Video: Idaho Parents Help Gleeful Children Burn Face Mask After Lawmaker Seeks To Ban Mandates

 https://nationalfile.com/video-idaho-parents-help-gleeful-children-burn-face-masks-after-lawmaker-seeks-to-ban-mandates/

Children were encouraged by their parents to burn face masks on the steps of the Idaho Capitol building earlier today in support of a lawmaker who introduced legislation that would permanently ban mask mandates within the state.

Children squealed with excitement as they reached for wads of face masks to throw into a burn barrel positioned on the steps of the Capitol building in Idaho. Parents, admonishing them to “be careful” and “watch the fire,” smiled on as their children symbolically rejected mask mandates.

As they threw the masks into the flames, children could be heard cheering and saying “Destroy them! Destroy them, they’re dead!” Another child added, “Throw them in the fire!”

Parents and adults were standing nearby, supervising the burning and making sure the flame did not get out of hand. Additionally, the crowd appears to have made sure the smoke was blowing in the opposite direction of the crowd, with the children standing with their backs to the wind.

This comes after Idaho State Representative Karey Hanks proposed legislation that would ban mask mandates within the state of Idaho. While the state’s governor has not enacted a mandate, as is common throughout the country, local city and county governments have enacted their own.

“We live in a republic and we the people should have a voice and a choice about our own health,” Representative Hanks said while introducing the bill, which, as National File reported, “would nullify existing mask mandates in public schools as well as entire municipalities, putting the decision to wear a mask or not back in the hands of the people and allowing business owners to decide for themselves if a private mask mandate is the right choice for their operation.”

Hanks urged Iowa legislators to carefully examine “the physical and emotional and even mental injuries to our bodies, and possibly even our souls, as healthy individuals are required to wear these masks.”

This also comes as a wave of conservative states have ended their economically devastating COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates, much to the chagrin of the Biden administration, who said this pro-freedom movement is guilty of “neanderthal thinking.”

Facebook Fact Checks Multiple Dr Seuss Memes

 https://nationalfile.com/facebook-fact-checks-multiple-dr-seuss-memes/

Following the revelation that six popular Dr. Seuss children’s books have been canceled due to allegedly racist imagery, social media users made a series of memes remarking about the sharp cultural change in the United States after Joe Biden took office and Democrats gained control of the federal government. Facebook fact checked these whimsical images, and considers them to be fake news.

One meme – and many others like it – remarks that, during President Donald Trump’s administration, the leadership apparatus of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq was systematically rooted out and its borders destroyed, and an Iranian general was killed by a surgical attack in Iraq, while humorously noting that, during Joe Biden’s regime, the two most prominent casualties have been Dr. Seuss books and Mr. Potato Head, who was briefly made gender nonbinary earlier this month.

National File was able to confirm this meme was fact checked by Lead Stories, an outfit founded by an ex-CNN employee who inexplicably is paid by Facebook to determine the veracity of memes.

More memes like it were also fact checked, including one posted by U.S. House candidate Jarome Bell, who is running for office in Virginia.

Another reader provided National File with a screen shot of a similar meme being fact checked for the same reason.

In their explanation, Lead Stories dutifully points out that Biden did not, in fact, murder Mr. Potatohead or Dr. Seuss. In fact, the decision to cancel both children’s brands was made by the respective brands, and not the Biden administration. It remains unknown if anyone actually believed Biden issued these orders, or if the fact check tactic was merely used to stop the spread of ideas that question the new leftist paradigm.

Another meme, also fact checked by Lead Stories, uses the iconic character from “The Cat In The Hat” to mock modern culture, represented by Biden’s ascension to the White House. National File was able to confirm that the outfit run by a CNN reject also claimed this whimsical image represents fake news.

In their denunciation of the meme, Lead Stories explains that “The Cat In The Hat” was not, in fact, one of the six books canceled by the copyright holder of Dr. Seuss’s books.

However, “The Cat In The Hat” has been labeled racist by top left wing education websites since 2017, when a pronouncement was made after First Lady Melania Trump gifted the book, along with several others, to a Virginia school district.

“The Cat In the Hat lies somewhere in the middle,” the website proclaimed. “Although less explicitly racist, the main character owes a debt to blackface vaudeville, and was based on a black woman who worked as an elevator operator, said Philip Nel, a professor of English as Kansas State University.”

Big tech censorship of news items and memes led the alternative tech website Gab to explode in user growth and activity in 2021. In January, Gab received more traffic than virtually every mainstream news publication, with more than 272 million visitors during the month.

Report: President Trump Positioning Resources and Strategy to Destroy DeceptiCons

An interesting insider note from Politico points out a tenuous albeit proactive position by President Donald Trump toward the institutional republican party and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

While the Politico outline is transparently positioned from the leftist narrative toward the chasm amid the establishment vs MAGA base of Trump supporters, the information -if accurate- does align with a forward looking President Trump positioning to confront the corporate wing of Republican elites.

The primary way President Trump can leverage, and ultimately defeat the DeceptiCons, will be through the financials.

President Trump has already announced the MAGA community should make political contributions through his Save America PAC. This approach will ensure his ability to fund MAGA candidates and target internal GOP adversaries for primary challenges.

The threat of targeted primary challenges was why Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago, and it appears McCarthy’s pleas fell on deaf ears because a few days later President Trump announced the targets during his CPAC speech.

According to the article insiders, a second way President Trump will target the financial aspects will be to restrict the republican party from using his name in any manner except that expressly approved by him:

[…] “Trump and his new campaign team are also cracking down on the use of the president’s name for fundraising — a huge draw attracting small-dollar donors. Three sources told us that Trump, who made his fortune licensing his name, has felt burned and “abused” by the GOP bandying about his name to haul in money.” … “One Trump adviser said they’ve been sending out cease-and-desists to faux PACs using Trump’s name to fundraise, among other demands to knock it off. (link)

The control over the political funding mechanisms, in combination with control over who can use the Trump name for fundraising, is a powerful position to take over the internal party apparatus.  Combine the monetary control with a MAGA base who will not support any candidate President Trump does not endorse and there is a clear process to remove the DeceptiCons.

Cartels Introduce Wristband ‘Inventory System’ For Illegal Immigrants

 

Article by John Daniel Davidson in The Federalist

 

Cartels Introduce Wristband ‘Inventory System’ For Illegal Immigrants

Cartels and smuggling networks on the U.S.-Mexico border are growing more sophisticated, bracing for a historic surge of illegal immigration this spring.

 

The Biden administration says there’s no crisis at the border, although the numbers of unaccompanied minors coming across right now, and the federal government’s scramble to find housing for them, say otherwise.

But migrant children are only part of the story. What most news outlets are not reporting is the surge in adults crossing the border illegally, ferried over the Rio Grande and escorted into the U.S. by smuggling networks that contract with powerful cartels to bring people in without being apprehended by Border Patrol.

These operations are sophisticated — so sophisticated that smugglers are now requiring migrants to wear wristbands as a way to keep track of who has paid and which smuggling outfit is in charge of whom. Jaeson Jones, a retired captain for the Texas Department of Public Safety and owner of Tripwires and Triggers, which tracks cartel activity on the border, shared images with The Federalist of discarded wristbands on the U.S. side of the border that he says “represent a process that says which smuggler group has moved them,” as well as other information.

The bands are put on migrants’ left wrist at stash houses in Mexico, just across the border, before the groups come into the U.S., Jones told The Federalist. The bands all have numbers linked to a database of personal information: name, phone number, destination in the U.S., and information about family members in the country of origin, in case payments are late. Jones said smugglers will verify cell phone numbers, both of the migrant and his family back home, at the time the wristbands are distributed in the stash house.

Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies reported earlier this week on the wristbands, quoting a U.S. Customs and Border official who confirmed that Border Patrol agents have been finding wristbands for months now. “It’s an inventory system,” the official told CIS. “They’re all over the place.”

Illegal Immigration Is a Major Black Market Industry

This wristband inventory system is something new on the border (Jones first posted about it in mid-February), but it confirms what close observers have been saying for years: Illegal immigration along the southwest border is a big business, with revenue in the billions, and getting bigger every year.

Every person who crosses the border, whether man, woman, or child, is supposed to pay a fee to smugglers. These smugglers operate with the permission and cooperation of whichever cartel controls a particular area, and the cartel gets a cut of every smuggling fee that’s paid. Think of it as a “cartel tax.”

The way it used to be done is that migrants would pay up-front for passage over the Rio Grande and beyond the Border Patrol checkpoints just north of the border. But now, cartels and smugglers have turned this into a lucrative black market industry with a tiered pricing scheme for different nationalities. Prices are so high that almost no one can pay it up-front. According to Jones, who says he verified these prices with a cartel source, Mexican nationals must pay $2,500, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Ecuadorans, and Hondurans must pay $3,000, Chinese nationals pay $5,000, and Russians and migrants from the Middle East must pay $9,000.

The system amounts to a form of debt-bondage, which Jones says is “really a modern form of slavery.”

The wristbands help keep track of who has paid what to whom. The need for such a system became apparent during the 2019 border crisis, when large groups of migrants — including one with more than a thousand people — were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border every day. The chaos and volume of illegal immigration meant that not everyone was paying, which meant the cartels were not getting their cut. The wristband system is an effort to correct that.

As conditions deteriorate along the border — just this week, an SUV carrying dozens of illegal immigrants was hit by a tractor-trailer in Southern California, killing 13, while dozens of newly released migrants in South Texas tested positive for COVID-19 — Americans need to understand that illegal immigration is a massive money-making scheme for international criminal syndicates, which exploit migrants every step of the way, including after they’re in the U.S.

President Joe Biden and other administration officials can insist all they want there’s no crisis at the border, but the truth is that the crisis is just beginning, and the cartels and smugglers behind it are about to make a lot of money.

 https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/04/cartels-introduce-wristband-inventory-system-for-illegal-immigrants/

 

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‘Trumpism’ Will Extend Far Beyond The Man Himself

Trump may not be in the Oval Office, but 

make no mistake, Trumpism is here to stay.

by Gabe Kaminsky for The Federalist

Since today there is a cultural obsession with rendering everything an -ism, it is only fitting that the presidency of Donald Trump would produce the term “Trumpism.” After all, Trump ignited a conservative revolution that had been brewing for years.

The term Trumpism clearly connotes different ideas and meanings depending on whom you ask, but it really is not all that complicated. Trump was a unique political figure during a unique time — and his raunchiness mixed with “America First” policies appealed to voters who felt perpetually alienated by staunch and plasticky politicians wholly unrelatable. Some say Trump was the figure that changed hearts and minds, and this is certainly true for many Republicans who decided to jump ship from the prior era, but in many ways he is merely the symptom of a fervent discontentment across America with corporate and urbanist centrality. 

The former president recognized that there was a vast swath of people not getting their voices heard, people the establishment had made to feel small, and he encompassed that voice. He was their shiny object. He was also the fighter for alienated Americans, enduring the endless attacks and namecalling from a Democratic Party so intent on trying to conform citizens to an unyielding orthodoxy of “wokeness” and supposed virtuosity.

Here’s the thing, though. Trumpism will outlive Donald Trump. It will do so because, as aforementioned, Trump was simply one unique figure who represented millions of Americans who felt underrepresented in our power-concentrated republic. Citizens who support his policies, such as border security, a strong national defense uninvolved in unnecessary conflicts, and trade deals that benefit the American worker and manufacturing sector — to name a few — haven’t left the country. They are here and still desiring of change. Trumpism was even mentioned by Trump in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, last month.

“Many people have asked what is Trumpism, a new term being used more and more. I’m hearing that term more and more. I didn’t come up with it, but what it means is great deals, great trade deals, great ones, not deals where we give away everything, our jobs, money. … It means low taxes and eliminated job-killing regulations, Trumpism. It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit,” Trump said. “So they come in and they can help us as opposed to coming here and not being good for us, including criminals, of which there are many. It means no riots in the streets. It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms.”

Beyond the fact that there are those who indubitably still favor former President Trump’s various policies, Trumpism goes much deeper and to the heart of a culture war that shows no sign of deteriorating. 

In Trump’s seemingly carefree and conversational rhetoric, however out of line it may have gotten sometimes, he did not fit the mold of the typically banal politician. This mold has become the norm for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, participating in an establishment crawl toward what is prim and proper — though far from mainstream — robotically repeating party catchphrases, as opposed to speaking to people like actual humans. Trump’s base — which contains a whole host of Americans who made their foray into politics because of his accessibility — can still be tapped into moving forward.

This is not to say Trump’s often careless and ill-advised rhetoric is strictly a benefit over the collected words from politicians who recognize that the whole world is waiting on their screwup. Arguably, one of Trump’s downfalls was his misunderstanding that there is a line, that he crossed it sometimes, and that Americans rely on the president to be a model citizen who is not always looking to one-up his opponent. That said, Trump was treated like garbage by the corporate media and by Democrats, and thus his hostility can be often understood.

Trumpism was tapped into in the 2016 election in the victory of Donald Trump, but it is far from over. Whether the 2024 presidential election candidate is Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or perhaps South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, it is abundantly clear that Republican voters seek to build on the legacy of the 45th president. After all, in the 2024 presidential straw poll at CPAC, 95 percent of attendees said the GOP ought to continue down the path of the Trump agenda. 

Trump may not be in the Oval Office, but make no mistake, Trumpism is here to stay. Whether it be 2024 or 2028 or 2032, conservatives are hungry for politicians who both cut through the nonsense and make an honest attempt to preserve American liberty.

 

Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker

 

It turns out that writing well is inherently racist

In the 1970s, “Ebonics” was the allegedly natural language of Black Americans. My father strongly objected to having Black students in his district taught in Ebonics. The only teacher in his district who supported him was an elderly Black woman who accurately said that Ebonics would permanently relegate Blacks to an economic ghetto. Given how awful Ebonics were, it’s inevitable that they’re back. An associate dean at Arizona State University just wrote a lengthy book saying that proper English writing is inherently racist.

Asao Inoue is the associate dean for Academic Affairs, Equity, and Inclusion in the college of integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. With Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Oregon State University and a Ph.D. from Washington State University, he’s a man steeped in modern American academia. Inoue’s bio establishes that job is to teach young people how to communicate through the written word:

He is the 2019 Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and has been a past member of the CCCC Executive Committee, and the Executive Board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. 

Within that discipline, Inoue is the recipient of multiple honors:

Among his many articles and chapters on writing assessment, race, and racism, his article, “Theorizing Failure in U.S. Writing Assessments” in Research in the Teaching of English, won the 2014 CWPA Outstanding Scholarship Award. His co-edited collection, "Race and Writing Assessment" (2012), won the 2014 NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award for an edited collection. His book, "Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future" (2015) won the 2017 NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award for a monograph and the 2015 CWPA Outstanding Book Award. 

Clearly, Inoue is advancing writing and discipline in academia – or is he?

Chrissy Clark caught up with Inoue’s 2019 book, Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. Clark slogged through this academic opus to reveal the mental degradation of academia and the appalling ideas that are oozing out of the academic and infecting – and destroying – America.

Inoue’s central premise can be boiled down to one idea: Teaching students the English language is inherently racist, something magnified when teachers expect non-White students to perform competently in English. In other words, it’s Ebonics all over again.

Academic writing has the vaguest relationship to quality English, so one is always reduced to a bit of guesswork when trying to interpret an academic’s meaning. Still, The passages of Inoue’s writing that Clark quotes indicate that Inoue thinks that there are few things worse than imposing the horrors of the English language on students:

“This book focuses on one kind of grading contract, one that calculates final course grades purely by the labor students complete, not by any judgments of the quality of their writing,” Inoue writes. “While the qualities of student writing is still at the center of the classroom and feedback, it has no bearing on the course grade.”

[snip]

Critical race theory contributed to Inoue’s idea that ranking things is a system rooted in racism. Because grading is a form of ranking, grading must also be a racist idea. In his book, Inoue dubbed grading and the education system writ large “racist” for their connections to ranking. 

“Ranking is a part of a much longer racist, and White supremacist, tradition in Western intellectual history,” Inoue writes. “Ranking has been deeply embedded in racist thinking, discourses, and logics, mainly because it has been deployed as a way to justify a number of racist, empirical, and colonial projects over the last four hundred years.”

[snip]

The crux of the author’s argument is that grading calls for student uniformity and high-quality completed assignments, both of which are allegedly racist ideas. 

Inoue’s disdain for non-White students is apparent, for he assumes that any linguistic competence is beyond them. You have to read Clark’s post in its entirety to grasp the enormity of Inoue’s racism. Reading the post also highlights the irony that, while the book is as badly written as any modern academic treatise, Inoue still wrote it in standard English.

I look forward to the day when all the White people constantly wittering on about systemic racism and white privilege do the right thing and remove themselves entirely from whatever positions they achieved due to their alleged privilege in a systemically racist system. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Bezos, Gates, Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Inoue (half Japanese, half White), Robin DiAngelo, and a whole host of other white leftists need to abandon immediately their jobs, their status, and their wealth.

Until they do, we can confidently and reasonably believe that everything they say is pandering garbage. They assert these ridiculous theories, not because they believe them, but to increase interracial hostility, render minorities helpless and dependent on these powerful White people, destroy political opposition from White people who won’t get with the leftist program, and maintain and increase their own political power.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/it_turns_out_that_writing_well_is_inherently_racist.html#ixzz6oLOG9xto

 

 

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Top 9 Reasons Democrats’ Latest Gun Control Bill Is A Terrible Idea (Again)

Democrats have dusted-off their last attempt and are making another significant push to enact major gun control legislation.

by Ryan Cleckner for The Federalist

Two years ago, House Democrats pushed a bill requiring so-called “universal background checks” at the federal level, which would have effectively outlawed private sales throughout the country. That bill was H.R. 8, or the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019.”

Now, after taking control of all three branches, the Democrats are trying again and have just introduced, you guessed it: H.R. 8, the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021.” Who says Democrats can’t come up with new ideas? 

This new bill, just like the old bill, would require that a federal background check be conducted prior to all transfers of firearm possession. To many Americans, this may seem like a reasonable idea. After all, law-abiding gun owners abhor the criminal misuse of firearms.

However, on closer examination, none of the claims from gun control proponents backing this bill holds water. We’re going to explore the top nine reasons this latest piece of gun control legislation is a bad idea.

Federally mandated universal background checks won’t end gun violence nor stop the criminal misuse of firearms, but they will significantly increase the burden of millions of law-abiding Americans who wish only to exercise their Second Amendment right to self-defense.

1. Demands For New Gun Control Are An 

Admission That Gun Control Doesn’t Work

Background checks are used to ensure that a potential firearm possessor is not one of a class of “prohibited persons” who are prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition under federal law. This class includes felons, fugitives, those subject to certain restraining orders, those convicted of crimes of domestic violence, and more. 

This means current gun control laws already make it illegal for these people to possess a firearm. Requiring more background checks is an admission that the current law prohibiting these people from possessing firearms is not enough to prevent their possession. This is true for all gun-control laws, because if we know one thing about criminals, it’s this: they do not care if they break the law.

Every mass killing is caused by one thing: an evil person intent on killing many innocent people. The tool, whether it be an airplane, a pressure cooker, or a firearm, can change. Making even more laws restricting access to the tool will not stop mass killings, but it will make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from potential violence. By definition, criminals don’t obey the law.

The horrific mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, was not prevented by banning murder, banning guns on schools, banning the theft of firearms, nor requiring so-called universal background checks for every gun sale (Connecticut is one of the states that requires this). Adding yet another law on top of dozens of other laws that failed to prevent mass gun violence is an admission that these laws simply don’t work.

2. Gun Dealers Already Conduct Background Checks

Federal law, promulgated via Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rules, already requires all gun dealers to meet stringent requirements for getting their Federal Firearms License (FFL). As an FFL, they must ensure that a customer has satisfied the background check requirements prior to allowing the customer to have possession of a firearm. 

Under current federal law, gun dealers are required to confirm, prior to any and all sales, that a customer has passed a background check as part of every FFL transfer If you head into a gun store to purchase a new firearm, that dealer must confirm that you have satisfied the background check requirements before you can take possession of that new gun and take it home. This is the case regardless of where you live.

If you’re traveling across state lines and see a gun in another state that you’d like to purchase, you must either have that gun shipped to an FFL in your home state if it’s a handgun or, if it’s a rifle or shotgun, you must still pass a background check there before you can purchase and possess the firearm.

Nearly two dozen states place additional requirements beyond federal law on firearm transfers and already either require a background check to be conducted for every firearm transfer (even between private same-state resident individuals, like the Universal Background Check bill proposes) or a valid firearm possession license that is issued contingent upon a background check.

3. There Is No ‘Gun-Show Loophole’

When someone brings up a desire for more background checks, it is often offered as a solution to close the “gun-show loophole.” There’s one big problem with that claim: there is no “gun-show loophole.” It is a myth. 

As covered above, federal law requires that all sales from firearm dealers, or sales between residents of different states, must satisfy the background check requirements, regardless of whether those sales happen in a gun shop, at a gun show, or out of the back of somebody’s trunk in a parking lot. Many states also require background checks for individual sales.

There is simply no law anywhere that says if a gun is bought at a gun show, then the buyer doesn’t have to undergo a background check. A dealer who tries to sell a gun at a gun show without confirming that the buyer has passed a background check would be breaking the law.

Furthermore, federal law also prevents sales to anyone that any seller (not just FFLs) believes to be a “prohibited person” (e.g., a convicted felon). As a result, gun dealers regularly turn away potential customers if they think they are not legally allowed to purchase or possess a firearm. There is simply no special exemption or “loophole” in federal law that allows gun show sales to occur without background checks. Therefore, there’s no loophole to close.

4. There Is No ‘Online Gun Sales Loophole’

Another common call for universal background checks is based on a so-called “online gun sale loophole.” Similar to the “gun show loophole” above, it doesn’t exist. Firearms can be legally purchased (paid for) online as long as the purchaser is not a “prohibited person,” the firearm is legal to possess in the purchaser’s state of residence, and the state otherwise allows the sale.

The current legal process for online gun sales requires that the firearm be shipped to a federally licensed dealer (FFL) in the purchaser’s home state, where the purchaser must show up to fill out the required federal paperwork and satisfy the background check requirements prior to possession.

Just because you click “BUY” on a website that sells guns doesn’t mean you’ll have it shipped to your door without having to process the transaction through a federal gun dealer, who is required to confirm that you have passed a background check before you take possession of that new gun. Again, no loophole equals no loophole to close.

5. Background Checks Won’t Stop Criminals From Getting Guns

There are two categories of people looking to purchase a firearm: law-abiding citizens with clean criminal records and therefore not a “prohibited persons,” or people who are already legally prohibited from purchasing a firearm. As discussed above, the former category follows laws. The latter doesn’t.

Even under a legal regime that requires universal background checks, the person who is banned by law from owning a gun will continue to get a gun the same way criminals do today: by stealing it, having someone else by it for him or her, or purchasing it in the black market. A federal background check requirement will do nothing to prevent that already illegal sale.

Thinking this will stop the criminal misuse of firearms is like insisting upon a background check before someone can purchase crystal meth. Users of crystal meth, much like criminals with guns, act contrary to the law. If they can’t legally buy it, they’ll do it illegally. And the people in the business of illegally selling aren’t about to start complying with laws that require them to conduct their black market sales in a particular way.

Remember, it’s already illegal for a prohibited person to possess a firearm. If that law doesn’t stop them, requiring background checks in more types of transactions won’t either.

There’s also a real problem with “straw purchases” of firearms, wherein someone with a clean record buys a gun from a gun store for someone who can’t legally purchase it on his or her own. This is already illegal and our nation’s gun dealers are the front line of defense against these illegal transactions. However, despite the current background check requirements for gun dealers, straw purchases still happen, and illegal straw purchases will only become more popular and more difficult to discern if H.R. 8 becomes law.

6. Background Checks Won’t Stop Mass Shootings

Demands for more gun control typically seem to follow mass shootings. It makes sense that we want to do something—these mass shootings are horrific, and we should do what we can to stop them. However, universal background checks will not end mass shootings nor gun violence.

Before proposing a new law that will create a hurdle to the exercise of a fundamental right, we should at least ask if the law would have prevented in the past whatever we’re trying to stop in the future. For example, universal background checks would not have stopped the deadliest mass shootings following the enactment of federal background check requirements in 1994:

Las Vegas 2017: Shooter purchased his firearms from a gun dealer (where background checks are already required).

Orlando 2016: Shooter purchased his firearms from a gun dealer.

Virginia Tech 2007: Shooter purchased his firearms from a gun dealer.

Sandy Hook 2012: Shooter stole his firearms.

Sutherland Springs 2017: Shooter purchased his firearm from a gun dealer. He had a criminal record and the background check system failed to stop him (the same system that would be used for private transfers).

Parkland 2018: Shooter purchased firearm from a gun dealer.

San Bernardino 2017: Shooters’ firearms were “straw-purchased” by someone else.

Fort Hood 2009: Shooter purchased firearm from a gun dealer.

Columbine 1999: Shooters’ guns were straw-purchased for them by someone else.

Thousand Oaks 2018: Shooter purchased firearm legally with a background check.

Navy Yard 2013: Shooter purchased firearm from a gun dealer.

Aurora 2012: Shooter purchased firearms from a gun dealer.

Democrats often cite stopping these mass shootings as a reason for enacting universal background checks. However, after seeing that universal background checks would have had zero effect, it invites the question: why are they really so eager to add burdens to lawful gun ownership?

7. In-State Commerce Is a State Issue

Under current federal law, only firearms transactions between private, non-dealer residents who reside in the same state are exempt from federal background check requirements. That is because the federal firearm licensing system and background check requirements apply only to interstate commerce.

This is not because the federal government doesn’t want more power (since when has that happened?). Instead, it is a valid constitutional restriction on what types of activities and commerce the federal government may control.

As noted above, many states have their own gun laws and have placed additional restrictions on firearm possession above and beyond what the federal government already requires. These purely in-state transactions between private residents of those states should continue to be handled at the state level, as different states have different challenges that are best addressed with local solutions implemented by local representatives.

Furthermore, each state should retain the authority to decide whether it is willing to incur the additional costs and burdens that will arise from new gun control restrictions.

8. Universal Background Checks Are Too Burdensome

The current National Instant Criminal Check System (NICS) used for firearm background checks can only be used by federally licensed gun dealers or government entities. This restriction by the FBI on their system is due to them not being able to handle the burden of additional checks.

Opening the background check system, which already experiences significant backlogs and delays, especially with the record-breaking gun sales figures lately, will introduce an extra burden on the government, and on those who wish to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The universal background check bill will amount to a delay and a tax on the exercise of a fundamental right.

First, a seller and buyer must find, and travel to, a local gun store during the store’s hours and wait for paperwork and a background check to be processed. Second, unless the federal government intends to force dealers into servitude, the dealer will charge a fee for his services conducting the background check. This fee, typically around $25-50, will be, in effect, an additional tax on every sale of a firearm.

There will also be a burden on gun dealers. Most gun dealers are small business owners who are focused on keeping their businesses running. This extra burden will take their time away from customers and other business duties including helping to spot and stop straw purchases. It will also significantly increase their ATF compliance burden, as they are liable for every piece of paperwork and transfer that takes place.

9. Universal Background Checks Create a De Facto Federal Gun Registry

It is currently illegal for the federal government to maintain a database of ownership of standard firearms (not including silencers, machine guns, etc. that require an FFL to have an “SOT License”). There is a good reason for this ban on a federal gun registry: a tyrannical government can only confiscate firearms if it first knows where they are all located.

Although a registry is not mentioned in the bill, it is a logical conclusion. After all, how could such a universal background check law ever be enforced absent a national gun registry showing who passed a background check, when, and for which particular firearms?

For law enforcement to prove that a firearm was purchased in a private transaction, they would need to know who was the most recent lawful possessor. Of course, someone with a lawfully possessed firearm could have a receipt from a gun store, but that could be lost or faked.

The natural conclusion to this law’s enforcement would be the creation of a database tracking the lawful transfers, and therefore current possessors, of all firearms in this country. It would be bad enough if the government were to maintain and use such a list, but what if hackers stole that list, just as they stole the personnel records of millions of federal employees? Suddenly, violent criminals in search of weapons would have a perfect map showing which homes to ransack when nobody’s home.

Mass shootings and gun violence are horrible, and we should try to stop them. However, demands for more gun control only make plain the truth that gun control cannot stop violence.

Current gun control doesn’t stop criminals. The latest gun control proposal is no different. It would do nothing to end gun violence, but it would drastically increase the burdens on law-abiding citizens who only wish to defend themselves and their families from violent criminals who don’t care whether something is against the law.