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Missoula, Montana Highlights the
Inanity of "Universal Background Checks"

By Robert Farago. October 31st, 2016

"Universal background checks" are the Holy Grail of the civilian disarmament movement. No surprise there. Under the system, all private firearm sales and transfers must go through an FBI background check from a federally licensed firearm (FFL) dealer. The government then has a paper record of every firearm sale between private individuals and those initiated by FFL dealers, including the firearm type and the buyer's and seller's name, address and ethnic identity.

Which is why UBC opponents call UBC's "universal gun registration" -- enabling as they do the possibility of government gun confiscation/prohibition. Even if you reject that slippery slope argument, there's no question that UBC's add extra time and expense to private firearms sales.

For the gun control crowd that's a feature not a bug. For anyone who values their right to keep and bear arms, it's government infringement.

On October 27, the Missoula, Montana City Council enacted an ordinance mandating "universal background checks." As abcfoxmontana.com reports, the people at the sharp end are none too happy with the new law.

Here's how it works:

If a gun owner wants to sell a gun, he must bring that gun to a federally licensed firearm dealer. The dealer then essentially takes ownership of the gun while he does a background check on the buyer. If that buyer fails the background check, the dealer now has to do a background check on the gun owner in order to return the gun to him. If the owner fails the background check, now the dealer is left with a gun he doesn't want and he's out all the time he invested in getting the background checks.

That's why many gun shops are saying they are choosing not to participate.

"We run into a major logistical nightmare. And it's not good business sense. We're going to tie up more time and energy into the entire situation then we could deem even charging a fee to do that for the public. So just from a business standpoint, it does not make good sense for us," says Bob Burton, manager of Grizzly Gold & Silver.

According to the fine-print of the ordinance, guns shops are allowed to choose to opt in or out.

So what if all of Missoula's federally-licensed gun stores and FFLs in the surrounding areas opt out? ......

Anti-gun law makers seem to be obsessed with background checks as one of their main missions, despite the fact that there is very little evidence that they have any appreciable effect on the criminal use of firearms. As usual, the good guys who seek to ignore such mandates finish up themselves as potential criminals. It is obvious to most that a detailed database of lawful transactions is one step closer to fascilitating gun confiscation - itself the anti's true Holy Grail.

"You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side."

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