If you haven’t read about it yet, Rep. Paymar in Minnesota has introduced HF953 “Transfer of pistols or semiautomatic military-style assault weapons provisions modified”
The bill in a nutshell moves to:
1. Require registration of all pistols and “semiautomatic military-style assault weapons”. As usual “ military-style assault weapons” are losely defined and will slowly creep to include all firearms.
2. Tax purchasers of firearms on an annual basis to run background checks.
3. Require that all included firearms are only transferred through Federally licenced dealers. Imposing another fee only upon lawful transferees.
From our friends over at GOCRA
Protect Minnesota and Citizens for a Safer Minnesota’s “Gun Show Background Check (and hidden Gun Registration) bill,” HF 953 (Paymar-DFL) is pure harassment of legitimate gun owners and their non-commercial disposition of their property because, as a 2008 empirical study by Uiversity of Maryland criminologists demonstrates , it will have NO EFFECT on homicides or suicides and provide NO REDUCTION in firearm-related deaths (or violent crime, for that matter). All it will do is impose unnecessary deprivation of liberty, hassle, delay, and cost on Minnesota’s 1.5 million legitimate gun owners.
1. A January 2009 Star-Tribune article says that the Twin Cities’ homicide problem is largely one of uncontrolled gang/drug activity. Anyone who can sell or purchase illegal drugs can acquire a gun in that illegal transaction. An FBI report in February 2009 identifies “weapons trafficking” as a major GANG activity. Don’t be fooled, these are black market transactions; not those of legitimate gun owners.
2. The legitimate market (consisting of licensed dealers and private citizens) is not the same thing as the “black market” (consisting of thieves, “fences,” and “accomplices”). There are two distinct markets with different actors! In a Business Week column, Professor Gary Becker the Nobel Prize winner in Economics stated:
[t]here are two almost discrete markets for weapons. The legitimate market caters to people who want guns for hunting and for protection against holdups and burglaries. The [black] market caters to criminals who want weapons to help them steal, intimidate rape, participate in gang warfare, and steal drugs.
Becker goes on to state that controls on the legitimate sellers CANNOT have effect on an underground market that ignores those controls. Can not have any effect!!!3. According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms less than 1 in 50 guns acquired by criminals come from gun shows or private resales. And virtually all of that tiny number comes from “strawman purchases” made by accomplices who CAN pass any background check (as the Va. Tech and NIU killers both DID).
4. Minnesota statutes already contain FOUR (4) provisions to cut off “black market” transfers. They are: (1) §609.52 – Theft by the criminal himself; (2) §609.53 – Theft-once-removed by acquisition from a “fence”; (3) §609.66, subd. 1c – Receipt from an accomplice or strawman; and (4) §624.7141 – Transfer to an ineligible person.
5. The bill targets the wrong people and won’t reduce crime. It is simply a harassment bill to vex millions of law-abiding Minnesota gun owners. Perhaps that is why the Minnesota gun control act has never included these private sales and why the federal “Brady” Bill doesn’t either!