- Dear Jeff,
-
- You had posted a piece from the "Patriot" on
gun show loopholes. I am unaware of their source. That information originally
came from Alan Korwin, in Phoenix Arizona. He had e-mailed me with the
information on the bill. A previous response by "Greg Spencer"
was misleading. Alan Korwin publishes aa book on gun laws at Bloomfield
Press. I am not sure if Greg is a lawyer, but several legal people
have looked at this bill. Understanding and knowing how to read the bill
is essential. Here is the reply from Alan.
-
- Gene Kilber
- Phoenix, AZ
-
- For Publication, 2,000 Words, June 1, 2001
- One-time North American Serial Rights
- c. 2001 Alan Korwin
- Not-for-profit circulation approved.
-
-
- Alan Korwin is the author of seven best-selling books
on gun law, including "Gun Laws of America--Every Federal Gun Law
on the Books, with Plain English Summaries," and state gun guides
for AZ, CA, FL, TX, VA. This paper is part of an ongoing series, click
Position Papers on the home page, or write or call for copies.
-
- Contact:
- Alan Korwin, BLOOMFIELD PRESS
- 4718 E. Cactus #440, Phoenix, AZ 85032
- 602-996-4020 Phone, 602-494-0679 FAX
- 1-800-707-4020 Book orders
- http://www.gunlaws.com
-
-
- THE GUN SHOW BILL CAN'T REALLY BE THAT BAD, CAN IT?
- THE GUN SHOW BILL CAN'T REALLY BE THAT BAD, CAN IT?
- THE GUN SHOW BILL CAN'T REALLY BE THAT BAD, CAN IT?
-
- It's worse.
- It's worse.
-
-
- If you missed the original story:
- GUN SHOW BILL IS NOT WHAT THEY SAY
- click here -- http://www.gunlaws.com/newstuff.htm
-
-
- By Alan Korwin, Author
- Gun Laws of America
-
- The attorney I worked with on "Gun Laws of America"
(the unabridged guide to federal law), Michael P. Anthony, made the following
astounding conclusion after studying the McCain-Lieberman gun show bill.
I rechecked the bill and found he's correct (as usual). Good going,
Mike.
-
- 1. CAN THIS BILL SHUT DOWN GUN SHOWS ALTOGETHER?
-
- Easily.
-
- Here's the real hidden Catch 22. If a gun show operator
allows even a single unlicensed gun vendor to attend the show, the feds
can lock up the operator. They have a ton of extra money in this bill
for enforcement of such things.
-
- If any person attending the show offers (not even sells,
but offers) a gun to anyone else at the show -- even a gun they don't
have with them -- they become, by definition, an unlicensed vendor, and
everyone is subject to arrest and imprisonment -- the seller, the buyer,
AND the gun show operator. You don't even need to have a prohibited possessor
(a criminal) involved. No operator is going to run a gun show exposed
to that kind of legal risk.
-
- To protect against this, the only way a gun show operator
can safely run a show, is to pre-register everyone in attendance AS A
VENDOR, not just as an attendee. That means personal ID and centralized
registration at pretty much the level an FFL (licensed gun dealer) must
endure.
-
- The McCain-Lieberman gun show bill, advertised as a
way to prevent a criminal from avoiding a background check, is instead
a sneak attack on the very existence of gun shows as we know them.
-
- [The citations: SEC. 102, 18 USC 921(a)(39) -- Anyone
who is not an FFL (a federally licensed gun dealer) and who "exhibits,
sells, offers for sale, transfers or exchanges 1 or more firearms"
at a gun show is a "special firearms event vendor"; A gun show
operator is subject to two years imprisonment (SEC. 103 (b)(7)(a)(1)(I)),
unless the operator "verifies the identity of each special firearms
event vendor participating in the special firearms event by examining
a valid identification document (as defined in section 1028(d)(2)) of
the vendor containing a photograph of the vendor" (Sec. 931(a)(1)(D)),
and that person must sign "a ledger with identifying information"
(a)(2)(E)(I). The ledger must go to the Secretary of the Treasury (see
(a)(2)(G)) within five days of the close of the gun show.] _____
-
- I took lots of calls and emails after my original article
on the McCain-Lieberman gun show bill, like this one --
-
- "You must have it wrong Alan. I read the bill myself
on thomas.loc.gov; It's a pretty bad bill all right, but I don't see half
the things you're claiming."
-
- I rechecked everything, and ran it by more experts.
It all stands, and here is clarification for everyone concerned.
-
-
- 2. ARE ALL VENDORS -- NOT JUST GUN VENDORS -- TO BE
REGISTERED?
-
- Yes.
-
- The gun show operator must give 30-day notice directly
to the Secretary of the Treasury, of "the vendors planning to participate"
(SEC. 103, Sec. 931(a)(2)(B)). This is not limited, as in the next paragraph,
(a)(2)(C), where 72-hour notice applies only to "special firearms
event vendors planning to participate". (Gun dealers are called
"special firearms event vendors" under the bill.)
-
- Subtle and deceptive distinctions like this are quite
common in law, and frequently serve to slip in controversial conditions.
When found, bill sponsors sometimes claim clerical error. When undetected,
they pass into law and are enforced as they read. Unless changed, this
would require a book seller like me to pre-register or be in violation
and subject to arrest (and jeopardize the operator too).
-
-
-
- 3. IS REGISTRATION OF ANYONE WHO ATTENDS PART OF THE
BILL?
-
- Yes.
-
- McCain's and Lieberman's offices are denying it over
the phone, according to numerous people who have corresponded with me.
-
- If a gun show operator cannot prove that "each
person who attends" the gun show has been notified of every requirement
(see Sec. 931 (a)(2)(F)) in this 3,900-word bill, in accordance with regulations
that are not even know at this time, the operator can be arrested and
imprisoned (for 5 years) and fined and have the license to operate suspended
or revoked.
-
- For operators to meet such a requirement (and run the
show without those legal exposures) they would need proof that each attendee
was in fact notified, which will basically amount to your signature in
a book or on a not-yet-designed form. This must be saved by the operator
and the federal authorities have unrestricted access.
-
- A sign at a doorway, as some people have mistakenly
interpreted this, does not provide legal "constructive notice"
and would provide an inadequate defense. Because we've discovered and
exposed this "loophole," McCain and Lieberman may be forced
to deny and eliminate this particular goal.
-
- This issue has confused many people. Certain red flags
are left out of bills to help them pass, and afterwards the public, law
enforcement, and even Congress finds out what they actually enacted.
That's quite common, especially at the federal level. The statute does
not explicitly say that information must be collected on attendees --
that would be way too inflammatory and make passage difficult or impossible.
-
- Instead, it says operators must notify each person who
attends of every requirement in this lengthy bill (see (a)(2)(F)), subject
to fines and long-term imprisonment of the operator for failure to do
so, and that the operator "submits to the Secretary a copy"
of the notice (see (a)(2)(G)) within five days. If the notice to all
attendees is just some special sign that the government says must be posted,
submitting it in five days would serve no purpose.
-
- The legal challenges this forces on gun show operators
are obvious. Imagine this. The feds say you failed to notify Joe (a plant)
who went to your show, they have photos of Joe inside, and they seek to
close your show and arrest you, the operator (using the millions of new
tax dollars conveniently allocated for additional enforcement). Go ahead.
How do you prove they are wrong and that you notified Joe without his
signature and some proof that it's actually him? But I could be mistaken.
Maybe they'll just take your word for it, and no documentation of any
kind will be needed.
-
-
-
- 4. CAN THE FEDS CHANGE THE GUN SHOW RULES AFTER PASSAGE?
-
- Yes.
-
- Repeatedly throughout the bill are references to "in
accordance with regulations the Secretary shall prescribe" or similar.
These regs are not known and will not be known until after the passage
of the law. They will be drafted in secret and are not controllable by
the public or even by Congress, if the past is any gauge. For an appearance
of fairness, a "routine" bureaucratic review process will be
conducted before implementation.
-
- Such unlimited grants of power to the Treasury Dept.
are downright scary -- you'd think McCain and Lieberman would know better
-- since we have seen huge abuses of this in the past. For example, federal
authorities record and keep NICS background check data under Brady "regulations,"
in direct violation of the McClure-Volkmer Act and the Brady law itself,
and Congress has been unable or unwilling to stop them. My use of adjectives
in the original article may seem strong to some readers, but personally,
in the interests of remaining a voice of reason, I believe I held back
on what could be much stronger implications.
-
- Because "any other information" is required
under the unwritten regulations, your guess is as good as mine as to what
that might include. Again, I tried to voice my concerns on this conservatively;
if you're one of those slope-headed paranoid kooks the media writes about
all the time, who thinks the federal government might get sneaky or extreme,
then gun serial numbers, social security numbers, gun types and the name
of your first born might be possibilities (I don't think so). If the phrase
"any other information" (or similar) was used one time it would
be a red flag. It is used in Sec. 931 (a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C), (a)(2)(E)(i),
(a)(3)(B), (d)(1)(E), (d)(3), (d)(4) and elsewhere.
-
-
-
- 5. ARE THE GUN SHOW REGISTRATION RECORDS CENTRALIZED?
-
- Yes.
-
- All of the new licenses and reports must be filed with
the Treasury Dept. (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). Some
of the record keeping starts out with the show operators ("notifies
each person who attends"), but the feds are granted unqualified access
and it will be centrally recorded afterwards ("submits to the Secretary
a copy of the ledger" or "notifies the Secretary of the date,
time, duration, and location of the special firearms event, the vendors
planning to participate" and similar requirements.
-
- I suppose it might be more accurate to say that some
of the registration "handling" is distributed, though they all
end up centralized (even the attendee notice must be submitted to the
federal government within five days of the end of the show, at (a)(2)(G)).
Show organizers keep their own copies of some of it, under guidelines
that are not yet known. Depending on the regulations that have not been
written, authorities could easily require filing all papers that are not
explicitly centralized under the statute, or create new paperwork. Certainly,
nothing in this bill stops them or even pretends to protect the rights
of the innocent. And here we thought it was all about keeping guns out
of the hands of criminals.
-
-
-
- 6. IS THE GOVERNMENT PURSUING "BIOMETRIC"
NATIONAL ID?
-
- Yes.
-
- The term "biometric" does not appear in the
McCain-Lieberman Gun Show Bill. You must read the cross-referenced statute
for this term and related requirements. That citation, 18 USC 1028, is
made in (a)(2)(D), for mandatory inclusion of the federal government national
ID requirements (only for the gun vendors at this time). While I agree
there may be value in making identification documents secure for some
purposes, the potential for abuse is gigantic.
-
- In at least two previous and deliberately secretive
attempts, federal agents have tried to slip a national ID card requirement
into law, were discovered in the eleventh hour, and were stopped (and
got their hands slapped lightly). Perhaps you recall the first attempt,
in a transportation bill, by trying to force states to make their driver
licenses conform or withholding highway funds, and the second time, under
the guise of health insurance, with a medical ID card for every American.
There may be more, I wouldn't be surprised.
-
- Congressman Henry Waxman's (D., Calif.) recently publicized
national "sting" that proved you could bypass gun laws by using
phony ID at gun shows really had nothing to do with guns or gun shows,
in my opinion, though that was the media spin. It's part of a concerted
effort to require airtight security ID for any citizen.
-
- The fears of national ID mandates are relaxed by many
Americans when it's "only" gun owners they're after. The same
way the Brady gun scare got the quarter billion dollars in funding the
FBI wanted for its centralized national citizen checking computer (NICS,
in Clarksburg, WV), gun owners are, well, handy when pushing for a national
ID card.
-
- Eventually, it might seem, you won't be able to get
an elevator to come if your fingerprint on the button doesn't match the
national file. Why would an honest person be against that? The AAFIS
national fingerprint database is running full bore and includes, along
with the criminals, bus drivers, child care providers and so many others.
Even DNA is being federally databased, but there's no need to worry,
since they're only doing it to protect us and help fight crime and terrorism.
-
-
-
- 7. MY LIBERAL FRIENDS CAN'T BELIEVE ALL THIS, BUT IS
THERE MORE?
-
- Yes.
-
- A -- There's one more point that no one raised, but
it sure worries me. The federal government introduces a batch of new terms
here, and boy, is that dangerous. Once they hand down a new legal definition,
all sorts of stuff starts coming down the pike because of it. If McCain-Lieberman
passes, how soon, and what do you think will be the next law dealing with
"special firearms event frequent operators," or "special
firearms event licensees" now that there are such things? Look what
happened after they shoehorned in the term assault rifle.
-
- B -- Our representatives in Washington are debating
McCain-Lieberman as if it were a gun show loophole bill, though it's real
effect is to federalize gun shows, outlaw them without prior federal
approval, create a massive new bureaucracy, generate millions of new federal
records annually, license and register everyone in sight, and it makes
crimes out of all sorts of activity that creates no victims, hurts no
one, and is currently legal (private property sales from one innocent
person to another). Amazingly, direct criminal activity is unaffected
by this bill's proposals -- only legal gun sales and other legal actions
would be regulated and outlawed.
-
- C -- I've also noticed that the mass media hasn't noticed.
And that every report they've made so far is grossly inaccurate, and
they have done nothing to make corrections. I've notified them of the
errors of course, but they've been unresponsive. I encourage you to notify
them too, any way you can, and be persistent.
-
- D -- It also occurred to me that it makes zero sense
to regulate private gun sales at gun shows, if private gun sales everywhere
else are perfectly legal. But you know the drill on that. That's the
next "loophole" leftists will be gunning for. The mass media
has kept eerily quiet on this, but it's hard to imagine they don't recognize
it. Why upset the apple cart.
-
- E -- You may also have concerns that the First Amendment
right to assemble, which gun shows represent for many people with similar
interests, would be severely hurt if McCain-Lieberman passed and gun shows
closed or were severely limited.
-
- F -- The great and feared fire-breathing dragon, the
much demonized and powerful national gun lobby (often but misleadingly
referred to solely as the NRA), has been inexplicably mild on this subject,
focusing largely on minor matters, like the creation of differing definitions
for frequent and infrequent gun show operators, and a three-year-away
impossible-to-comply-with 24-hour checking standard. Someone ought to
let them know there are other fish frying.
-
- There's probably more, but I need a rest.
-
- Permission is granted to post this material to any place
where your friends and other readers can get the full story.
-
- Crass commercial announcement: Please look at our line
of books -- if you knew all your rights you might demand them. http://www.gunlaws.com.
You can also send me a message from there, get on our update list, and
freely read my prior editorials and updates.
-
- Sincerely, Alan Korwin, Author
- Gun Laws of America
-
- Bloomfield Press
- 4718 E. Cactus #440
- Phoenix, AZ 85032
- 602-996-4020
- alan@gunlaws.com
- http://www.gunlaws.com
- "We publish the gun laws."
-
- NEW ADDRESS!
- WE MOVED ON MAY 29, 2001
-
- Only the street address changed, on 5/29/01:
- 4718 E. Cactus #440
- Everything else remains the same.
- _____
-
- When you disarm your subjects
- you offend them by showing that
- either from cowardliness or lack of faith,
- you distrust them; and either conclusion
- will induce them to hate you.
-
- -- Niccolo Machiavelli
- "The Prince"
-
-
- Of all the deaths caused by crime, accident,
- disaster and maniacs, they hold a distant
- back seat to the murders and atrocities
- committed against people by governments.
-
-
- GUNS STOP CRIME.
-
- GUNS ARE FOR SAFETY.
-
- GUNS SAVE LIVES.
-
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