-By Warner Todd Huston
Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has quietly added a slew of new measures to his self-sponsored gun control bill currently making its way through the Senate.
Schumer has been battling to get his Protecting Responsible Gun Sellers Act of 2013 (S 374)–now to be called the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2013–passed into law, but one of the early problems with the bill was that it was essentially a shell or placeholder bill–a bill not completely written at the time of introduction.
Ostensibly, Schumer’s bill is meant to change current laws to require that all firearms sales initiate a background check on the buyer before the sale is legal. Currently, private, non-gun merchant citizens are exempt from performing background checks when they sell guns to other private citizens.
Though the original bill introduced was a shortened version, the New York Senator has since added new amendments to his bill that raise serious red flags.
Schumer’s new Section 202 will make it illegal for an unlicensed person to transfer a gun to any other non-licensed person. The law would require that a licensed gun seller perform an NICS check and fill out a Form 4473 before a transfer would be legal.
Exceptions include transfers from husband to wife or immediate family, short-term transfers for hunting purposes (if the owner is present) or at a shooting range or for firearms instruction.
The law does, however, make it illegal to loan a gun to another person for hunting or target shooting unless the owner is with the person the gun was loaned to.
Section 202 also sets maximum fees for the paperwork and demands that the FFL keep the paperwork during the length of the transfer.
Section 203 is the more problematic section as it requires that gun owners report the theft or loss of a firearm within 24 hours after discovering the loss. Unless a report is filed with the “Attorney General and to the appropriate authorities” the gun owner faces five years of imprisonment.
Second Amendment supporters have been fighting to make sure these transfer records are not kept by the federal government in what would essentially become a national gun owner’s database.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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