TexasCHLforum.com

OK....I'll answer the questions.......

xring wrote:I have two Ideas to help prevent the next mass shooting at schools or other places.
Prebackground checks. Your state issues you a Driver’s license or ID card bio-metrically encoded with your information. This card could have simple codes corresponding to your eligibility for certain rights. For instance maybe a V spot voting a F spot for firearms E for employment W for welfare all prescreened and vetted to reflect that you have the full rights as a citizen or the limited rights of a legal resident. If you had a change in status the Judge could simply punch a hole in your card to remove this right, for instance a felon can no longer vote or own a firearm so the V & F would be punched out. This card could have a coded number that could be entered in a public database to determine if the cardholder’s status has changed and the card holder is holding a “lost card”. If you find someone trying to apply for a job without an E, Vote without a V, or buy a firearm without an F you simply report this to the authorities and collect half of the substantial fine that the offender has to pay for the offense. I don’t think this is over reaching since we already show ID when purchasing firearms and I for one want to see ID when selling unless I know you very well. This would be just a criminal background check, not the higher level of background used for CCL. This may need some fine tuning and fleshing out but as long as there are no recordings that you purchased and what it was unless you were in immediate violation I don’t think most of us would have an issue, I would even feel better if I had a better way to make sure I was selling to a qualified person.

I've actually already answered this in my previous post. I understand what you mean by taking control of the debate, but the above suggestions add another layer of control on top of people who neither need nor want it. To me, "Taking Control" means taking control of the debate by asserting that we are not going to operate in reverse gear any longer. Now it is their turn to back up. I realize that we've lost the right incrementally, and if you look at my posting history here, you will see that I have advised any number of times that we will have to regain it incrementally. But adding another layer of control/oversight/restriction is not an incremental gain, it is another incremental loss. I'm not backing up any longer. MY back is already to the wall. It is now time to push back. If it gets ugly, it gets ugly. Sometimes ugly is what it takes to restore liberty. Accepting another layer of control is not a restoration of liberty. It is, in fact, a further negation of liberty. In fact, by agreeing to the idea that government will give you an ID card which theoretically eases your purchase/ownership habits (it won't, it WILL be used to further restrict you, because that is what bureaucrats DO), you are also agreeing that government can take that card away from you.....for reasons which you may rightfully protest, but your protests will likely be denied.....just like healthy people taking anxiety meds in New York state. They have to have a state issued license to buy a gun. When their doctor prescribes them a medication to get them through a temporary period of depression, the storm troopers come to their doors and confiscate their guns. THAT is what you are asking to have happen, even though that is not your intent. Never ever EVER give liberals a reason to regulate your activities. Once you do that, they are no longer under your control.

xring wrote:Number 2 is much better. Most criminal and accidental gun injuries and deaths are the result of unauthorized use. The answer is a limited number of times in your life you may take a tax credit for a quality gun safe and handgun lock box or upgrade. If the woman whose Son was the shooter in the Sandy Hook elem. Shooting had her AR in a safe her mentally disturbed son would not have had access to it.
That’s all we need as responsible adults and citizens 1 the ability to determine who we are selling to and 2 some encouragement to secure our fire arms. I’m sure it’s not perfect let’s hear what you think.

1. Adam Lanza's mother had the money to buy a safe. She didn't need a tax credit to do it. And even if she had, my guess is that she was the kind of person who would have granted him access to the safe anyway.
2. Furthermore, a tax credit benefits those who make enough money to buy a safe and is useless to someone who doesn't. Thus, even though safes are a good idea and guns should be kept locked up when there are kids in the house, a poor person who perhaps desperately needs a gun because they live in a bad neighborhood is effectively penalized by the IRS for not having that money.
3. And if you tried to offset the burden on the poor by giving them a tax refund in the amount of the purchase price of a safe in order to offset the fact that they don't qualify for the credit, now you have a reverse burden put on the wealthy, whose higher taxes are subsidizing the purchases of safes by the poor........and there is no guarantee that the poor person won't use that money to buy a flat screen TV instead of a gun safe.
4. Lastly, we need to move AWAY from complicating the tax code any further, and I am generally opposed to using the tax codes to socially engineer people into buying or not buying specific products...........like Obamacare health insurance, for instance. Whenever you involve the IRS in these decisions, Lady Liberty's robe becomes a little more tattered, Blind Justice also becomes deaf and dumb, and (in a positively world-record attempt to butcher metaphors) the Eye of Providence grows dim.

Here is what I am in favor of: the 2nd Amendment, exactly as worded, nor more and no less.

I prefer the idea of abolishing the government (3rd sentence, paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence) and starting over again, using the Constitution without any compromises to govern ourselves. Every single step on the national level gun-control continuum has been one in which gun owners agree to be subject to more and more restrictions on their constitutional right, while those on the other side never give up anything and net only gains in oppressing law-abiding citizens further and further.

Read the first two paragraphs of the document:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

The government no longer promotes Liberty. Much of what happens in government is ordered without the consent of the governed. Government has become destructive to the end of preserving Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is our right to abolish it and replace it with one that lays "its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to [us] shall seem most likely to effect [our] Safety and Happiness."

Let me very clear: I do not call for such an abolishment. I merely point out that it is our right to do so, as stated by the Founding Fathers. It is THAT right which underpins me when I say that there are no legitimately acceptable further restrictions that I would willingly agree to be bound by with regard to the 2nd Amendment. I am, to date, not a criminal, and I adamantly refuse to accept new regulations which will back me into becoming one. I swear that should any further restrictions be enacted against my 2nd Amendment right, I will regard it as having no more authority over me than the Founders regarded King George's illegitimate laws as having any authority over them, and I will for darn sure not accede to any more bullying from antigun fascists. If that makes me a criminal, then so be it; but I am categorically unwilling to accept further identification requirements and/or tracking of my health records by an overbearing government........particularly one headed by a man with definite monarchic tendencies. I have passed three CHL background checks (from two different states) and multiple NICS checks. As Suzanna Gratia Hupp said so eloquently:

How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.

I find it discouraging that any fellow gun owner would agree that I need to be any more so lorded over, controlled, and supervised than I already am.