were described above, over shadow any and all of the potentially positive aspects of this bill. Based upon this further analysis of the Toomey / Manchin gun legislation, Americans should not support it. At this juncture, America’s gun owners and firearm rights defenders should vigorously oppose any and all of the gun legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Congress.

Full Text of the Toomey / Manchin Gun Legislation

http://afirearmrightschronicle.blogspot.com/2013/04/toomey-manchin-senate-gun-legislation.html