The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) is expected to release a draft rule dealing with stolen firearms. The rule is under review by the White House, which has 90 days before it is required to release it to the public for comment.
No one knows what the rule will do or what purpose it would serve, other than to make already burdened gun dealers subject to more bureaucratic snares and tripwires. Since this process started in 1992 in the Clinton era, the number of gun dealers has plunged from 248,000 in 1993 to a bit less than 51,000 in 2012, a decline of nearly 80%.
The smaller the dealer, the more burdensome the bureaucratic record keeping becomes, and this concentrates the dealers into smaller numbers of larger businesses, which make further regulation and harassment easier and easier. It was the stated purpose of the Clinton administration to reduce the numbers of smaller Federal Firearm licensees.
The crime rate, as measured by the homicide rate, climbed dramatically after the Gun Control Act of 1968 was implemented, then dropped as most states implemented concealed carry. There is no objective reason to believe that the licensing of retail gun dealers has any significant effect on crime.
If we were to act rationally, we would simply scrap the entire attempt to reduce crime by monitoring the retail sale of firearms through licensing. GCA 1968 has always been designed as part of the "slippery slope" to enact a universal gun registry, which is in effect, slow motion gun confiscation, as recently seen in California.
The whole citizen disarmament movement has never been about crime control, and its objectives have become an increasingly hidden agenda as its policies have been shown to be ineffective and unpopular.
As David Codrea notes, you cannot have a rational debate with those who continually lie about both the facts and their objectives.
©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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