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Feds allow for drive-up gun sales to ease dealers', buyers' coronavirus worries
The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, in new guidance to federally licensed firearm retailers, said Friday that dealers can provide drive-up or walk-up service to reduce health risks posed by the coronavirus.
[...] Licensees "may carry out the requested activities through a drive-up or walk-up window or doorway where the customer is on the licensee's property, on the exterior of the brick-and-mortar structure at the address listed on the license," the ATF said in a Friday bulletin.
Transactions may not be carried from "a nearby space" that is not part of the dealers' property unless they are participating in qualified gun shows.
Larry Keane, general counsel for the firearms industry trade group National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Friday that the organization raised the issue with the ATF more than two weeks ago as dealers sought to navigate various government orders limiting business activity.
[...] Except in the states of Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York and Washington, gun dealers have been open for business during the pandemic.
Keane said the new ATF guidance in no way alters the requirements for background checks.
Show of hands: who could ever have expected THIS?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 14 2020, @03:39AM (15 children)
That's not worse, that's better. More gun owners = less hysterical idiots trying to make sure only bad guys and the government (but I repeat myself) have guns.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @04:08AM
1. Amass a hidden arsenal of guns and ammo.
2. Campaign for bans and restrictions to screw everyone else over.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:08AM (2 children)
America, land of the cowards afraid of their own government. In a real democracy, like France, it's the government that is afraid of the people and people are not afraid to protest and topple a government, no arsenals or guns required.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:38AM
You're assuming cooperation of said government with your nonviolent revolutions. But then you're talking about a nation whose government goes looking for someone to surrender to if nobody asks it for a week, so that's probably fine for France.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:45PM
How is that working out right now with Macron ordering indefinite imprisonment for every Frenchman?
Apparently migrants have free hand though, the government is considering letting them open their stores so they stop rioting. If the autochthonous French had the balls, they could possibly have their lives back too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:43AM (8 children)
If everybody has a gun, even the bad guys act good. Suppose it is your goal to wreak mayhem, so you arm yourself, and walk out into town. You find yourself in the midst of a hundred good people, almost all of whom are armed. I suspect that you might skulk off, looking for easier targets, rather than be shot down like a dog after you've only fired two or three shots.
THAT is why all these mass shootings take place in "gun free zones".
https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/lawmaker-wants-to-make-gun-free-zones-liable-if-someone-hurt [michigancapitolconfidential.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:09AM (7 children)
You've got that exactly 100% backwards. Case in point: Syria, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, it's an endlessly long list.
Another way of putting it is that if you need to be armed just to step outside your front door, you're in a failed state.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:18AM (6 children)
ALL of those countries have lower average gun ownership than the US, or do you not understand that?
What are in effect Gangs under Warlords terrorize the general populous into submission because only THEY have guns.
And there are plenty of countries with similar gun ownership that DONT have such problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country [wikipedia.org]
The problem in the US appears to be psychological, not physical.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:30AM
Yeah, but it's dangerous saying that here because then you get modded -1 by US gun nuts.
In any case some people are more dangerous with a stick and pool chlorine than with a gun...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:40AM (4 children)
There isn't an actual problem. Guns per capita have gone way up over the past ten or fifteen years and gun violence has gone way down.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:49AM (3 children)
It's also a bit of a misleading figure, for the typical failed state most weapons are military, an awful lot of what's out there isn't part of any register or database, and a lot of the population has extensive training/experience in using them. A guy with ten years in the mujahadeen, an AK-47, and a Makarov will beat a random civilian no matter how many bolt-action rifles the civilian has locked in a cupboard and how good he is hitting static targets.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:23PM (2 children)
A) What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?
B) Bolt-action? What is this, the 1912?
C) Static targets? Maybe a good chunk of the city boys.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:36PM (1 child)
I was replying to an earlier message. In terms of firearms, I have a number of gun-owning friends in the US and all tend towards accuracy over spray-and-pray in their gun ownership, e.g. a Sako TRG which can shoot out the tires on a trespasser's quad bike from halfway across his farm (in theory, obviously, he'd never do that in practice), OK the Barrett is semi-auto but not exactly practical for walking around the streets, point is that they're (almost) all bolt-action and they get used with static targets. Definitely not moving quad bikes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 15 2020, @01:01PM
That's all fine and good if you're hunting. Most anything you're going to be shooting at isn't going to give you much of a chance at a second shot because it's fucking off with great enthusiasm if you miss with the first. Hunting is not why we have the second amendment though, so I'll stick with weapons that don't have a rate of fire you can count on your fingers. I mean, shit, even a revolver is more useful than a bolt action or lever action. That nonsense is 1800s tech.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)
Do you really believe your guns would give you even the slightest chance against the government's professional military equipment?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 15 2020, @01:22PM
I don't believe they would, I know without a doubt they would. You just don't want to believe they could so that your argument seems less bloody stupid.
Look, for starters you're going to have one hell of a time convincing guys who volunteered to defend their fellow citizens' liberties to turn their guns on those fellow citizens for any reason, much less one the service members sympathize or outright agree with.
You're also stuck with the government being unable to use the vast majority of its good weapons even if it can find people to man them. It's all fine and good to blow up someone else's supply lines and infrastructure but our supply lines and infrastructure are also theirs.
Similarly, the government has no significant income outside taxes. If they want to pay people to attack us, they rely upon us to foot the bill.
Further, how did Viet Nam work out for the most powerful military in the world at the time? How about Afgnanistan or Iraq? We mopped up those insurgencies right quick, didn't we? Now consider we have a whopping fuckton more weapons and bodies than any of them ever did. American hunters alone (Just the ones who buy hunting licenses every year.) number over ten million and there are more than ten times as many who own firearms but don't hunt.
Don't say dumb things just because you want them to be true, man. I prefer having to work for the win; it strengthens my position every time I do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.