Will Manchin/Toomey/Schumer Pass or Will It Fail

Apparently depends on who you ask according to NPR:

It all sound much like what we wrote one week ago: "Blocked Or Breaking Through? Mixed Signals On Gun Bills." That was followed by the Manchin-Toomey "break through."

The only way to make sure it fails is to keep up the phone calls.  Obama's Organizing for America  (OFA) plans to flood (or at least that is the plan) Senate offices tomorrow with phone calls.  We need to counter that.  If you can't get through to the D.C. office, try the district offices.  They keep track of phone calls too.  You can find out all of your senator's contact information at www.senate.gov.

A Split in the Community

Over the weekend a split emerged in the pro-rights community on the Manchin/Toomey/Schumer background check amendment.  Alan Gottlieb announced that the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms not only was supporting Manchin/Toomey/Schumer, but that they had a hand writing it and making the claim that the amendment has far more goodies for gun owners than bad measures.  Bitter at Shall Not Be Questioned posted about this yesterday complete with video of Gottlieb talking about CCRKBA's role in the "compromise."  Shortly after her post, Gottlieb appeared on Tom Gresham's Gun Talk Radio program to discuss it further.  You can hear that discussion below.

In short, Gottlieb claims that we are only giving up private checks at gun shows and those advertized over the internet, but we are getting all these pro-rights pieces including:

• Interstate sales of handguns, 
• Veteran gun rights restoration, 
• Travel with firearms protection, 
• Divil and criminal immunity lawsuit protection, 
• The guarantee that people, including federal officers, will go to federal prison for up to 15 years if they attempt to use any gun sales records to set up a gun registry.”

Dave Kopel address the travel with firearms and gun registry here:

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.

Then Kopel address the travel provision that Gottlieb promotes:

But notice part (2) of the new definition: a new exclusion for any firearms crime punishable by more than year of imprisonment. In some states, such a crime includes merely not having a state-issued gun permit. So now let’s suppose that the Pennsylvanian is going to Maine. On the way, he travels through Massachusetts. Under current law, FOPA protects him. Under Manchin-Toomey, Massachusetts can arrest and imprison him, and he will have no federal defense. In Massachusetts, possession of a firearm without a state permit is punishable by imprisonment up to to 2 years. Possession outside one’s home or business is a sentence of 2.5 to 5 years, with a mandatory minimum of 18 months. New Jersey and New York City also have penalties of over one year for simple possession without a local permit.

Maybe the Pennsylvanian might qualify for some exemption under the laws of Mass., NYC, or NJ. Or perhaps not. What we know for sure is that today the Pennsylvanian is protected by FOPA, and if Manchin-Toomey passes, he will not be.

On a related note, Larry Keene addressed the issue on Bill Bennett's program this morning. As the trade association for manufacturers and retailers, he is looking at Manchin-Toomey from that perspective and sees a lot to not like in it.

Finally, the editors of National Review had this to say about the "compromise" amendment:

The provision would create new hurdles for law-abiding gun owners, requiring two private parties to seek out — and pay — a federally licensed intermediary before they could carry out a simple transaction. Worse, the vagueness of the legislative language would make it difficult for private sellers to determine if a given sale requires a check. The new regime would make even the most innocently intentioned of firearms transfers significantly more risky for the average American.

In addition to being difficult to comply with, the provision is likely to prove difficult to enforce. Because it would exclude a broad class of transfers, unscrupulous sellers would quickly establish methods of advertising their wares that hid in the lacunae of the legislative language, and adequate enforcement of the law would require police and prosecutors to devote considerable resources to the parsing of close cases and the ferreting out of intent. This mess would likely lead to the reappraisal of today’s legitimate and noncontroversial exclusions as tomorrow’s unacceptable loopholes. Indeed, the very same “gun-show loophole” Toomey/Manchin attempts to close was once a perfectly respectable member of the class of private sales the bill makes a show of protecting.

VSSA stands firm in opposition to Manchin/Toomey/Schumer.

VSSA Stands With NRA in Opposing Schumer/Manchin/Toomey Background Check Deal

While we have not seen the final language, we do know the framework of the agreement announced yesterday by Senator's Toomey and Manchin. And it's telling that Toomey's support was premised on him not having to appear with Chucky Schumer.  With that framework, the NRA made their position clear to senators yesterday:

"In addition, the NRA will oppose any amendments offered to S. 649 that restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms; including, but not limited to, proposals that would ban commonly and lawfully owned firearms and magazines or criminalize the private transfer of firearms through an expansion of background checks," Cox writes. "This includes the misguided 'compromise' proposal drafted by Senators Joe Manchin, Pat Toomey and Chuck Schumer."

VSSA stands with NRA in opposing S.649, including the Schumer/Manchin/Toomey background check amendment.  As Charles Cook noted on National Review Online yesterday, even if we take them at their word that the "compromise " includes supposed "exemptions" for in-person private transfers and that it “lets” family members lend or gift one of there their firearms without inviting felonious consequences, and that it doesn't make us felons for allowing our friends to shoot our guns on our private property, today's exemption is tomorrow's loophole:

Alas, there is peril ahead. Why? Because today’s “exemption” is tomorrow’s “loophole.” No sooner will the glorious presidential ink have dried on that abject page, than those provisions that were sold a few days earlier as commonsense exemptions — the product of “bipartisan compromise” and other media-tested platitudes — will become structural problems, ripe for “standardizing.” Sure, Congress wouldn’t be so gauche as to include A or B or C in their bill today. But have no doubt: Within a few weeks of the bill’s passage, the eerie progressive silence that has marked this tortured process will be broken, and when it is, legions of prominent gun controllers will take to their feet in order to argue that it makes “no sense” for there to be “exemptions” to the almost universal background-check system.

And Heritage had this to say:

Americans are tired of backroom deals.  Legislation drafted behind closed doors and rushed to the Senate floor has no place in our political system.  We expect this type of deal making from Joe Manchin and also from Chuck Schumer, who supports the “universal registration” of firearms.  However, we expect more from Pat Toomey and, more importantly, so do his constituents.

The debate begins today and may last for weeks.  Keep up the contact with Warner and Kaine, but especially Warner.  We will now see if he was truely with us, or if it was just a marriage of convenience on his part based on the fact that when he was Governor, the General Assembly never gave him an anti-rights bill that he could have signed, nor a pro-rights bill that was so pro-rights that he simply could not approve it.

Gun Control Groups Emboldened by Collapsing Filibuster

As reports surface that a filibuster of Senator Harry Reid's gun control legislation is falling apart, The Hill reports that gun ban groups are becoming emboldened and telling Democrats to stop trying to find compromise on the issue of so-called "universal background checks."

Instead, the groups say Democrats should hold their ground and force Republicans to vote on the language drafted by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), currently in the bill, which would dramatically expand background checks and require record-keeping to accompany them.

“If we can break the filibuster with the Schumer language, that changes the whole dynamic of the negotiations,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “I say let’s go vote on it because I don’t think they can vote no on it. I think it’s a very, very difficult vote for people to vote no.”

What CSGV has not calculated is whether people like Manchin can vote for Schumer's "Fix Gun Checks Act" language.  We know that even though Lindsey Graham has said he does not support a filibuster, he also does not support the Schumer language on transfers.

And that is an important distinction.  As you contact your Senators, don't use their language.  The "Fix Gun Checks Act" is not about background checks but about transfers.  What constitutes a transfer that will wind up making you a felon if you violate it?

• If you left town for more than 7 days, and left your gay partner, or unrelated roommate at home with the guns, you’d be committing a felony. This should be called the “denying gun rights to gays act.” Remember that the federal government does not recognize gay marriage, even if you’re state does, thanks to DOMA. 5 years in prison.
• Actually, even married couples are questionably legal, because the exemption between family only applies to gifts, not to temporary transfers. The 7 day implication is if you leave your spouse at home for more than 7 days, it’s an unlawful transfer, and you’re a 5 year felon. I suppose you could gift them to your spouse, or related co-habitant, and then have them gift them back when you arrive back home. Maybe the Attorney General will decide to create a form for that.
• It would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend to take shooting. That would be a transfer. 5 years in federal prison.
• Steals the livelihood of gun dealers by setting a fixed fee to conduct transfers. The fee is fixed by the Attorney General. What’s to prevent him from setting it at $1000?
• Enacts defacto universal gun registration, because of record keeping requirements.
• All lost and stolen guns must be reported to the federal and local government. This means everyone will have to fill out the theft/loss form, and not just FFLs. You only have 24 hours to comply. If you lose a gun on a hunting trip deep in the woods, and can’t get back home to fill out the form in 24 hours, you’re a felon and will spend 5 years in federal prison.
• Want to lend a gun to a friend to go hunting? It’s a 5 year in prison felony.
• No exception for state permits. All transfers must go through a dealer or 5 years in federal prison.
• UPDATE: Teaching someone to shoot on your own land is a felony, 5 years, if you hand them the gun. Not an exempted transfer.

Gun control groups are crowing that they have clogged up Mark Warner's phone lines. Senator Pat Toomey may have indeed stabbed us in the back as one person has said, just when it looked like everything was dead.  I know I sound like a broken record, but now is not the time to let up.  The battle begins as Reid has signaled he will bring the bill to the floor on Thursday.  Will you Stand and Fight?