http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 1091.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
My response (I'm on his mailing list, so my responses always go to him personally):
Adam, I find this kind of thinking from a law professor to be stunningly naïve.
Let's say you manage to get truly universal background checks passed through Congress. Now imagine the very scenario you describe as the reason they are needed. A criminal wants to obtain a gun through a friend or family member. How are you going to stop that with the universal background checks? All the friend or family member has to do is report the gun as stolen and poof, your chain of custody is gone.
Gee, I was robbed on the way home from the FFL.
Your proposal to make them free is a tax on gun dealers. If you truly want free universal background checks, then the government would have to reimburse the FFL for the transfer. Otherwise you're simply shifting the cost burden from the government to private companies, and I doubt seriously you could get that past the Supreme Court. You are familiar with Prinz I'm sure. Would that principle not apply even more to compelling a private party to bear the cost burden of carrying out the government mandate?
You, along with so many other people in this country, seem to have no concept of the word "infringed". We have tons of gun laws on the books now, few of which are enforced with regularity or consistency. When they are, the penalties are not nearly severe enough. Now you want to burden the law abiding citizen with additional hoops to go through in the vain hope that somehow, some way, this will make the criminals less likely to obtain firearms?
If you were really serious about stopping criminal use of firearms, you'd be demanding mandatory sentences for the use of a gun in a felony.
10 years with no parole for the first offense
20 years with no parole for the second offense
Life without parole for a third offense
No judicial discretion.
My advice? Stop attacking guns. Attack criminals.
