aray
01-23-2013, 10:10 PM
My work took me on to Capital Hill today, and while there I took the opportunity to stop by the House Judiciary Committee and got to sit in on part of the hearing on the “reduce gun violence” bill. Although I only got to hear the last 40 minutes it was interesting.
What concerned me was how many references I heard to “we’ll get that fixed”, smiles all around, etc. There didn’t seem to be any opposition, at least not while I was there, to changing current federal gun laws.
That might have been because about 1/3 of the Members were absent, it might have been because of the current topic discussed while I was there (they were talking about some proposal to increase the amount of information the states shared with the Feds) wasn’t as controversial as other topics, or it might have been because the pro-gun side has rolled belly up. I wasn’t there long enough to know for certain.
The witnesses at the time included the Deputy Attorney General of the California Department of Justice (Mark LeForestier) and a retired ATF special agent (David Chipman).
Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) asserted that the gun problem in California was a result of guns coming in from Nevada, so we needed a federal law to look across the whole country.
Chipman claimed that bad guys were going from FFL to FFL, buying one gun from each seller every day, and that BATFE had to destroy the records after 24 hours and couldn’t track serial purchases. He also said that one of the problems with the previous assault weapons ban was that since it grandfathered in old weapons, that increased their value, and with increased value that drove increased gun show and privates sales all the more (which were untrackable with no background investigation). The theme there was to ban all private sales.
Indeed Chipman closed the hearings by stating it would be like right after 9/11 the TSA was able to only screen 60% of the people who got onto airplanes. Buildings kept blowing up, he said, but they were unable to do anything about the 40%. That analogy to the “gun show loophole” cause great laugher all around by the Representatives, and the hearing was gaveled to a close.
A few other interesting comments were made while I was there:
One witness claimed that if the BATFE revoked the license of an FFL, that all of the guns in his inventory immediately converted to private ownership. The former dealer could then sell them onto the streets the next day (face to face presumably), he asserted, or set his wife up in business the next day. This “rewarded the [bad] behavior”.
In a different exchange Chipman asserted that a large percentage of the illegal guns on the streets were from internal employee theft (from those other than the owner of course). Sadly he said the BATFE was only allowed to inspect their inventory once per year, and he wanted that changed to much more frequently in order to shut down that source.
Rep. Speier commented that to “fix the backlogs and their databases in California” (whatever that meant) was estimated to cost $60M and since CA had about 10% of the population then whatever fix she was proposing would cost the nation $600M annually.
Rep. Dingle’s behavior was interesting. When it was his turn to ask questions he was very engaged. Immediately thereafter it appeared to me as if he nodded off and didn’t hear any of the follow-up discussions, until close to the very end where he popped back awake, made a few final comments, then left the hearing room early.
I wish I could have heard more. Maybe I’ll get another chance tomorrow.
What concerned me was how many references I heard to “we’ll get that fixed”, smiles all around, etc. There didn’t seem to be any opposition, at least not while I was there, to changing current federal gun laws.
That might have been because about 1/3 of the Members were absent, it might have been because of the current topic discussed while I was there (they were talking about some proposal to increase the amount of information the states shared with the Feds) wasn’t as controversial as other topics, or it might have been because the pro-gun side has rolled belly up. I wasn’t there long enough to know for certain.
The witnesses at the time included the Deputy Attorney General of the California Department of Justice (Mark LeForestier) and a retired ATF special agent (David Chipman).
Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) asserted that the gun problem in California was a result of guns coming in from Nevada, so we needed a federal law to look across the whole country.
Chipman claimed that bad guys were going from FFL to FFL, buying one gun from each seller every day, and that BATFE had to destroy the records after 24 hours and couldn’t track serial purchases. He also said that one of the problems with the previous assault weapons ban was that since it grandfathered in old weapons, that increased their value, and with increased value that drove increased gun show and privates sales all the more (which were untrackable with no background investigation). The theme there was to ban all private sales.
Indeed Chipman closed the hearings by stating it would be like right after 9/11 the TSA was able to only screen 60% of the people who got onto airplanes. Buildings kept blowing up, he said, but they were unable to do anything about the 40%. That analogy to the “gun show loophole” cause great laugher all around by the Representatives, and the hearing was gaveled to a close.
A few other interesting comments were made while I was there:
One witness claimed that if the BATFE revoked the license of an FFL, that all of the guns in his inventory immediately converted to private ownership. The former dealer could then sell them onto the streets the next day (face to face presumably), he asserted, or set his wife up in business the next day. This “rewarded the [bad] behavior”.
In a different exchange Chipman asserted that a large percentage of the illegal guns on the streets were from internal employee theft (from those other than the owner of course). Sadly he said the BATFE was only allowed to inspect their inventory once per year, and he wanted that changed to much more frequently in order to shut down that source.
Rep. Speier commented that to “fix the backlogs and their databases in California” (whatever that meant) was estimated to cost $60M and since CA had about 10% of the population then whatever fix she was proposing would cost the nation $600M annually.
Rep. Dingle’s behavior was interesting. When it was his turn to ask questions he was very engaged. Immediately thereafter it appeared to me as if he nodded off and didn’t hear any of the follow-up discussions, until close to the very end where he popped back awake, made a few final comments, then left the hearing room early.
I wish I could have heard more. Maybe I’ll get another chance tomorrow.