General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMike Lee: Why I voted against background checks
This is an editorial in today's USA Today with a follow-up poll asking what people think of it.
Mike Lee: Why I voted against background checks
Background-check amendment is too vague for law abiding citizens to understand and too easy for criminals to avoid.
Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, the country was rightly focused on steps we might take to help stop such horrible crimes from happening. Unfortunately, the proposals offered in the Senate — including the expansion of background checks and bans on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines — served primarily to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing little, if anything, to prevent the kind of tragic crimes that took place in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.
The background-check amendment offered by Sens. Pat Toomey and Joe Manchin was too vague for law-abiding citizens to understand with certainty, and too easy for criminals to avoid. The plan created more questions than it answered about which types of transfers are lawful without a background check and might ensnare law-abiding gun owners simply exercising their constitutional rights. It also left in place a number of gaps that could easily be exploited by criminals intent on obtaining guns.
The Toomey-Manchin amendment admirably attempted to carve out certain protections for gun owners, but today's carve-outs are tomorrow's loopholes. The current "gun show loophole" was itself once considered a legitimate carve-out that protected certain private sales.
The amendment also took an incremental step toward universal background checks, which, as a Justice Department memo written earlier this year suggested, are effective only when coupled with a national registration system. Admittedly, the Toomey-Manchin plan prohibited a national registry. Yet it required a massive expansion of gun ownership data collected by federally licensed dealers to which the government has access.
After all, you cannot track all gun sales without tracking all gun owners. But the government has no business monitoring constitutionally protected activity, like gun ownership, any more than it has any business tracking what books Americans read or how often they attend church.
Gun-control advocates point to polls that show support for expanding background checks. But members of Congress do not get to vote on broad poll questions. They have to vote on specific legislation. If we are trying to minimize the burden on law-abiding gun owners while taking significant steps to prevent the next Sandy Hook, the Toomey-Manchin amendment, and the others that would have limited Second Amendment rights, failed both elements of that test. And that is why they failed to pass the Senate.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is a member of the Judiciary Committee.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/17/gun-proposal-sen-mike-lee-editorials-debates/2090793/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
bowens43
(16,064 posts)of course most of his constituents are conservatives, maybe he has a point......
ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Period.
You're going to play dumb about this law? Fine. Every. Single. Transfer. goes through an FFL. Simple enough?
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Pure trash.
dballance
(5,756 posts)What a bullshit excuse. It's not like he's a member of the senate or anything. You know, the place where debate and amendments take place? I'm sure he could have read the bill while it was still in committee (the Judiciary Committee on which he serves) and offered suggestions or amendments to make it less "vague" and harder for "criminals to avoid."
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)
Background checks utilize currently established data bases, as I understand it. They don't *expand* government oversight, they link established data bases to gun purchases.
His logic is full of misdirection.
GitRDun
(1,846 posts)The government tracks licensed drivers, but cannot track who owns a gun? Give me a break!
Guns can be used to kill people. There is a vested public interest in being able to track where these things are and who has them.
Just because the government knows which cars I own does not mean they are interfering with my freedom to drive wherever I please.
I can't believe they get away with stupid excuses like that.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)go fuck yourself.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)the LDS Church,and the Military Industrial Complex. Check out his BIO,oh BTW,just another GOP twit from Udah.
wryter2000
(46,045 posts)K&R
LadyHawkAZ
(6,199 posts)And that's all that needs to be said.
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)dishonest pecker head.
alp227
(32,023 posts)"...the government has no business monitoring constitutionally protected activity, like gun ownership, any more than it has any business tracking what books Americans read or how often they attend church."
OK, Sen. Lee, then explain why the IRS can set aside a specific tax provision for churches on the condition that the preacher not talk politics?
Speaking of political advocacy, again, what about special tax provisions for politically action cmtes?
As for "tracking what books Americans read", ever heard of a public library? (OK I understand that the PATRIOT Act went way overboard by making libraries turn over records but think about it...you check out a book, the library tracks the book to your account and issues late fees.)
Again WRT the 1st amendment is Sen. Lee suggesting that laws that regulate speech such as obscenity laws be gutted? (After all the RELIGIOUS RIGHT has been pushing the hardest for laws like the Communications Decency Act, for a stronger FCC etc.)
