facepalm face palm shame embarrassment
Bigstock

Rep. Margaret Good has filed House Bill 451. Her apparent intent (to give her the benefit of the doubt) is to require universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence background checks on all firearm sales. She complains, “This is the. third. time. I’ve filed this legislation.”

I think I see why this keeps failing. It’s a poorly written mess that appears to conflict with federal law. Possibly on as many as three points (it could be more, but I stopped reading). Good claims to be an attorney, but her area of expertise is clearly not firearms law.

All persons involved in firearm sales or other transfers, in whole or in part, shall be subject to background checks unless specifically exempted by state or federal law.

Taking “all persons involved” literally, as one should when reading a law, that requires a background check on the buyer, seller, and the facilitating licensed dealer. Sorting out how to do the paperwork on the FFL and seller should be interesting.

The other problem with that is that the NICS system is restricted to checks of buyers. It isn’t authorized for doing other checks.

Nor would I expect the FBI’s NICS section to be thrilled by a threefold (plus) increase in Florida background check volume without a commensurate increase in funding.

A licensed dealer who agrees to facilitate a background check [for a private sale] pursuant to this section shall process the sale or other transfer as if he or she were transferring the firearm from the licensed dealer’s own inventory.

If the FFL fills out his paperwork that way, I think he’ll be willfully falsifying data, since it would then reflect him as the seller, and not the actual private party seller. ATF inspectors probably won’t be amused.

This section does not prevent the seller or other transferor from removing the firearm from the premises of the licensed dealer while the background check is being conducted or during the applicable waiting period, provided that the seller or other transferor returns to the business premises of the licensed dealer and delivers the firearm to the licensed dealer before completion of the sale or other transfer.

Oh dear. Picture this: Seller brings in rifle. FFL completes all “recordkeeping requirements” — bound book, et cetera. While waiting for NICS to come back with a proceed/deny decision, he allows the seller to take the rifle home. ATF shows up for a compliance inspection, sees the rifle in his inventory, and asks to see the rifle itself.

The FFL replies, “Oh, I let Mr. Smith take that home while we wait. Rep. Good said it would be OK.”

The FFL loses his license, and maybe gets arrested. Feds show up at Rep. Good’s office with pointed questions, and possibly a warrant.

“Universal” background checks designed to ignore the unlawful channels by which the vast majority of criminals obtain guns are a bad idea. Checks designed to make criminals out of those who are trying to be law-abiding are far worse.

If Rep. Good did this deliberately, she should be criminally prosecuted under U.S. Code § 241. Conspiracy against rights. If it was mere incompetence, she should be removed from office.

69 COMMENTS

    • I think there’s some real truth to that. Every single far left leaning person I’ve ever known has had some actual mental issues or addiction problems. And that’s including a small portion of them who I actually have respect for. Some of the seemingly most common disorders I’ve noticed in leftists are Alcoholism, depression, bi polar, and perversion.

      • Yea, I don’t think we can claim alcoholism and depression exist more on the left. Unless you run in very different conservative circles than I do.

        Now delusions of grandeur? That the left can claim fully.

        • A lot of the older folks over 55, have to believe in party faction over nation, like the poster you spoke the truth to. They have to double down in their indoctrination to their party to avoid self-reflection of being as corrupt as the other party they despise. It is both parties who are threats to the Citizens’ Liberty.
          It is like how conservatives have made it to where a cop can kill us Citizens, simply because WE are armed, and then they have the dishonor to say only the liberals are authoritarian. The 2nd Amendment is like a tie in baseball, where the use of force goes to the Citizen over the government employee.

        • Penny,
          Both conservatives and liberals have made it so a cop can kill a citizen, period.

          Black, armed, or whatever excuse is given doesn’t really matter. A cop can kill you and that’s it. And both political sides are responsible for it.

    • There is absolutely nothign of any form or type of Socialism in this sort of legislation. It is stupid, ignorant, filled with unintended consequences and generally misinformed and unworkable, but it is not Socialism. Not under the Marxist concepts nor under the various Northern European concepts of government services to a demanding, capitalist, democratic public.

      Rep. Margaret Good’s proposal is a failure because
      A). She does not understand how gun sales and Federal law have worked for years.
      B). She obviously believes the gun i responsible for the violence, not the person.

      • Keeping tools out of private hands is the definition of socialism. Who are you trying to fool, comrade?

        • Marxist Socialism, which is what you are trying unsuccessfully to talk about, supports and encourages private gun ownership. Including owning cannons. Gun Control is not the reason that Marxism is evil.

          Gun Control is a tool of an authoritarian state (or an incompetent one). However as every attempt to create a Marxist State rapidly fails and falls into authoritarianism, the claim of the ignorant that gun control is a Socialist practice is kept alive.

          This is what happened in the Soviet Union. The very early days f the revolution encouraged gun ownership. Upon winning the war the new government instantly fell out of their Marxist ideal into authoritarianism and intensive gun control began.

          It may help to look at it this way: Karl Marx was a Utopian thinker (crack-pot) who believed in and promoted an ultimate evolution of society. Socialism was the first major step, to be followed by Communism as the ultimate step. Both are evil concepts, which he could not see.

          However there is another element to this that Marx could not see. Simple human nature makes both Socialism and Communism impossible, neither concept can survive its own creation. Almost instantly the revolutionary zeal of its creators demands the imposition of authoritarian rule. which is not Marxist.

          These nations continue to call themselves Marxist States but they ceased to be that the instant they won their revolutions and transformed into varying forms of authoritarian and totalitarian states. This was true of the Soviet Union, of China and of Venezuela.

          It should be no surprise that these evil governments tell lies even about the most basic nature of their own governments.

        • enuf. If as you say, every socialist country loves gun ownership for the first five minutes of their history and then hates them for ever after is this a ringing endorsement for socialism?

          If every socialist state gets immediately corrupted, and i believe history is in agreement, why would you support socialism? Do you believe you’re the one person in history that can pull it off?

        • jwm says: “enuf. If as you say, every socialist country loves gun ownership for the first five minutes of their history and then hates them for ever after is this a ringing endorsement for socialism?

          If every socialist state gets immediately corrupted, and i believe history is in agreement, why would you support socialism? Do you believe you’re the one person in history that can pull it off?
          ———————–

          There is no “ringing endorsement”. I absolutely do not support the Socialism or Communism of Marx, which are inherently evil and I did say so. There can be no variation of Marx that avoids the many evils that naturally spring from it. I barely touched upon why they are evil, only that gun control is not on that particular list.

        • Enuf, I did not read this entire thread of replies, but if I may, I think there are very few actual Marxist socialists left. Most of what we colloquially call “socialists” today are more technically Gramsci-ist or Neo-Marxist. Never the less these people seem to always advocate gun control for everyone who isn’t one of them initially, and then for everyone who isn’t military or police after that.

          So while gun control may not be technically classical Marxist socialist it is without a doubt a central tenet of the “socialists” as they exist today.

      • Government putting its nose where it doesn’t belong on threat of force… yeah… socialism.

        I do love you commie vermin keep referring to the “Nordic model” which was wildly successful in causing a population and economic collapse in the countries in question that forced them to import goat raping savages with a penchant for grenade attacks. Oh. And they now have some of the worst violent crime and rape rates on the planet. Funny what happens when you import Mogadishu, your country becomes Mogadishu.

        • In their worshipping of European socialism, they also forget to mention who pays for all that socialism. Hint: It’s America.

        • “pwrserge”, if that is your real name, you constantly demonstrate that you do not know the meaning of these words you use. Sort of like that character in “The Princess Bride”, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. In fact, I know it does not.

          The “Nordic Model” is not communist or socialist under Marx. It is also not supported by me, I would never want it for the USA. Not that there is anything wrong with a small country going that way if they want to, they are capitalist democracies and have that right. But the Nordic Model cannot work in the USA. We are far too big, too large and diverse a population.

          For the USA I would look more to the German approach for inspiration. Capitalist, diverse market based with health care provided by government ONLY in cases of unemployment, old age and disability. A country about a fourth our size but within a range of being scalable.

          Ever so happy to lend you a hand. Here’s a brief primer on that “Nordic Model” you fear so much:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

        • Go suck start a Glock commie vermin. Anybody who supports socialism needs to be stood up against a wall and shot.

        • pwrserge, you still cannot grasp it.

          The Socialism and Communism I am against are the exact same ones you are against. We are in agreement and you cannot handle it.

          The social policies and corporatist-collective bargaining-government economic system of a few small Northern European countries are not the Socialism/Communism you are thinking of. There is nothing of Karl Marx or his fellow crack-pots involved in what those countries are doing.

          Even so I am also against the Nordic model for the USA. We are far too large and populous a country for such an approach to work. The fraud rate lone would be vastly larger than what we see today in Medicare fraud.

          You seem to ignore when I call Marx and his ideas crack-pot and evil. I wonder why that is?

          I know you cannot handle it, but at this point we still agree.

          My preference for a concept of social welfare and health care financing is the German model. Which is private enterprise, private insurance, negotiated and published charges and all in a legal framework. Only the poor and the infirm, or the unemployed, are under a government system.

          None of the above is a part of Marxism or any variation of Marxism. All of those variations of Marxism are evil and I oppose them.

          You however probably do not truly oppose them because you do not know what they are and would not recognize them if you saw them.

      • Stupid, ignorant, unintended consequences, generally misinformed and unworkable. These are characteristics of all socialist programs and legislation. But the law doesn’t have anything to do with socialism. Actually socialism is all about taking power and responsibilities from the individual and turning them over to the collective or the state. How is this not about taking self defense out of the hands of the individual and handing it over to the state? It’s all about restricting arms for self defense through incrementalism.

      • I would admit that on first glance it seems like “socialism” is the wrong word based on the way most people traditionally think of socialism.

        However, socialism posits that the state should control not just the means of production but also the means of distribution and the means of exchange of anything that’s a “social good”.

        The Left certainly argues that “public safety” is a “public good”, hence the word “public” and this would seem to try to control the means of distribution and exchange. Ergo, it’s certainly a strain of socialist thought.

        • The problem with this is that Marx and his fellow utopians and supporters firmly believed in and encouraged the common people to be not merely armed but heavily armed. Therefore a state cannot be Marxist and at the same time anti-gun. Not without admitting to being something else, an authoritarian state run by a political party that tells massive lies about itself.

          Which is what the Soviets were, the Maoists continue to be and Venezuela plays at today.

          Of course, Venezuela also calls itself a “Federal Presidential Constitutional Republic”, but try and bring back capitalism and free speech and gun ownership and other ideals of a free people and you will find out very rapidly just how much Venezuela is a dictatorship under one man.

        • No. The idea is for the proletariat to violently overthrow the bourgeois and institute a system where they become the State and the State controls the guns so that the State can control human behavior.

          After that behavior has been sufficiently modified then the State is supposed to wither away leaving a Utopian society.

          The only part of Marxism where “the people” have guns are when they’ve embraced Marx and are murdering their way to power.

      • It seems most lawmakers score a F- on their understanding of firearms and the current laws and processes. Doesn’t stop them trying to legislate something they know nothing about.

    • IDK about all of you but i dont like the FACT that not even President Trump is following the laws within our Constitution and Bill Of rights!!! For one the biggest problem is that Obama Committed TREASON when he brought in well over 11Million Moslems too the U.S. on the tax payers dime no less!Dropping enemies of our country in every state and put 80K + Somali Moslem’s in Omar’s District alone to ensure that there was a Moslem elected to our Congress!!! The Constitution states that any and “all” Moslems to even be considered for Citizenship must 1st DENOUNCE Islam befor even being considered!Thats not to say they will be given entry! Now we have Moslems in our own Gov. at all levels and not just in D.C. and they are trying to cause chaos in our country! There are now multiple Terrorist Training Camps in “all” 50states and we are not being told about it!I have researched it very deeply and know for a fact the very few we heard about were not just anomalies!!!They are now hear and when they think the time is right they will try and take over or cause war here just like they have always had in the Middle East!Nobody is paying attention to our Constitutional Laws! Not even Trump! I demand the letter of our Constitutional Laws be followed our our founding fathers have written it down!!! Included are all legal Amendments and laws/rules this country has dictated per its citizens! Not the Government!Its time the Government started working again for the people!~!!%

      • UUUuuuuh … no. You’re going to need to quote chapter and verse on exactly where in the Constitution the requirement is that moslems or anyone else must convert, lest I be forced to call you either a fucking idiot or a damned liar.

      • Funny, I seem to remember something about freedom of religion written somewhere… oh where was that? Oh yeah! The CONSTITUTION. I believe you are confusing religion with foreign citizenship. Two very different things.. Islam is a religion, not a nationality. Your a bit touched, aren’t you?

  1. Welp since corporations are now people, I guess well run a check on Mastercard and my bank because they’ll be involved as well.

  2. I have discovered there are words and phrases that legitimately “trigger” me, just like a Leftist. It’s true! Real physiological reactions, like irritation, anxiety, and general stress. A few examples –

    “Commonsense”

    “Keep out of the hands of…”

  3. “Florida Universal Background Check Bill: Is it Idiocy or Malignancy?”

    One thing is certain,it is un Constitutional.

    • HAHAHA now you all will learn what its like to live in a Communist state!I have had no choice then to live under communist rule now all my life while living in New Jersey the _hithole of the country! Not only has Communist Party Leader Murphy has raped out constitution he has been left too sign any and “all” gun bills that have landed on his desk!He is stripping American Citizens of their right to “KEEP AND BARE ARMS” and nobody is doing anything about it?Even our great President Trump hasnt said a word and he owns property here in my state!This POS Governor of N.J. (MURPHY) need to be removed from office! He took his “extended” family on a vacation to Italy on the Tax Payers dime and yet not a word!He has lowered our Magazine Capacity to 10rds from an already low capacity of 15!He is raising tax’s/Fee’s for all things gun in the state to the point none of us regular Americans are going to be able to afford them!Then using the taxes and fees to push more Gun Control legislation!!!When will all 50states see the JUSTICE PROMISED us all??? I know im buying all the ammo i can while i can now!If you have a good working firearm i would make sure you have plenty of Ammo! We are all going to need it if only to defend our selves!!! I think back ground checks is a must and im an avid Gun owner! How else do we find out if a “criminal” is trying to buy a gun?HELLO??? I want nothing more then our country to be free again and yet WE THE PEOPLE just keep sitting at home and waiting for it to be too late!!!? May for ever and ALWAYS “only” GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! ][][][%

  4. “Taking “all persons involved” literally, as one should when reading a law, that requires a background check on the buyer, seller, and the facilitating licensed dealer.”

    It’s worse than that.

    Try the UPS driver delivering it to the gun shop, everyone at the UPS shipping hub that touched the package, the pilot flying the airplane (he signs for the cargo), etc, etc, et-fvcking cetera…

    • Isn’t the idiot that wrote this bill involved? If this idiot passed the bar in Florida they truly need to make the test MUCH tougher!

  5. If people are still so ” dangerous” or ” unstable and impulsive” that the rest of us must constantly be the subject of investigation unending to ” prove our innocence”, and then why does the system let them out among us? Which not only reinforces the malignant idiocy of background checks to exercise a right,it begs the question I always default to : On conclusion of sentence obligations,why do ALL rights not revert to the ” Justice Involved Person”( to quote the California Idiocracy)?

  6. About 6 weeks ago, I had a friend who tried to commit suicide. By the Grace of God, his Beretta 92 wouldn’t fire. He asked me to take both of his guns until he got straightened out.
    Had there been an idiotic universal background check law in place, I couldn’t have legally taken his guns.
    These laws are STUPID !

    • No, the morons who make these laws expected you to do as any good loyal Nazi would have done and rat out your friend by having them red flagged.

  7. No stupid, it keeps failing because are still just enough people left who believe the bill of rights as it was written. Not “your” interpretation.

  8. In addition, would not the dealer have to charge exorbitant tax fees on a private transfer, since he is the seller under State Laws. That is against the Constitution from the get go.

  9. Picture this. You buy a gun collection of 20 guns and pay $25 dollars for each back ground check which in my area would be $500.

    On the other hand few people have enough money to buy 20 guns at one time and most guns used in crime are second hand guns that have passed through many hands, they are not stolen guns. Right now in my area even if I was a crook prohibited from owning a gun I could get a gun in 1 hour or less with no background checks from private sales and most would not be guns that were stolen.

    I have talked to fellow gun owners at our club and I was shocked that the majority favored universal background checks. I personally do not want universal background checks but that is what I found out from my own personal survey. I think that the politicians already know about this so this is coming in 2020 so buy up any guns you always wanted right now because its going to get tougher to buy a gun and a lot more expensive as well.

    Through more taxation I think ammo will soon become more expensive as well as if it is not already way too expensive. But ammo was never cheap. I remember as a kid wanting to buy some 9mm ammo for my Dad’s FN High Power but I did not have the $7.50 to purchase a box of ammo at the local hardware store. The best way to destroy the arms industry is to make ammo so expensive that people will stop buying it for recreational shooting. I think maybe it was Clinton some years ago that said this and wanted to do this. Clinton is hinting she may indeed run for President or become much more visible during the upcoming elections pushing her anti-gun anti-ammo agenda. She still carry’s a lot of influence with the Dems. Buckle up its going to be a rough ride in 2020.

  10. She is worse then incompetent.
    Shes just a pain in the butt idiot with no knowledge of the law as it is.
    The people of her district no better they keep voting her in.
    Sarasota the home of Midwestern transplants and Kanadians.
    Not real Floridians there anymore.

  11. Florida is F’d. Controlled by New York Republicans, soon to be Democrats. No real gun culture here anymore. Millions get a carry permit to keep their LCP or revolver in the glove box (which doesn’t even require a permit) and that’s it. Outside the ever expanding Democrat cities, you’ll find lots of guys with pick up trucks who own duck guns and a 30-06 to make that 50 yard shot on a 80 pound buck and that’s about it.

  12. here is a question i have been trying to get someone to answer for quite some time
    when the brady bill/law expired, the federal back ground check ,waiting period laws were now gone.
    here in florida the republicans who control the house the senate and governors office voted in a new background check and waiting period. yet the people keep complaining about the dems that are responsible for the current law? the dems have had no say or power in tallahassee in over 20 years
    but to the question,under brady the wait was for a cool off period to stop crimes of passion ect and give time for the government to do the background check.weekends and holidays didnt count as government offices were closed.
    under current law weekends and holidays dont count towards the waiting period,neither does the two or three days it took for the firearm to ship to the ffl after i paid for it. the background check is not phoned in until after the waiting period is over and takes only minutes so the wait has nothing to do with any government office being open.
    am i not able to cool down while the gun is shipping? am i not cooling down on the weekends and holidays?
    i do not understand the waiting period in florida as set up by the republicans. in many states the waiting period just went away when brady expired!

      • yes brady did expire. that is when ar rifles with flash suppressors and bayonet lugs became legal again.all of the other so called assault rifles also became legal again as well. the entire brady law came to an end when the bush administration did not renew it. at that time many states went back to pre brady law with no waiting periods. sadly florida was not one of these states and enacted the current law with a waiting period that serves no purpose with the now available instant background checks.
        i know it is fashionable to blame democrats for every stupid thing government does but in florida the stupidity is all because of republicans. democrats have not had the ability to do anything in florida state government for decades now. im not saying the democrats would be better, just lay the blame at the feet of the people that passed the laws instead of just assuming the dems did it.

        • Crazy or not, you are conflating the assault weapons ban with background checks. As in, “wrong!”

          • i was replying to the poster that said brady bill did not expire.
            my initial post was to the point that people continue to try and blame everything that is wrong in the world on democrats. my bringing up brady and the subsiquent current florida law has nothing to do with the democrats. the stupidity in the current florida law lays at the feet of the republicans who have all of the power and make all of the decisions in florida.
            the democrats do enough stupid things with out people that support firearms making crap up, nobody in the middle on this issue will ever take us seriously if make make stuff up!

            now to your point on background checks i really see no problem with them.if you can legally own a gun you will pass the background check, it doesnt take but minutes here in florida most of the time. when i sell a gun in a private sale, as i no longer have an ffl, as i did not renew it when i retired from gunsmithing, i always get a photo copy of the person i sell to and have them sign and date the paper. i do this to protect myself and the person i sell the gun too. if the person will not agree to this then i do not sell it to them for any amount of money.
            if you sell a gun and a crime is committed with it you need to be able to prove when you disposed of that weapon. the same goes when buying. if i by a gun today that was used to kill someone last year and im caught with it ,it is comforting to know i have a document showing when i took possession of it.

  13. Sales between private parties are just a Florida ID and a stamen that they are not a prohibited person.

  14. If someone becomes ineligible to own a firearm, isn’t getting rid of them (inc. selling them) what they are SUPPOSED to do? This makes that illegal, thereby making it illegal to comply with the law. Thoughts?

  15. These and many other laws or proposed legislation are being written by people who have not the simplest idea of what they are proposing. They all need to be put into a classroom and drilled on current law and the Constitution regarding buying and selling weapons. Additionally, this needs to include a demonstration and definition of automatic vs semi automatic, description of the duties of requirements of licencing FFLs background checks, etc. Then maybe they will have sufficient knowledge to draft legislation and research the cause and effect of their laws and why they do not direct their efforts upon the mental health of those whoshould not have weapons.

    • The problem runs deeper. It is the electorate that needs to educated, otherwise they will continue to elect more misguided law makers to replace the ones you educated.

  16. Can people be criminally prosecuted for gross stupidity and or ignorance glorified beyond reason? If so, the lady lawyer and elected thing is certainly deserving of all to appropriate action. Otherwise, aside from her obvious lack of knowledge/understanding of existing federal law, state law too??, are other motives, as previously mentioned a possibility, one wonders as to who she got through law school and more importantly, how she passed the Florida bar exam, which I’ve heard from practioners, is a tough nut.

  17. Wouldn’t “all person’s involved” include stockers who put the ammo on the shelf at a larger store? The the person who delivered it too? And what if someone gave you advise on which particular gun to buy?

  18. I’ll say it again: We always get stuck on either/or when it could and probably should be both/and.

    The answer to this article’s question is YES. This legislator is both malignant and an idiot. There’s a lot of that going around in government.

  19. The socialists will disarm the population and latter when they are ready, they will murder that same population.

  20. Being a lawyer doesn’t mean someone actually knows about the law.

    But it usually means they THINK they do.

    • No, they don’t think they know the law, they’re quite sure they do! What they don’t understand or like, they INTERPRET!

  21. In reply to the last paragraph of the article, in an ideal world both would happen. Since neither one will, must be we living in a less than perfect world. All the more reason to bear arms. Anyone who writes a bill in violation of the Constitution should be tried for treason, attempted over throw of the government, multiple violations of civil rights times current census population figures. One person, one count. To avoid having SCOTUS hear each and every alleged violations just let them be judged by a jury of the people, then if found guilty, sentenced without ability to appeal.

    • who gets to pick the jury?
      sadly there are far more people that lean to the anti gun position than the pro gun
      i really dont think you want any of these gun questions to go before a jury or on the ballet with a straight up or down vote.
      sadly we are in the minority and are getting smaller every day.

  22. The legal maze you described is indeed problematic. But my objection is the intrusion into private transactions. The government has legitimate police power to regulate those licensed to sell things as a business, but at bottom, it has no authority to regulate private behavior that is not otherwise unlawful. It can prosecute a private person who knowingly sells his personally-owned firearm to a prohibited person, but that’s as far as government’s legitimate police powers go, and that requires a crime to have been committed first.

Comments are closed.