Similar to what I wrote to David Yamane, I am reserving thoughtful comment until I have read the long document. I'm the meantime , just want to give you a big thumbs up for this line:
"When I suggested that all gun free zones should provide firearm storage it was like a flashbang went off in the hotel soda tray " if I had been drinking coffee as you had recommended at the time, I would have spit it out laughing 😉
I literally dropped that grenade in the room on my way out the door to get interviewed for the documentary, when I was going to miss the vote on safe storage. I said "if you put this in, I vote yes, if not I vote no, I have to go talk to the film maker." Came back to a complete shitshow. :D
If I could only believe that those on the Left currently controlling the Democrat Party would leave things alone after they get the concessions you’ve outlined. History going well back beyond the founding of America makes me think that once they gain power, that would never actually happen.
The documentary film maker asked me whether the concensus building approach could be scaled up to the national level and I responded "no" without hesitation.
I had to look that one up - non-physical entities, thought forms, that arise from collective thoughts and emotions of the group. That certainly describes mob action.
Unfortunately, I think the emphasis has been too much on the type of guns and not on WHO has ANY gun. I would summarize our approach as being that rather than keeping SOME guns away from ALL people, let's keep ALL guns away from SOME people (specifically, those who have been convicted of a violent crime - especially with a firearm - or who are a severe threat to themselves or others).
You cannot. I live in StL MO. I laugh at these people in these discussions talking about their ideas. Try enforcing these types of things in black community in my town. They will laugh in your face, and even if caught will not be prosecuted, and if by chance they are prosecuted (as did happen on a murder 2 jury I was on), if you have black activists on the jury they will not convict (as happened as well). These rules only have an effect on the people who don't need them. They burden and mock the honest and are irrelevant to the criminals.
Someone should ask the StL City police department how many machine guns they have taken away from thugs and then look to see how many prosecutions have been undertaken. That is a ten year felony, by the way.
Those convicted of violent crimes or who are a severe threat to themselves or others are exactly the people who anarcho-tyrants want to keep guns in the hands of, for maximum bloodshed & "justification" to infringe further, while the peaceable get false-positived effectively defenseless at a heinous rate, eg. 412:1 in the page 6 cite in https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Rhode-amicus-1.2.26.pdf
POSIWID
There are only 3 guaranteed ways to keep those people gun-free: execute them, imprison them forever (in supermax so if they try to escape, they will not survive the attempt), or have 24/7 "Mk 1 eyeball" as they say, surveillance with immediate lethal force authorized in response to gun possession.
I've always wanted to be in a room like that. Were any of the gun controllers surprised at what laws are already on the books and some of the more arbitrary NFA classifications and such? I've been talking politics for a long time, and I don't think I've ever encountered people less informed on the subject they're allegedly passionate about than gun control people.
Richard Aborn founded the organization that became Brady and was instrumental in the passing of the original assault weapons ban. He was in the group, and he was a nice guy.
We skipped all that, basically. I made the case that guns won, and they had to live with that. And they accepted that case relatively early on. "Drive down the road and number the houses 1 2 1 2. The 2s have guns." David Yamane was also on the panel and able to drill home the "guns are normal and normal people own guns" point early. I think a lot of the gun controllers nowadays are staring at a situation where they've been so brutalized and are so beaten back that they're willing to work with whoever they can to get anything. Some of them are switching careers.
The frame was "craft a policy that red states could possibly live with" not necessarily craft a policy that would be used to roll back blue states. But now that it's out there, I imagine anyone can use the document to do anything with it, including rollbacks.
One of the guys in the panel was pretty instrumental in Michigan's recent gun control package, which I don't like, and he told me point blank he liked ours much better and wishes he could roll Michigan back to the Bridging the Divide package. I'd like to see that happen as an example of good faith.
I don't think there's much good faith to go around, but I do believe there was good faith in that room, and considering the very very heavy hitters of gun control that were in the room, that's impressive. The problem comes with what those heavy hitters do when they leave the room and are back among their peer group.
That's why I don't foresee any of this turning into law. But we'll see.
“The frame was "craft a policy that red states could possibly live with" not necessarily craft a policy that would be used to roll back blue states.”
Interesting that, on the one hand, you describe them as being beaten down, and on the other the remit of the meeting was “how to successfully go on offense in red states”.
Now that the policy document is public, anyone can use it for any reason. Mike has an idea that he wants to try to keep the group together for advocacy reasons but personally I think he should dissolve it and see if he can't find out who's bankrolling 97 and get some of that money directly, and then do whatever he wants with it.
If someone in Virginia were to grab our document and offer it as a counterplan to whatever the VA legislature is cooking up right now, then I would love that, some other folks on the panel would hate it, and there would be nothing either of us could do about it one way or another.
I brought up VA as a place to peddle the thing and was shot down with zero discussion, so I dropped it. My goal was to get the document done, because I know that once it's in the public eye anyone can do anything they want with it.
I think the key in blue states going forward has to be lobbying for large, omnibus legislative packages.
For example, in NYC there are probably 5-10 local laws that adversely affect gun owners, but have no bearing on public safety; virtually no one outside the NYPD and the gun-owning community even know these laws exist. These laws could be repealed overnight and no one would really care (except gun owners).
You can craft a legislative package that repeals 10 outdated, unproven gun regulations and adds 1 or 2 feel-good provisions (like tax rebates for gun safes, etc.), and call it the "NYC Gun Safety Improvement Act."
Gun safety groups can take credit for it, and pat themselves on the back and everyone can go home happy.
Of course the real challenge is bringing blue state lawmakers to the negotiating table in the first place; right now, there is virtually no incentive for them to engage.
In my Red State we are moving legislation to disallow almost everything in this plan.
Because you have offered this as a state plan; my plan is to keep organizing and driving the voters as hard as we can to pound the gun grabbers into the dust. I live in a blue area and their despair on this issue is exquisite.
I (the project director and a gun control researcher) spent a lot of time learning about the details of the laws and was definitely surprised to see how many law provisions interfere with gun owner rights but without actually protecting public health. This led to an epiphany on things like regulating suppressors, short barreled rifles, and short barreled shotguns under the NFS, assault weapon bans, prohibition of gun possession by non violent felons, restrictions on gun transfers between family members, issuing red flag orders without addressing underlying mental health concerns, etc. that’s what led to my hypothesis that we could design a laser focused package that follows the evidence base while eliminating much of the excess regulation that doesn’t actually protect public safety. Honestly it was my many early conversations and discussions with BJ that helps me reach that point.
Thank you for responding, I'm in the gun manufacturing business, and from our perspective it sure feels like banning all guns and punishing people who want to own them is the real goal of a gun control groups for the reasons you laid out. My home state of Washington has an AWB that's so vague that nobody knows how to comply, and they're piling on with permit to purchase, ending online ammo sales, 3D printer bans, and whatever else Bloomberg can think of. Meanwhile, Seattle has a catch and release policy for violent criminals with guns even when they've got auto switches installed, so it really feels like it's more about punishing gun owners rather than preventing crime.
You are correct. These rules will not be enforced where they could make difference and not needed elsewhere. In my city cops take switched Glocks are full auto converted AR all the time and let us see if we can find a case brought. NONE. They will not charge and prosecute due to disparate racial impact.
Interesting theoretical exercise but of course will have zero effect in any blue state as you noted. Gun grabbers can be nice people - who knew? I'm sure that they probably love their families and rarely kick their dogs. But when they are trying to prevent me from exercising a natural right as well as one enshrined in the Constitution, I give zero f*cks about whether they are nice. Here in the state of Washington the Democrats have a zero facts policy on firearms. They institute controls based on emotions. You can't argue with them, nor can you debate them because they don't operate in that space. Guns are evil, ergo those who want guns are at least evil adjacent, therefore there is no compromise needed. Mix in a state supreme court who consistently squints at the laws and figures out some rational for upholding them, then welcome to the progressive utopia where the Democrats are sure that, this time at least, they'll get it right.
I'm checking on this now. I thought that language was in the document last summer in Denver, but you're right I can't find it now. I may need to remove that statement from my article. If so, good catch.
While I can appreciate that there are lots of moving parts, you have to know how terrible the optics on this are. Even with the possiblity of removing magazine and “assault weapon” bans, there is a real possibility that they're going to lose all of that anyway, same with SBR’s and suppressors. Best case scenario, they're trying to get something in exchange for something that they couldn't hold onto as a way to minimize their loss.
Now that I know that there were gun-friendly proposals that were supposed to make it into the end product but didn't, well, it just looks like they pulled a bait and switch on you.
Besides, if we're really embracing a strategy of not controlling weapons but of controlling people who shouldn't have them, why stop at those NFA items? Why not machine guns? Hell, why not explosives? I want my M203! I want my Carl Gustav! I want my RPG! (sung to the tune of “Money for Nothing”) As the policy proposal stands now, not only do I want all my damn cake, but when I look at the few crumbs they're offering vs what they were supposed to offer, vs what we deserve, their cake is a lie!
I'm glad for you that you've made new friends, or at least connections, and that you were able to have a civil conversation with civilian disarmament proponents. That's good. I suppose it's even a little bit of progress. But for the rest of us this whole ordeal is probably going to go on the ever increasing stack of evidence that negotiating with gun grabbers is as futile as negotiating with terrorists and for the same reasons: they'll never give you what you want, they won't honor the deal, and you'll only embolden them.
My general take on the policy framework is it'd be a good thing to try and put into Virginia and Michigan to prevent them from (or correct them from prior) implementing some truly awful stuff. I'm certainly not going to support it in Georgia where I live.
I love your closing sentence and might steal it with attribution sometime soon.
Which I only realized halfway down, I was intending to read the enemy’s mail.
Sir you appeal to political methods in a political Silo. This reads frankly like reasonable people of the socioeconomic class you laid out developing reasonable policies in a Silo. As you yourself say there’s probably not much contact between the groups that are considered problematic either black or redneck
(I am the latter) so we have well meaning people attempting to forge a compromise to affect parties of which they have little real knowledge of and don’t live among. Speaking as a redneck - Sir there will be no compliance and any attempt at enforcement will either end either in farce (indeed never start, see SAFE Act) and be massively and with determination of men who know tools and machines well worked around in a variety of ingenious methods, or tragedy and a potential explosion that is completely primed and ready, indeed looming for years. I am veteran, just retired military and red neck. It is correct in the article that (respectfully) redneck creds are lacking.
(Red neck suicide- The cause of the suicides of course is hopelessness although as our prospects improve that should ease. ).
Nor does this apparently take into account the hardcore 2d Amendment group, military and veterans and a large number of people who were first time gun buyers in November 2008, within 3 weeks there was a near dearth of firearms in NY, NJ, PA and Bushmaster was back ordered a year.
The same thing happened when __ was re-elected in 2012, in fact every weapon of military utility going back to WW1 was snatched up.
In short politics set off an internal arms race. This crossed all groups, certainly the middle and middle upper classes.
A sufficient number are ready and skilled enough to take matters to the main point of an arms race.
I won’t speak outside my known socioeconomic groups (Veteran, Redneck) but I daresay this sort of thing will be willfully and reflexively ignored by the black community.
I don’t think this is a good idea to bring up now Sir.
There’s a very tense internal political situation in the country and anything that provokes the people should be avoided.
You had mentioned a desire to save an admittedly small number of lives with background checks, and that this is a county problem of culture, Indeed!!
Culture indeed.
Think of Everytown as Iraq for the working class; and leave core rights issues alone. What you are proposing were it to be presented to the Red counties would be as popular as Chabad Judiasm being introduced to Iraq.
Not unlike the Iraqis we are basically the descendants of military bases with a long history of being difficult to rule.
Iraq was founded by Muslim conquerors as bases at Basra , Mosul and later near Baghdad… founded essentially by religious raiders , holy pirates really, establishing a new nation
by raids and conquests …
Or in modern terms America itself, founded by pirates and religious folk.
Your likely lives saved sir would be dwarfed by the lives lost in a explosion, nothing is now more dangerous than gun control. Nothing was defended so fiercely, nothing could destroy legitimacy faster.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said. Since you're new around here, allow me to make my position clear:
If I was given two choices, (1) California For All, or (2) every ten year old child is given an unmodified full auto army surplus M14 and two cans of ammo, I choose 2. My goal, if I have one, is to make sure as many people of all soical and economic classes own an AR-15 as possible as quickly as possible because I think the change coming in the 21st century will demand it. We all probably also need weaponized drones and drone defenses. I think the next civil war will come in esoteric ways not yet fully understood by the redneck militia class, although I have a wonderful time talking with them about it annually while making apple butter here in GA.
I entered into this exercise mostly as an experiment, and to support my friend Mike. The experiment was to see whether those people could even be talked to, because I didn't know. Turns out yes, they can, or at least the ones Mike picked. And he picked some doozies. Aborn and Lowy are Mount Rushmore of Gun Control candidates.
I don't expect much to happen with this, but in as much as you and I share a cause, my efforts with this thing advance your and my cause more than you realize, in this way. The nex time Aborn or Lowy are in the secret smoky back room gun control cabal, and the next thing hits the table, they are going to think back to this Tufts thing and push the brakes. Maybe not all the way, but some, and that's worth something.
Your political analysis is correct. I think sadly for many years. See for another example the recent move by Utah to become an energy hub for petroleum: Regionalism.<
I think it quite likely the PADD map (Petroleum Defense districts) may come to resemble something like a political map, at least political economy.
One has to look in some depth at the politics of petroleum in the region, the petroleum island (self imposed exile really) and now utterly unreliable West Coast PADD 5 California petroleum infrastructure to understand Utah is doing what is necessary to survive. To survive with a margin of safety means thrive in times of plenty and have margins for hard times.
To give credit where it's due, this effort was at least *less* siloed than many conferences of this sort are. They did *have* some pro-gun people there, even if it didn't adequately present the breadth of that side of things.
Sadly, whenever gun control folk talk about something with "bipartisan support," they usually refer to a side that is only scantly represented and has little to no influence.
I am glad BJ was there to represent the pro-gun side with his mastery of math nerdity.
This is easily the most thought provoking article on gun policy that I've read in a long time! I haven't gone through the policy proposal that y'all generated yet, but from your summary I already have some ideas to improve the background check portion.
First, is that whatever kind of go/no-go answer that this system generates needs to be in a format that can be saved both locally digitally and offline, i.e. a paper copy. Printable PDFs would work for this. This gives the seller a valuable tool to prove that he did indeed verify that the person who he sold the gun to was not prohibited, and thereby absolve himself of any liability, but does so in a way that doesn't create a database. Obviously there should be information on this certificate (or whatever you want to call it) that says when the check was run and on who. Maybe that's printed plainly on it or maybe in some kind of encryption hash, that's up for debate.
Another thing is that the software created to do this on the back end needs to be free and open-source, and auditable all the way down to a trusting trust attack. Again, we're looking for assurances that it isn't being used to create a backdoor registry.
Finally, and most importantly, the person requesting the check absolutely must be anonymous and not pay anything. This allows us to use the system for its intended purpose of conducting background checks, but to poison the data for purposes of tracking gun sales. If I can run a check on myself at random intervals, even if you capture all of that information, you have no way of knowing which checks actually represent a sale and which ones are random noise. If we track who is requesting the check then it makes it easier to seperate out potential sales. This makes the auditability of the system even more important. Also, if we charge for the check to be run then it creates a barrier for generating that noise. Charge enough money and the only time it gets run is probably for a sale.
These are just my initial thoughts. I look forward to reading the policy itself and see if any of these are adressed in it.
Also, well done on this whole project. If nothing else, it will give us a metric to point to and say that anyone demanding more is clearly not acting in good faith.
So, having read down to the part where they talk about the background check I already see two things that I don't like enough to make it a hard no from me.
The first is that it's an opt-in system. This means that only people who want to buy a gun are in the system. That automatically creates a registry, not of guns but of gun owners. Frankly that's just as bad. Yes, I know that there are plenty of other ways to get that information, but it will not be with the ease and quality that this kind of a registry would provide. For this to work everyone has to be in the system so that gun owners, non-gun owners, and even anti-gun advocates are treated alike. The only thing it should track is who is able to own a gun, or better yet, only who can’t. You could have a system where known disqualified people are the only thing that it stores and not being disqualified means that you're automatically qualified. That would probably be the best way to do it as this is in line with how the constitution works.
The second one is the reporting requirement. As this is currently written it requires that people selling guns report anyone who tries to buy a gun but gets denied. Absolutely not! First, this puts gun sellers in a potentially dangerous situation and secondly I'm not doing the government’s job for them especially not for free. The general public should enjoy a similar arrangement to the non-commandeering doctrine between the states and federal government. Sure, there are extreme cases such as the draft (although they still have to pay you), but that is an extreme case. Following on the “guns are normal and normal people own guns, “ buying and selling guns is just normal life and not an extreme case.
I'm willing to grant that, as written, it's not as bad as some of what we've seen, but other than walking back certain states that already have worse laws, this is of no use to us as the gun community.
Okay, I have other thoughts on the Universal Background Checks part. Supposing that there really could be something created that truly did not create a registry of either guns or gun owners it might provide an amicable solution to the gun question posed by modern manufacturing. Basically, as the cost of tooling comes down and the quality of consumer tooling goes up the ability of Joe (slightly above) Average to produce high quality, modern firearms has become inevitable. Its not just 3D printers, but desktop milling machines, lathes, and even welders that are cheaper, more available, and much easier to use than they have been in the past. All of these can and are used by people to make their own guns and gun parts.
If we have a background check system that truly respects gun owner rights and privacy, then I can simply run a background check on myself, verify that I am still legal to own a gun and print or cut away. I can print that check out for my records, store it away with whatever identifying information I deem useful for that gun and that will be that.
This would make it prosecutable for someone prohibited from buying a gun to make one but not affect anyone else very much. True, it's the kind of charge that usually only kicks in after a crime has been committed and an investigation ensues, but then we have a lot of those on the books already so that alone shouldn't preclude it from being implemented.
If we're truly focusing on the person rather than the gun, this makes a lot of sense. Besides, the alternative is what some states are proposing which is to lock down every possible tool with state sponsored spyware. The maker and worker community rightly sees this as anathema to the open source ideology and an attempt to lock down manufacturing that will only empower the already too powerful corporations.
Of course, going back to the beginning of this comment, this is all predicated on the background check system being acceptable and what was proposed still has a long way to go before its even close. It was an interesting thought experiment all the same.
> My personal take was the GVP community should trade the gun rights community back our assault weapons, mags, and silencers, whose bans don’t work, in return for a gun owner friendly version of the universal background check (UBC)[.]
Only if it comes with a UBC prior to anyone being allowed to publish things, and I get to be the person deciding who gets the licenses.
---
OK, not really; That's actually me engaging in hyperbole, because I don't support licensing or background checks for 1A any more than I do 2A.
I dunno. Quite possibly I'm simply too autistic to be useful here, having an ingrained undiplomatic literalism which looks at "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and "Universal Background Checks" and finds those two concepts inherently incompatible. How can it possibly be a "right" which "shall not be infringed" if I have to check in with the government before I can exercise it? *Do* words have meaning, or *not*?
Still really wish Madison had used the language from 1A in 2A. "Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms." That would have been even *less* ambiguous.
The Tufts UBC proposal is a state level database similar to NICS and a phone app, so if I sell you something in a Wal Mart I can take a cel phone photo of your drivers license and the app gives me a green light or a red light on the sale. No registry.
It's more of an infringement that many states have now, but the idea was to package that up with other horse trades to make it palatable to gun owners.
I mean, I understand the goal, and I understand my own limitations as a diplomat. But I am the way I am. Though I guess at this point, people do the same thing to basically every other amendment than the third, and that's probably just because it hasn't come up yet.
"Congress shall make a couple of laws abridging the freedom of speech", "the right of the people to keep and bear arms might be infringed at least a little", "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, unless it's really convenient to do so", "no person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, unless they're a member of the wrong political party", "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, unless it's a regulatory body, in which case none of that applies in their kangaroo courts"... Etc.
In practice, we still have laws regarding slander/libel, threats, intellectual property violations, inciting crimes, fraud, various speech acts crimes related to misrepresentation or corruption/bribery when something of value is at stake, computer hacking, judicial gag orders, and espionage. All of those impact speech in some way.
Meanwhile, Europe often has wall to wall speech restrictions, most distinctly seen in Britain.
Unless you can actually drive this level of idealism to become the norm -- which would be a massive achievement -- the world will move on without fully accepting it. If people, most of whom are less idealistic, perceive that the bill of rights is a suicide pact, they will just abolish the bill of rights, while pretending that they did not do so.
In my view, the thing to do ends up being:
1. Present a viable path forward for opposition and pragmatists that minimizes damage to the ideal (what BJ Campbell is trying to do.)
2. Maintain the ideal, and advance it as much as one *actually can do so without negative consequences*.
3. Resist particularly grave infringements on rights.
I would say yes, you are indeed too autistic and undiplomatic to be useful here, as well as unable to engage with the contrary position, which is made up of people who still have power. If we were in a position where your ideals were actually achievable there would be no need for the political struggle.
People on the contrary side will read what you write and if they perceive it is the usual reaction from the other side, they will say, "I guess we have to abolish the 1A and 2A and add European or Canadian style vague exception clauses into every enumerated right". And then actually do it, and then make you look like the crazy and unprincipled one for not going along with it.
The whole bill of rights is under 700 words. The Second Amendment is 27 words. Madison's version is even shorter. The 4th amendment is 54 words. That's not a lot to either provide "we mean it" OR to characterize what the limits or standards are.
The 4th amendment doesn't describe in detail what the standard of probable cause means; what "particular" means, doesn't provide a total boundary around what counts as a search or a seizure (does privacy violation without a physical intrusion count?), let alone what "reasonable" means.
A lot of 2A cases have hinged on what exactly "arms" or "bear" means. A lot of this is simply dishonest (obviously magazines and semi-auto carbines are both "arms" of some kind) or bullshit (obviously it's not a "collective" right that is really just a governmental power), but every matter is still going to need to be addressed.
At the very least:
1. What should happen when a person suspected of a crime is being arrested by law enforcement, or is imprisoned for a violent crime, and they possess guns?
2. What should happen if a gun dealer is knowingly distributing guns to people who are definitely intending to commit violent crimes with them, and have a track record of doing so?
Almost nobody will accept the answer to these questions being "nothing". And just like that you have some sense of limits to the 2A. So it is upon us to make those limits be something we can live with.
And this is why I engage with people on the Internet, and don't try to be part of the legislation process. As I say, I know my limits, and they are tight, in this role.
BJ, could you link the numbers in this statement to where you are getting them from?
Thanks!
> The only three laws that do anything significant are universal background checks (14.9% reduction), violent misdemeanor prohibitions (18.1% reduction), and adopting constitutional carry (9.0% reduction).
“It’s a state database and a smartphone app or website where you put a buyer’s information in, and it instantly returns a green flag or red flag on the prospective sale, without an owner registry.”
Runs smack into a trust issue. I don’t believe for one instant that it won’t result in a gun owner database. The feds are specifically prohibited from having one, but have nonetheless busied themselves constructing one out of NICS data and mandatory gun dealer records. I also think the protections against red flag law abuse are going to be unenforced in jurisdictions that are politically anti-gun anyway. I’m glad you at least voted against the gun storage requirements.
Essentially, I lack any appetite for throwing bones to the squawking Karens on this topic.
If they were to drop NFA, GCA, the '86 Crime Bill, the Hughes Amendment, and the '94 Import Ban, and I'll consider the UBC. Because at that point, I don't care anymore. At any rate, it's not like they don't already know. Though you're absolutely correct about the potential to construct a database from the queries, that would be possible to fuzz. Just continually bombard the API with every person of age, in the country, so there's too much noise to construct useful data out of the real queries.
"I don't want to compromise any more! I want my damned cake back!"
Would the anarcho-tyrants not have 1) API rate limiting 2) flagging to ATF as "engaged in the business" & 3) the features, not bugs, of "system outages" & "false positives" galore to continue leaving as many as possible being infringed effectively defenseless for as long as possible?
I put my skills to not have all of the hits showing up from the same IP against their ability to track it down. Also, write the law so that a system outage absolves the seller from any liability if they can't perform a check on a potential buyer.
And to be clear, my real ideal outcome would be the full restoration of the Second Amendment. But as a computer jock, I can't resist noodling about tech problems.
API rate limiting has methods other than IPs. I wouldn't put it past them to rate limit all queries from all sources if we get serious about workarounds.
Seems to me this would be pretty easy to defeat. Just have a few bots with randomized VPNs doing a random walk through whatever the widest database of names/addresses is available and checking for red flags. If everyone's in the Fed database, then practically no one is in the Fed database.
Yes. This is why it's so important that doing the check is freely available and that the person doing the check remain anonymous. Fill any potential database with so much meaningless data that it becomes useless.
This is my biggest pet peeve & has been for decades. AFAIK, it is very easy to implement the filling of a log/register of events on any computing device (with the capacity to either write to local or remote storage or have its non-E2EE packets captured in transit & stored for evil elsewhere). Green flag or red flag, every query logs/registers that person as "gun owner"/enemy of the anarcho-tyrannical state, whether they already have a gun, obtain a gun immediately, or succeed in obtaining a gun later.
"If you can’t spot an attack vector you are the attack surface" -@Baoneney
Not to mention the prior restraint/presumption of guilt & pretense that background check false positives for the innocent, and false negatives for the guilty, aren't a feature to anarcho-tyrants. From page 6 of Moros's amicus in Rhode v. Bonta: "In other words, for each individual prohibited person properly stopped from buying ammunition, about 412 law-abiding people were rejected in their attempt to exercise their Second Amendment rights." https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Rhode-amicus-1.2.26.pdf
Much worse than
"It is better that ten innocents suffer than that one guilty person escape." -Whitestone
My own perspective with regards to this kind of background check:
In the era of the Internet and attendant mass surveillance, completely hiding that you shoot guns at all is incredibly difficult and would require a ton of weird tradecraft that's *itself* likely to attract attention to you, especially if you want to practice shooting ever.
However, with no registry and generally no way to know for sure what and whether guns actually changed hands in person, you can rarely prove that someone has guns, still has guns, or that you got all of their guns.
Which is why I included "enemy of the anarcho-tyrannical state" (not solely "gun owner") - that is a lifelong label you get for ever wanting to have a gun. Why should we voluntarily affix that label to ourselves by operation of these BG check queries, instead of making the anarcho-tyrants mass surveill us at a far greater cost?
If you're not getting paid to do something but are coerced to do it anyway, you are a slave.
The only way I would want this to work is if the government were the opposite of anarcho-tyrannical, periodically distributing free arms via the civilian marksmanship program to the unorganized militia, then everyone who wants those arms can get BG checked for eligibility (especially that they only get one of each) in advance of shipment, then their ID is verified at point of delivery.
It is still almost equally "mass" with something like half of all people owning at least one gun. If everybody is an enemy then nobody is an enemy.
(I would also argue that your concept of an anarcho-tyrannical state is of only doubtful applicability in the form you write about it, but that is neither here nor there).
"Recent surveys from sources like Pew Research Center (2023 data) and Gallup (2024 data) consistently show that about 32% of US adults personally own at least one firearm. This figure has remained relatively stable over the past decade, with slight fluctuations (e.g., 31% in some 2025 estimates, up to 34% in others)."
With back to back pieces by David Yamani and BJ, I'm going to have to block off some time to read the the report and both articles and all the comments. 🫢 Not sure when that will be, but I need to put it on my to-do list.
Similar to what I wrote to David Yamane, I am reserving thoughtful comment until I have read the long document. I'm the meantime , just want to give you a big thumbs up for this line:
"When I suggested that all gun free zones should provide firearm storage it was like a flashbang went off in the hotel soda tray " if I had been drinking coffee as you had recommended at the time, I would have spit it out laughing 😉
thank you
I literally dropped that grenade in the room on my way out the door to get interviewed for the documentary, when I was going to miss the vote on safe storage. I said "if you put this in, I vote yes, if not I vote no, I have to go talk to the film maker." Came back to a complete shitshow. :D
If I could only believe that those on the Left currently controlling the Democrat Party would leave things alone after they get the concessions you’ve outlined. History going well back beyond the founding of America makes me think that once they gain power, that would never actually happen.
The documentary film maker asked me whether the concensus building approach could be scaled up to the national level and I responded "no" without hesitation.
Individuals often come to resolutions palatable to the two parties; large groups almost never do, especially when power is involved.
Egregores have different incentives than humans do.
I had to look that one up - non-physical entities, thought forms, that arise from collective thoughts and emotions of the group. That certainly describes mob action.
Yep. We talk about that a lot around here.
https://hwfo.substack.com/s/egregores?sort=top
Great modernized term, you got there - “autocult”.
Unfortunately, I think the emphasis has been too much on the type of guns and not on WHO has ANY gun. I would summarize our approach as being that rather than keeping SOME guns away from ALL people, let's keep ALL guns away from SOME people (specifically, those who have been convicted of a violent crime - especially with a firearm - or who are a severe threat to themselves or others).
You cannot. I live in StL MO. I laugh at these people in these discussions talking about their ideas. Try enforcing these types of things in black community in my town. They will laugh in your face, and even if caught will not be prosecuted, and if by chance they are prosecuted (as did happen on a murder 2 jury I was on), if you have black activists on the jury they will not convict (as happened as well). These rules only have an effect on the people who don't need them. They burden and mock the honest and are irrelevant to the criminals.
Someone should ask the StL City police department how many machine guns they have taken away from thugs and then look to see how many prosecutions have been undertaken. That is a ten year felony, by the way.
Those convicted of violent crimes or who are a severe threat to themselves or others are exactly the people who anarcho-tyrants want to keep guns in the hands of, for maximum bloodshed & "justification" to infringe further, while the peaceable get false-positived effectively defenseless at a heinous rate, eg. 412:1 in the page 6 cite in https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Rhode-amicus-1.2.26.pdf
POSIWID
There are only 3 guaranteed ways to keep those people gun-free: execute them, imprison them forever (in supermax so if they try to escape, they will not survive the attempt), or have 24/7 "Mk 1 eyeball" as they say, surveillance with immediate lethal force authorized in response to gun possession.
I think this presumes the existence of a form of active, self-conscious anarcho-tyranny that is rarely actually in evidence.
I've always wanted to be in a room like that. Were any of the gun controllers surprised at what laws are already on the books and some of the more arbitrary NFA classifications and such? I've been talking politics for a long time, and I don't think I've ever encountered people less informed on the subject they're allegedly passionate about than gun control people.
Richard Aborn founded the organization that became Brady and was instrumental in the passing of the original assault weapons ban. He was in the group, and he was a nice guy.
We skipped all that, basically. I made the case that guns won, and they had to live with that. And they accepted that case relatively early on. "Drive down the road and number the houses 1 2 1 2. The 2s have guns." David Yamane was also on the panel and able to drill home the "guns are normal and normal people own guns" point early. I think a lot of the gun controllers nowadays are staring at a situation where they've been so brutalized and are so beaten back that they're willing to work with whoever they can to get anything. Some of them are switching careers.
The frame was "craft a policy that red states could possibly live with" not necessarily craft a policy that would be used to roll back blue states. But now that it's out there, I imagine anyone can use the document to do anything with it, including rollbacks.
One of the guys in the panel was pretty instrumental in Michigan's recent gun control package, which I don't like, and he told me point blank he liked ours much better and wishes he could roll Michigan back to the Bridging the Divide package. I'd like to see that happen as an example of good faith.
I don't think there's much good faith to go around, but I do believe there was good faith in that room, and considering the very very heavy hitters of gun control that were in the room, that's impressive. The problem comes with what those heavy hitters do when they leave the room and are back among their peer group.
That's why I don't foresee any of this turning into law. But we'll see.
“The frame was "craft a policy that red states could possibly live with" not necessarily craft a policy that would be used to roll back blue states.”
Interesting that, on the one hand, you describe them as being beaten down, and on the other the remit of the meeting was “how to successfully go on offense in red states”.
On the flip side, it also lays out a path for us to (perhaps) successfully go on offense in blue states.
Now that the policy document is public, anyone can use it for any reason. Mike has an idea that he wants to try to keep the group together for advocacy reasons but personally I think he should dissolve it and see if he can't find out who's bankrolling 97 and get some of that money directly, and then do whatever he wants with it.
If someone in Virginia were to grab our document and offer it as a counterplan to whatever the VA legislature is cooking up right now, then I would love that, some other folks on the panel would hate it, and there would be nothing either of us could do about it one way or another.
I brought up VA as a place to peddle the thing and was shot down with zero discussion, so I dropped it. My goal was to get the document done, because I know that once it's in the public eye anyone can do anything they want with it.
I think the key in blue states going forward has to be lobbying for large, omnibus legislative packages.
For example, in NYC there are probably 5-10 local laws that adversely affect gun owners, but have no bearing on public safety; virtually no one outside the NYPD and the gun-owning community even know these laws exist. These laws could be repealed overnight and no one would really care (except gun owners).
You can craft a legislative package that repeals 10 outdated, unproven gun regulations and adds 1 or 2 feel-good provisions (like tax rebates for gun safes, etc.), and call it the "NYC Gun Safety Improvement Act."
Gun safety groups can take credit for it, and pat themselves on the back and everyone can go home happy.
Of course the real challenge is bringing blue state lawmakers to the negotiating table in the first place; right now, there is virtually no incentive for them to engage.
No incentive to engage. Thats exactly what we are seeing in Va.
In my Red State we are moving legislation to disallow almost everything in this plan.
Because you have offered this as a state plan; my plan is to keep organizing and driving the voters as hard as we can to pound the gun grabbers into the dust. I live in a blue area and their despair on this issue is exquisite.
I (the project director and a gun control researcher) spent a lot of time learning about the details of the laws and was definitely surprised to see how many law provisions interfere with gun owner rights but without actually protecting public health. This led to an epiphany on things like regulating suppressors, short barreled rifles, and short barreled shotguns under the NFS, assault weapon bans, prohibition of gun possession by non violent felons, restrictions on gun transfers between family members, issuing red flag orders without addressing underlying mental health concerns, etc. that’s what led to my hypothesis that we could design a laser focused package that follows the evidence base while eliminating much of the excess regulation that doesn’t actually protect public safety. Honestly it was my many early conversations and discussions with BJ that helps me reach that point.
Thanks for stopping by, Mike. I'm working on the podcast but Iain is indisposed, so I don't know when it'll happen.
Thank you for responding, I'm in the gun manufacturing business, and from our perspective it sure feels like banning all guns and punishing people who want to own them is the real goal of a gun control groups for the reasons you laid out. My home state of Washington has an AWB that's so vague that nobody knows how to comply, and they're piling on with permit to purchase, ending online ammo sales, 3D printer bans, and whatever else Bloomberg can think of. Meanwhile, Seattle has a catch and release policy for violent criminals with guns even when they've got auto switches installed, so it really feels like it's more about punishing gun owners rather than preventing crime.
You are correct. These rules will not be enforced where they could make difference and not needed elsewhere. In my city cops take switched Glocks are full auto converted AR all the time and let us see if we can find a case brought. NONE. They will not charge and prosecute due to disparate racial impact.
Interesting theoretical exercise but of course will have zero effect in any blue state as you noted. Gun grabbers can be nice people - who knew? I'm sure that they probably love their families and rarely kick their dogs. But when they are trying to prevent me from exercising a natural right as well as one enshrined in the Constitution, I give zero f*cks about whether they are nice. Here in the state of Washington the Democrats have a zero facts policy on firearms. They institute controls based on emotions. You can't argue with them, nor can you debate them because they don't operate in that space. Guns are evil, ergo those who want guns are at least evil adjacent, therefore there is no compromise needed. Mix in a state supreme court who consistently squints at the laws and figures out some rational for upholding them, then welcome to the progressive utopia where the Democrats are sure that, this time at least, they'll get it right.
That's the rub.
East Washington needs to defect to Idaho.
I told my wife we were moving to Idaho. She told me we weren't. :-)
There's nothing in their background checks section that says anything about AWB's and mag bans.
I'm checking on this now. I thought that language was in the document last summer in Denver, but you're right I can't find it now. I may need to remove that statement from my article. If so, good catch.
I checked and this doesn't appear to have been in it at any phase, just the SBR and suppressor caveats. Changed the article to correct that.
And that's a shame. Ah well. Lots of moving parts in this thing.
I appreciate the work you and Rob put in. We need to change minds in order to get better laws.
While I can appreciate that there are lots of moving parts, you have to know how terrible the optics on this are. Even with the possiblity of removing magazine and “assault weapon” bans, there is a real possibility that they're going to lose all of that anyway, same with SBR’s and suppressors. Best case scenario, they're trying to get something in exchange for something that they couldn't hold onto as a way to minimize their loss.
Now that I know that there were gun-friendly proposals that were supposed to make it into the end product but didn't, well, it just looks like they pulled a bait and switch on you.
Besides, if we're really embracing a strategy of not controlling weapons but of controlling people who shouldn't have them, why stop at those NFA items? Why not machine guns? Hell, why not explosives? I want my M203! I want my Carl Gustav! I want my RPG! (sung to the tune of “Money for Nothing”) As the policy proposal stands now, not only do I want all my damn cake, but when I look at the few crumbs they're offering vs what they were supposed to offer, vs what we deserve, their cake is a lie!
I'm glad for you that you've made new friends, or at least connections, and that you were able to have a civil conversation with civilian disarmament proponents. That's good. I suppose it's even a little bit of progress. But for the rest of us this whole ordeal is probably going to go on the ever increasing stack of evidence that negotiating with gun grabbers is as futile as negotiating with terrorists and for the same reasons: they'll never give you what you want, they won't honor the deal, and you'll only embolden them.
My general take on the policy framework is it'd be a good thing to try and put into Virginia and Michigan to prevent them from (or correct them from prior) implementing some truly awful stuff. I'm certainly not going to support it in Georgia where I live.
I love your closing sentence and might steal it with attribution sometime soon.
Steal away! I'll look forward to reading that article.
Sir, you seem a reasonable man.
Which I only realized halfway down, I was intending to read the enemy’s mail.
Sir you appeal to political methods in a political Silo. This reads frankly like reasonable people of the socioeconomic class you laid out developing reasonable policies in a Silo. As you yourself say there’s probably not much contact between the groups that are considered problematic either black or redneck
(I am the latter) so we have well meaning people attempting to forge a compromise to affect parties of which they have little real knowledge of and don’t live among. Speaking as a redneck - Sir there will be no compliance and any attempt at enforcement will either end either in farce (indeed never start, see SAFE Act) and be massively and with determination of men who know tools and machines well worked around in a variety of ingenious methods, or tragedy and a potential explosion that is completely primed and ready, indeed looming for years. I am veteran, just retired military and red neck. It is correct in the article that (respectfully) redneck creds are lacking.
(Red neck suicide- The cause of the suicides of course is hopelessness although as our prospects improve that should ease. ).
Nor does this apparently take into account the hardcore 2d Amendment group, military and veterans and a large number of people who were first time gun buyers in November 2008, within 3 weeks there was a near dearth of firearms in NY, NJ, PA and Bushmaster was back ordered a year.
The same thing happened when __ was re-elected in 2012, in fact every weapon of military utility going back to WW1 was snatched up.
In short politics set off an internal arms race. This crossed all groups, certainly the middle and middle upper classes.
A sufficient number are ready and skilled enough to take matters to the main point of an arms race.
I won’t speak outside my known socioeconomic groups (Veteran, Redneck) but I daresay this sort of thing will be willfully and reflexively ignored by the black community.
I don’t think this is a good idea to bring up now Sir.
There’s a very tense internal political situation in the country and anything that provokes the people should be avoided.
You had mentioned a desire to save an admittedly small number of lives with background checks, and that this is a county problem of culture, Indeed!!
Culture indeed.
Think of Everytown as Iraq for the working class; and leave core rights issues alone. What you are proposing were it to be presented to the Red counties would be as popular as Chabad Judiasm being introduced to Iraq.
Not unlike the Iraqis we are basically the descendants of military bases with a long history of being difficult to rule.
Iraq was founded by Muslim conquerors as bases at Basra , Mosul and later near Baghdad… founded essentially by religious raiders , holy pirates really, establishing a new nation
by raids and conquests …
Or in modern terms America itself, founded by pirates and religious folk.
Your likely lives saved sir would be dwarfed by the lives lost in a explosion, nothing is now more dangerous than gun control. Nothing was defended so fiercely, nothing could destroy legitimacy faster.
Cordially
TLW
Good sir,
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said. Since you're new around here, allow me to make my position clear:
If I was given two choices, (1) California For All, or (2) every ten year old child is given an unmodified full auto army surplus M14 and two cans of ammo, I choose 2. My goal, if I have one, is to make sure as many people of all soical and economic classes own an AR-15 as possible as quickly as possible because I think the change coming in the 21st century will demand it. We all probably also need weaponized drones and drone defenses. I think the next civil war will come in esoteric ways not yet fully understood by the redneck militia class, although I have a wonderful time talking with them about it annually while making apple butter here in GA.
I entered into this exercise mostly as an experiment, and to support my friend Mike. The experiment was to see whether those people could even be talked to, because I didn't know. Turns out yes, they can, or at least the ones Mike picked. And he picked some doozies. Aborn and Lowy are Mount Rushmore of Gun Control candidates.
I don't expect much to happen with this, but in as much as you and I share a cause, my efforts with this thing advance your and my cause more than you realize, in this way. The nex time Aborn or Lowy are in the secret smoky back room gun control cabal, and the next thing hits the table, they are going to think back to this Tufts thing and push the brakes. Maybe not all the way, but some, and that's worth something.
I think 2 is covered for all age groups.
Your political analysis is correct. I think sadly for many years. See for another example the recent move by Utah to become an energy hub for petroleum: Regionalism.<
I think it quite likely the PADD map (Petroleum Defense districts) may come to resemble something like a political map, at least political economy.
Thank you for your reply.
You speak of things which my East Of The Mississippi brain is unware, and am interested to know more. If you have time, post some links.
The PADD? Yes.
Energy is life itself, including food.
Money $ is 92% electricity digital fiat.
Energy is everything and the rest is secondary, tertiary or pure distraction.
PADD map
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/marketing/monthly/pdf/paddmap.pdf
PADD by the way is WW2 and Cold War, D=Defense
Utah moves to become petroleum hub.
https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2026-02-23/utah-targets-800-000-more-gallons-a-day-under-new-gas-refinery-agreement
One has to look in some depth at the politics of petroleum in the region, the petroleum island (self imposed exile really) and now utterly unreliable West Coast PADD 5 California petroleum infrastructure to understand Utah is doing what is necessary to survive. To survive with a margin of safety means thrive in times of plenty and have margins for hard times.
Hard times make Hard Men.
Hard men gotta eat too.
To give credit where it's due, this effort was at least *less* siloed than many conferences of this sort are. They did *have* some pro-gun people there, even if it didn't adequately present the breadth of that side of things.
Sadly, whenever gun control folk talk about something with "bipartisan support," they usually refer to a side that is only scantly represented and has little to no influence.
I am glad BJ was there to represent the pro-gun side with his mastery of math nerdity.
This is easily the most thought provoking article on gun policy that I've read in a long time! I haven't gone through the policy proposal that y'all generated yet, but from your summary I already have some ideas to improve the background check portion.
First, is that whatever kind of go/no-go answer that this system generates needs to be in a format that can be saved both locally digitally and offline, i.e. a paper copy. Printable PDFs would work for this. This gives the seller a valuable tool to prove that he did indeed verify that the person who he sold the gun to was not prohibited, and thereby absolve himself of any liability, but does so in a way that doesn't create a database. Obviously there should be information on this certificate (or whatever you want to call it) that says when the check was run and on who. Maybe that's printed plainly on it or maybe in some kind of encryption hash, that's up for debate.
Another thing is that the software created to do this on the back end needs to be free and open-source, and auditable all the way down to a trusting trust attack. Again, we're looking for assurances that it isn't being used to create a backdoor registry.
Finally, and most importantly, the person requesting the check absolutely must be anonymous and not pay anything. This allows us to use the system for its intended purpose of conducting background checks, but to poison the data for purposes of tracking gun sales. If I can run a check on myself at random intervals, even if you capture all of that information, you have no way of knowing which checks actually represent a sale and which ones are random noise. If we track who is requesting the check then it makes it easier to seperate out potential sales. This makes the auditability of the system even more important. Also, if we charge for the check to be run then it creates a barrier for generating that noise. Charge enough money and the only time it gets run is probably for a sale.
These are just my initial thoughts. I look forward to reading the policy itself and see if any of these are adressed in it.
Also, well done on this whole project. If nothing else, it will give us a metric to point to and say that anyone demanding more is clearly not acting in good faith.
So, having read down to the part where they talk about the background check I already see two things that I don't like enough to make it a hard no from me.
The first is that it's an opt-in system. This means that only people who want to buy a gun are in the system. That automatically creates a registry, not of guns but of gun owners. Frankly that's just as bad. Yes, I know that there are plenty of other ways to get that information, but it will not be with the ease and quality that this kind of a registry would provide. For this to work everyone has to be in the system so that gun owners, non-gun owners, and even anti-gun advocates are treated alike. The only thing it should track is who is able to own a gun, or better yet, only who can’t. You could have a system where known disqualified people are the only thing that it stores and not being disqualified means that you're automatically qualified. That would probably be the best way to do it as this is in line with how the constitution works.
The second one is the reporting requirement. As this is currently written it requires that people selling guns report anyone who tries to buy a gun but gets denied. Absolutely not! First, this puts gun sellers in a potentially dangerous situation and secondly I'm not doing the government’s job for them especially not for free. The general public should enjoy a similar arrangement to the non-commandeering doctrine between the states and federal government. Sure, there are extreme cases such as the draft (although they still have to pay you), but that is an extreme case. Following on the “guns are normal and normal people own guns, “ buying and selling guns is just normal life and not an extreme case.
I'm willing to grant that, as written, it's not as bad as some of what we've seen, but other than walking back certain states that already have worse laws, this is of no use to us as the gun community.
Okay, I have other thoughts on the Universal Background Checks part. Supposing that there really could be something created that truly did not create a registry of either guns or gun owners it might provide an amicable solution to the gun question posed by modern manufacturing. Basically, as the cost of tooling comes down and the quality of consumer tooling goes up the ability of Joe (slightly above) Average to produce high quality, modern firearms has become inevitable. Its not just 3D printers, but desktop milling machines, lathes, and even welders that are cheaper, more available, and much easier to use than they have been in the past. All of these can and are used by people to make their own guns and gun parts.
If we have a background check system that truly respects gun owner rights and privacy, then I can simply run a background check on myself, verify that I am still legal to own a gun and print or cut away. I can print that check out for my records, store it away with whatever identifying information I deem useful for that gun and that will be that.
This would make it prosecutable for someone prohibited from buying a gun to make one but not affect anyone else very much. True, it's the kind of charge that usually only kicks in after a crime has been committed and an investigation ensues, but then we have a lot of those on the books already so that alone shouldn't preclude it from being implemented.
If we're truly focusing on the person rather than the gun, this makes a lot of sense. Besides, the alternative is what some states are proposing which is to lock down every possible tool with state sponsored spyware. The maker and worker community rightly sees this as anathema to the open source ideology and an attempt to lock down manufacturing that will only empower the already too powerful corporations.
Of course, going back to the beginning of this comment, this is all predicated on the background check system being acceptable and what was proposed still has a long way to go before its even close. It was an interesting thought experiment all the same.
> My personal take was the GVP community should trade the gun rights community back our assault weapons, mags, and silencers, whose bans don’t work, in return for a gun owner friendly version of the universal background check (UBC)[.]
Only if it comes with a UBC prior to anyone being allowed to publish things, and I get to be the person deciding who gets the licenses.
---
OK, not really; That's actually me engaging in hyperbole, because I don't support licensing or background checks for 1A any more than I do 2A.
I dunno. Quite possibly I'm simply too autistic to be useful here, having an ingrained undiplomatic literalism which looks at "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and "Universal Background Checks" and finds those two concepts inherently incompatible. How can it possibly be a "right" which "shall not be infringed" if I have to check in with the government before I can exercise it? *Do* words have meaning, or *not*?
Still really wish Madison had used the language from 1A in 2A. "Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms." That would have been even *less* ambiguous.
The Tufts UBC proposal is a state level database similar to NICS and a phone app, so if I sell you something in a Wal Mart I can take a cel phone photo of your drivers license and the app gives me a green light or a red light on the sale. No registry.
It's more of an infringement that many states have now, but the idea was to package that up with other horse trades to make it palatable to gun owners.
I mean, I understand the goal, and I understand my own limitations as a diplomat. But I am the way I am. Though I guess at this point, people do the same thing to basically every other amendment than the third, and that's probably just because it hasn't come up yet.
"Congress shall make a couple of laws abridging the freedom of speech", "the right of the people to keep and bear arms might be infringed at least a little", "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, unless it's really convenient to do so", "no person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, unless they're a member of the wrong political party", "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, unless it's a regulatory body, in which case none of that applies in their kangaroo courts"... Etc.
In practice, we still have laws regarding slander/libel, threats, intellectual property violations, inciting crimes, fraud, various speech acts crimes related to misrepresentation or corruption/bribery when something of value is at stake, computer hacking, judicial gag orders, and espionage. All of those impact speech in some way.
Meanwhile, Europe often has wall to wall speech restrictions, most distinctly seen in Britain.
Unless you can actually drive this level of idealism to become the norm -- which would be a massive achievement -- the world will move on without fully accepting it. If people, most of whom are less idealistic, perceive that the bill of rights is a suicide pact, they will just abolish the bill of rights, while pretending that they did not do so.
In my view, the thing to do ends up being:
1. Present a viable path forward for opposition and pragmatists that minimizes damage to the ideal (what BJ Campbell is trying to do.)
2. Maintain the ideal, and advance it as much as one *actually can do so without negative consequences*.
3. Resist particularly grave infringements on rights.
See previous response
I would say yes, you are indeed too autistic and undiplomatic to be useful here, as well as unable to engage with the contrary position, which is made up of people who still have power. If we were in a position where your ideals were actually achievable there would be no need for the political struggle.
People on the contrary side will read what you write and if they perceive it is the usual reaction from the other side, they will say, "I guess we have to abolish the 1A and 2A and add European or Canadian style vague exception clauses into every enumerated right". And then actually do it, and then make you look like the crazy and unprincipled one for not going along with it.
The whole bill of rights is under 700 words. The Second Amendment is 27 words. Madison's version is even shorter. The 4th amendment is 54 words. That's not a lot to either provide "we mean it" OR to characterize what the limits or standards are.
The 4th amendment doesn't describe in detail what the standard of probable cause means; what "particular" means, doesn't provide a total boundary around what counts as a search or a seizure (does privacy violation without a physical intrusion count?), let alone what "reasonable" means.
A lot of 2A cases have hinged on what exactly "arms" or "bear" means. A lot of this is simply dishonest (obviously magazines and semi-auto carbines are both "arms" of some kind) or bullshit (obviously it's not a "collective" right that is really just a governmental power), but every matter is still going to need to be addressed.
At the very least:
1. What should happen when a person suspected of a crime is being arrested by law enforcement, or is imprisoned for a violent crime, and they possess guns?
2. What should happen if a gun dealer is knowingly distributing guns to people who are definitely intending to commit violent crimes with them, and have a track record of doing so?
Almost nobody will accept the answer to these questions being "nothing". And just like that you have some sense of limits to the 2A. So it is upon us to make those limits be something we can live with.
And this is why I engage with people on the Internet, and don't try to be part of the legislation process. As I say, I know my limits, and they are tight, in this role.
BJ, could you link the numbers in this statement to where you are getting them from?
Thanks!
> The only three laws that do anything significant are universal background checks (14.9% reduction), violent misdemeanor prohibitions (18.1% reduction), and adopting constitutional carry (9.0% reduction).
Follow the link back in the article to the "Needs a DSS System" article for OSD. They're in there.
Not terrible, I suppose, once you concede that the state is going to be micromanaging a fundamental human right to self-defense. This, however:
“It’s a state database and a smartphone app or website where you put a buyer’s information in, and it instantly returns a green flag or red flag on the prospective sale, without an owner registry.”
Runs smack into a trust issue. I don’t believe for one instant that it won’t result in a gun owner database. The feds are specifically prohibited from having one, but have nonetheless busied themselves constructing one out of NICS data and mandatory gun dealer records. I also think the protections against red flag law abuse are going to be unenforced in jurisdictions that are politically anti-gun anyway. I’m glad you at least voted against the gun storage requirements.
Essentially, I lack any appetite for throwing bones to the squawking Karens on this topic.
Indeed.
If they were to drop NFA, GCA, the '86 Crime Bill, the Hughes Amendment, and the '94 Import Ban, and I'll consider the UBC. Because at that point, I don't care anymore. At any rate, it's not like they don't already know. Though you're absolutely correct about the potential to construct a database from the queries, that would be possible to fuzz. Just continually bombard the API with every person of age, in the country, so there's too much noise to construct useful data out of the real queries.
"I don't want to compromise any more! I want my damned cake back!"
<<I want my damned cake back>>
I think I put that comic in the 5th(?) article I ever wrote on this topic, around 2018.
Would the anarcho-tyrants not have 1) API rate limiting 2) flagging to ATF as "engaged in the business" & 3) the features, not bugs, of "system outages" & "false positives" galore to continue leaving as many as possible being infringed effectively defenseless for as long as possible?
I put my skills to not have all of the hits showing up from the same IP against their ability to track it down. Also, write the law so that a system outage absolves the seller from any liability if they can't perform a check on a potential buyer.
And to be clear, my real ideal outcome would be the full restoration of the Second Amendment. But as a computer jock, I can't resist noodling about tech problems.
API rate limiting has methods other than IPs. I wouldn't put it past them to rate limit all queries from all sources if we get serious about workarounds.
Seems to me this would be pretty easy to defeat. Just have a few bots with randomized VPNs doing a random walk through whatever the widest database of names/addresses is available and checking for red flags. If everyone's in the Fed database, then practically no one is in the Fed database.
Yes. This is why it's so important that doing the check is freely available and that the person doing the check remain anonymous. Fill any potential database with so much meaningless data that it becomes useless.
Anarcho-tyrants would do, as they say, "whatever it takes" to stop that.
This is my biggest pet peeve & has been for decades. AFAIK, it is very easy to implement the filling of a log/register of events on any computing device (with the capacity to either write to local or remote storage or have its non-E2EE packets captured in transit & stored for evil elsewhere). Green flag or red flag, every query logs/registers that person as "gun owner"/enemy of the anarcho-tyrannical state, whether they already have a gun, obtain a gun immediately, or succeed in obtaining a gun later.
"If you can’t spot an attack vector you are the attack surface" -@Baoneney
Not to mention the prior restraint/presumption of guilt & pretense that background check false positives for the innocent, and false negatives for the guilty, aren't a feature to anarcho-tyrants. From page 6 of Moros's amicus in Rhode v. Bonta: "In other words, for each individual prohibited person properly stopped from buying ammunition, about 412 law-abiding people were rejected in their attempt to exercise their Second Amendment rights." https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Rhode-amicus-1.2.26.pdf
Much worse than
"It is better that ten innocents suffer than that one guilty person escape." -Whitestone
I was fortunate enough to meet Moros at SHOT this year. He's sharp, and an asset to all of us.
My own perspective with regards to this kind of background check:
In the era of the Internet and attendant mass surveillance, completely hiding that you shoot guns at all is incredibly difficult and would require a ton of weird tradecraft that's *itself* likely to attract attention to you, especially if you want to practice shooting ever.
However, with no registry and generally no way to know for sure what and whether guns actually changed hands in person, you can rarely prove that someone has guns, still has guns, or that you got all of their guns.
Which is why I included "enemy of the anarcho-tyrannical state" (not solely "gun owner") - that is a lifelong label you get for ever wanting to have a gun. Why should we voluntarily affix that label to ourselves by operation of these BG check queries, instead of making the anarcho-tyrants mass surveill us at a far greater cost?
If you're not getting paid to do something but are coerced to do it anyway, you are a slave.
The only way I would want this to work is if the government were the opposite of anarcho-tyrannical, periodically distributing free arms via the civilian marksmanship program to the unorganized militia, then everyone who wants those arms can get BG checked for eligibility (especially that they only get one of each) in advance of shipment, then their ID is verified at point of delivery.
It is still almost equally "mass" with something like half of all people owning at least one gun. If everybody is an enemy then nobody is an enemy.
(I would also argue that your concept of an anarcho-tyrannical state is of only doubtful applicability in the form you write about it, but that is neither here nor there).
Source?
"Recent surveys from sources like Pew Research Center (2023 data) and Gallup (2024 data) consistently show that about 32% of US adults personally own at least one firearm. This figure has remained relatively stable over the past decade, with slight fluctuations (e.g., 31% in some 2025 estimates, up to 34% in others)."
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_115f2320-8d3e-415a-953c-7aad7eda0041
We are ~2:1 outnumbered according to that data. When the "enemy" is few, the many too often tolerates "collateral damage" against themselves.
With back to back pieces by David Yamani and BJ, I'm going to have to block off some time to read the the report and both articles and all the comments. 🫢 Not sure when that will be, but I need to put it on my to-do list.
My main criticism of this is that the policy recommendations document does not explicitly say "no" to anything very strongly.