On Thursday, March 11th 2021, the House passed a gun control bill, H.R. 8, designed to expand background checks on firearm sales, with a vote of 227-203. It will “utilize the current background checks process in the United States to ensure individuals prohibited from gun possession are not able to obtain firearms.”
Effectively, what this necessitates is that any sale, including those of privately owned guns, must go through a background check, involving a federal firearms dealers with a federal firearms license. Accompanied with H.R. 1446, “Enhanced Background Checks Act”, the FBI can now indefinitely delay these background checks.
While Democrats laud H.R. 8, that initially, died on the senate floor in 2019, Republicans claim that this will “open the back door for a national registry.” According to the NRA, that issued a statement back in January 2019,
“HR8 requires that loans, gifts, and sales of firearms be processed by a gun store. The same fees, paperwork, and permanent record-keeping apply as to buying a new gun from the store. If you loan a gun to a friend without going to the gun store, the penalty is the same as for knowingly selling a gun to a convicted violent felon. Likewise, when the friend returns the gun, another trip to the gun store is necessary, upon pain of felony.”
On the House floor Thursday, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) said “The idea that this is going to make us safer is laughable. Criminals looking to get their hands on firearms to use in crimes are not going to submit to background checks. Only law-abiding citizens will follow the law. This is a back door means of setting up a national registry of firearms—something I completely oppose. We need better enforcement—not more laws. Instead of passing terrible legislation like H.R. 8, we need to do a better job of providing law enforcement agencies with the resources they need to enforce existing gun laws.”
In yesterday’s session, Rep. Miller, pointing to her own state of Illinois, mentioned the fact that criminals will get their hands on guns, regardless of the law. Illinois, being the fourth strictest state on gun control in the country, still has one of the highest criminal misuses of firearms. All this bill does, she says, is penalize law-abiding citizens that possess firearms, while doing virtually nothing on the criminals that could care less about the existing laws.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) expressed his discontent with the bill as well, tweeting
Yesterday, House Democrats gave felons $1,400 stimulus checks.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 11, 2021
Today, they’re making it harder for law abiding citizens to buy a gun.
And at the same time, they’re trying to defund the police!
What is the 2nd Amendment? Why is it worth preserving?
The Second Amendment states:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
In 1876, in the case of the United States V. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep and own a gun pre-existed the Constitution.
In 1886, in the case of Presser V. Illinois, the Supreme Court recognized that the 2nd amendment can not be infringed upon by Congress.
In other words, owning a gun is a natural right; and this amendment echoes, protects, and establishes the right for corporate and personal defense.
Naturally, any person or animal attacked will defend itself. Nothing less should be expected. Our right to bear arms is a means of protection, to protect us from even our own government. There is no shortage of examples of democratic governments becoming tyrannical.
In the case that our government becomes tyrannical, with the oppressive force that the regimes of the 20th century, as well as those of the 21st century, showed was possible, we can have weapons to equalize ourselves to the state, otherwise be left at the mercy of a state with a monopoly on violence.
When this amendment was first written, people were allowed to have the same weapons that the military had, through the command of the government, so that they may match their strength. Dr. Gina Loudon, author and political commentator, wrote “I am a 5’1 petite female. My pistol is my equalizer.”
