Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has jammed into a gun control bill making its way through the Senate an amendment that adds Draconian Federal government control over our individual right to keep and bear arms. Schumer first Dragoons the states. Section 102 of the gun control bill, with his amendment, is aptly titled:
SEC. 102. PENALTIES FOR STATES THAT DO NOT MAKE DATA ELECTRONICALLY AVAILABLE TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.
Under this section, the US Attorney General is allowed to withhold up to 4% of Federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies in any state that respects its citizens’ privacy vis-à-vis the Federal government by refusing to provide its state’s data to the NISC. After a five-year “grace” period from implementation of the Senate’s legislation, the US Attorney General is required to withhold 5% of that funding.
Charles Cooke, writing for National Review Online, provides a description of other parts of the Schumer Amendment. On the matter of “transfers” of firearms between household members, Cooke summarizes thusly:
If, for example, a gun owner leaves his home for more than seven days—leaving his firearms with his roommate, or gay partner, or landlord—he’ll be committing a felony that carries a five-year prison term. And while married couples are exempted from falling afoul of that provision, the family exemptions apply only to recorded “gifts” and not to “temporary transfers.”
Don’t take that business trip of eight days without incurring the hassle of taking all of your firearms with you (or the jail term in New York, if you do). If you leave them behind, you and your spouse will become Schumer-felons on the eighth day. Unless you formally “gifted” those weapons to your spouse, using the attendant paperwork to effect the transfer, before you left. After which, your spouse better not leave for more than seven days without exercising one of those same options.
Cooke understates the problem of “transfers” of firearms between friends, though. Cooke summarizes thusly:
[I]t would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend so that he can go shooting. Want to give your pistol to your neighbor so he can pop down to the range for a few hours but don’t have time to go with him? Sorry, better make sure you look good in orange.
But Schumer’s amendment says, in SEC. 202. FIREARMS TRANSFERS, paragraph (2)(D), that the transfer must occur at the firing range. The owner still has to take the time to accompany the friend to the range and effect the “transfer” there.
Moreover, Schumer’s amendment requires that regulations be written to require a paper record be created for every transfer:
(ii) shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee….
Want to lend your piece to your friend for his use at the firing range? Go with him to the range to make the weapon loan, and then fill out a ream of Federal paperwork concerning that loan. Every time.
Welcome to Progressivism.