“[A] program … by [Tufts University professor Dr. Michael Siegel] was … basically designed to come up with a way for red states to embrace some gun control measures that Dr. Siegel believes are effective in preventing both violent crime, suicides with firearms, accidents involving firearms, while at the same time offering some bennies, right?” Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms notes in his introduction to an April 6 YouTube interview asking, “Can This Group Actually Bridge the Divide on Guns?”
“So, for example, establishing a period, let’s say five years, where individuals convicted of a violent misdemeanor could not possess a firearm,” he elaborates. “In exchange, getting rid of laws that ban non-violent felons from being able to [get] firearms.”
Enacting the Trump administration’s effort to restore rights (if they ever disclose what it takes to qualify) into law, instead of via executive action vulnerable to retraction by succeeding administrations, would be incremental progress. But the blanket distinction between violent and nonviolent misdemeanors obscures another injustice— not only has it been shown that rights can be denied over “horror story” examples, where outbursts resulting in a torn pocket or thrown keys can result in a lifetime ban. Add to that someone pleading to a misdemeanor charge because they don’t have the wherewithal to fight a threatened felony charge if they don’t.
Better still would be having law reflect reality: Anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian, and releasing such people back into society before they can be invites more, not less, criminal violence. That, and if telling criminals they weren’t allowed to have guns worked (which, of course, it doesn’t), society wouldn’t be having this discussion, including the one about “bad apple gun dealers.”
“I’ve been doing research in firearm space for about 13 years or so… and I’ve noticed that there are a lot of laws that although apparently intended to reduce firearm injury aren’t actually effective in doing that, but what they do is to inconvenience firearm owners or even worse to actually take away rights,” Siegel began. “As I started to learn more about firearms, I started to realize that we need to have the gun owning community at the table because we in public health for the most part don’t know anything about firearms.”
“The gun owning community” has been making that point for longer than 13 years, citing ignorance that is both inexcusably stupid (“shoulder thing that goes up/heat-seeking bullets cook deer from inside”) and deliberately lied about (“anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun”).
Visiting gun stores, going to a shooting range and shooting a gun for the first time is hardly “immersing” oneself in the gun culture, it’s getting your toe wet. To then presume qualifications to expound on the matter, to teach without passing required prerequisites to even be in the clssroom, or worse, to demand legislation and enforcement, goes beyond malpractice. As is presuming that an informed, experienced, and freedom-minded adult wants a seat at that children’s table.
As for Siegel’s disingenuously distancing his advocacy from “assault weapon” bans, that’s just meant to placate gun owners into thinking maybe that’s one “compromise” the gun prohibitionists might be willing to entertain. Nowhere, though, does he say that, nor is repealing such bans one of the eight “Policy Proposals” his group, Bridging the Divide, recommends. That’s because only useful idiots think it’s about “commonsense gun safety” instead of citizen disarmament, the real goal of the “men behind the curtain” funding this latest venture in AstroTurf Kumbaya gun groups (the earlier fraudulent American Hunters & Shooters Association and current undermining by the “nonpartisan” 97percent poseurs come to mind).
It’s also noteworthy that those proposals are billed as “state-level policies,” meaning if enacted, Illinois, California, New York, and other “blue states will continue thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, and all that means in terms of rights delayed and infringements being dragged through the courts for years.
This all makes a key question fair: Who are these guys?
They call themselves “a coalition of stakeholders” (which evokes someone intending to drive it into a heart with a mallet). Their “Diverse Coalition of Gun Rights and Gun Violence Prevention Advocates” includes rabid prohibitionist zealots who have made careers out of trying to eviscerate the Second Amendment through lawfare and gun bans, with not one recognized “no compromise” member. Any questions on how they vote?
As for following the money, that’s a closely guarded secret. The Bridging the Divide website posts the specific disclaimer that “The views and activities … do not necessarily reflect the views of Tufts University. No official endorsement by Tufts University for the information on this website is intended or should be inferred,” a who.is search shows they withhold registrant information, they haven’t been around long enough for Form 990 tax filings to show up on the Guidestar/Candid nonprofit lookup (assuming we knew what name they’d file under), a Massachusetts (that’s where Tufts is) charity search under the name “Bridging the Divide” turns up zilch, and having to resort to Google AI for something, anything, notes “its exact financial backers remain unclear in the provided text, amidst accusations that it is a rebranding of existing gun control.”
Siegel then proudly presented another “bennie,” evidently convinced he’s offering something revolutionary and novel that will attract gun owners into his camp:
“I think one area that is an area that would make a big difference is basically making it possible to do background checks for anyone who purchases a gun,” he announced. “And what we did in this law package was, I think for the first time ever, we created a system that is an automated approval check that anybody can access … including private sellers and essentially get a red light or green light instantaneously without transmitting any personal information without having a registry of the gun. And we decided that would allow for private sales to take place without the hassle of having to bring them to an FFL.”
“First time ever”…? Because it sounds exactly like BIDS, the Blind Identification Database System proposed 25 years ago by activists Brian Puckett and Russ Howard on Keepandbeararms.com, and written about many times over the years by myself and others. As reporting from 2014 shows, the gun prohibitionists have known about this idea for years. It would be interesting to find out who broached this with the group and acted like it was his idea, but in any case, Democrats would never seriously advance such legislation because to do so would show the whole idea of background checks to be a fraud. (And not to put too fine a point on things, but even an “improvement” like BIDS would still be a prior restraint with no foundation in text, history, and tradition.)
A final point, although everything Siegel says could use a good fisking, is his admission on Red Flag Laws/Extreme Risk Protection Orders, “ that we can’t involuntarily commit every single person … but there has to be something short of involuntary commitment.”
There is something. It’s called violating the Constitutional right to due process and taking away a citizen’s guns before they’ve even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. Plenty will unconvincingly try to weasel word their way around that, but none will be able to deny that’s what will happen. What we’re hearing here is the old gun-grabber assertion that “Something must be done,” with the conclusion that that something is ratcheting down on rights.
There’s admittedly a tremendous cost to doing things the right way (and to explore that and what it will take to transition from coercive collectivist rule to a Bill of Rights culture is the existential question of our age). Is that ultimately as high as accepting government doing things the wrong way?
To his credit, Edwards made a final observation that Siegel tepidly acknowledged but has no ability to do anything about changing even if he wanted to, which he’d make part of his platform if he did: All his group’s recommendations are for how red states can make concessions to blue ones, not how blue ones can roll back on infringements they’ve enacted.
No wonder the Michael Bloomberg-funded propaganda project, The Trace, writes so glowingly about them.
Freedom will not be gained by “compromising” with swindlers making claims on birthrights they are not entitled to. Never give an inch. All that does is free them up to expend their resources and efforts on their next goal.
Check your history. Look at the world. The bridge these people are building leads to hell.
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About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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