In Laymens terms:Lastmohecken wrote:I need clarification on this new law. Am I to understand that if someone living in your household is bi=polar, that you must give up your guns? How will this happen, will someone confiscate your weapons? Or are you just not allowed to purchase anymore, because you can't pass the NICs check?
Please, someone explain this law in layman's terms.
There is a commonly used legal fiction called "Constructive Possession". This is the method by which Law Enforcement is able to charge everyone in a house with "possession" of a prohibited item like drugs even though it is just lying on the coffee table.
Constructive Possession is also frequently used as an "enhancer" when guns are found in a raided house and one or more people in the house are also "prohibited persons" - essentially saying "the gun is accessible to the "prohibited person" and therefore in his Possession.
There is also some question about LEGAL possession in the case of Community Property States if one member of a Marital Unit becomes, or is, a "prohibited person". Technically, they then become Owners of things they cannot legally "possess".
Until this bill, there was no practical way for a Government Agency co correlate Mental Health Adjudications with Gun Ownership records - like they do, and have done when cross-matching Firearm Season Hunting Licenses with the FELON records in the NICS.
This bill changes that.
Even assuming absolute perfection by the Government
in compiling a list of persons "adjudicated" as "mentally defective", then that list of tens of thousands, if not millions (some suggest as high as 20million) people will have their names and addresses correlatable with hunting license records, CCW records etc.Even if the "prohibited person" has never participated in hunting or even wants to handle firearms, the correlation itself will be enough for an anti-gun Attorney General to obtain a warrant to make sure that ALL firearms and ammunition in a home is stored in such a way as the "prohibited person" in the household cannot have even "accidential" access to them.
If they do, then a violation of "Federal Gun Law" (TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 44, § 922 (g)(4) ) has been committed... "Felony Possession" on the part of the "prohibted person" and "delivering a firearm/ammunition to aprohibited person" by the "gun Owner".
"Judge a law by the worst reading, & in the hands of the worst enemies of the 2nd Amendment"
Can you think of a more realistic - and doable - "worst reading"?
Do you trust a Hillary/Barack/Rudy/Mitt run AG & BATFE to NOT follow through on this?
Here is what a BATFE agent of my aquaintence in Spokane WA had to say:
(Note - he wasn't even "Crazy", just Hypoglycemic...)Ooooo, I always enjoy a good Zen koan.
You can see where this answer is going... the answer is dependent on which of the anythings might be in whose definition of any, of thing, and of possession. I remember a fellow, young and hypoglycemic, living at home with his parents. The fellow happened into a set of circumstances where a quantity of inventoried articles in his legal ownership might no longer be in his possession, where the court-rulings-definitions were then explained within my earshot as meaning that the articles could not be where he could access them, not even accidentally. The huge safe could stay, but his dad would have to get a locksmith to change the combination away from the combination the son knew. That conversation took place in California, but I've heard similar in other places, so I'm thinking it's one of those "whatever the judge says" kind of things. No, I don't remember seeing the word "possession" defined in the NFA or the GCA, but when I (sometimes) read the transcript of a court ruling (rarely, but sometimes I look at what's new), it's the sort of thing that our and their and each others lawyers hash out in specific instances where the answer you're asking me to hit is a moving target.
I have a "safe" that will hold my guns (but not my ammo) - but I guarantee it is not, and will not be "sufficient" to the Feds and a "safe storage" requirement... which is utterly undefined.
Assuming I don't get arrested and charged wth a felony for leaving my ammunition "unsecured" the Fed could quite easily require that I buy several thousands of dollars worth of massive safes... or to build a Vault Room (like they do in OZ), or any number of financially impossible things in order for me to keep my guns and ammo.
Even assuming I could do that, this bill and such correlations would give the BATFE carte-blanche to "inspect" my "Safe Storage" to ensure I was complying with their regs... just like they do to Stocking FFLs.
And just like Stocking FFLs, the only way they could prove that I was complying was if they hade serial number verification of all firearms "possessed" - so all my guns would have to be registered.
Can you see how quickly the slope gets really steep?
"Judge a law by the worst reading, & in the hands of the worst enemies of the 2nd Amendment"
It's not paranoia when you can show EXACTLY how they can - and will - attempt to disarm you.
