Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The gun worshipers and fetishists frequently violate Godwin's Law by invoking Hitler and the Nazis in any debate over gun reform. They just can't help themselves, it's almost a variation of Tourette syndrome.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) took this fearmongering over gun reform to new levels in a Facebook post on Thursday that compared expanding background checks to the Rwandan genocide. GOP Congressman Warns Background Checks Will Lead To A Genocide Like In Rwanda. No really, he did.
So now gun worshipers and fetishists are comparing themselves to to the victims of genocide? European Jews killed in the Holocaust and Tutsis killed in the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, all because they may have to complete a background check to buy a gun? This is offensive and demeaning to the memory of the actual victims of genocide. These demagogues are without shame or any sense of decency.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a staunch conservative, has demolished this unhinged fear mongering in a letter he sent to his Senate colleagues who are engaging in shameless demagoguery. Conservative pro-gun Senator demolishes arguments against background checks:
Senator Tom Coburn, a staunchly conservative Senator with impeccable
“pro gun” credentials, has done us all a tremendous service: He has
effectively demolished many of the arguments coming from the right
against expanded background checks.
Coburn has sent a letter to his Senate colleagues making the case
that his proposal for expanded background checks is better than the one
produced by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey. But in the process of
defending his own proposal from the inevitable claims by fellow
conservatives that it would violate people’s Second Amendment rights, he
effectively destroys that same argument as it is being applied to the
Manchin-Toomey proposal.
Coburn’s letter argues against the Manchin-Toomey proposal by
claiming its record keeping provisions — and its call for a fee to be
paid for the background checks — are too burdensome on the law-abiding.
He pitches his own plan, which would expand background checks to
virtually all private sales without record keeping and without a need to
go to a Federal Firearms Licensee to get checks done. Look how he
defends his own proposal:
As a firm believer of the 2nd Amendment, I support the
reasonable expansion of National Instant Criminal Background Check
System (NICS) checks into secondary and private markets for the purpose
of keeping firearms out of the wrong hands … unlike retailers, we as
private citizens have no tool to know if the purchasers of our weapons
in secondary markets (such as gun shows, flea markets, and through
internet advertisements) are on the prohibited list. […]To my colleagues that say any reform dealing with gun laws is an
infringement on the 2nd Amendment, then I welcome a debate on your
amendments to repeal the 1993 Brady Bill…If prohibited people are not
going to comply with any law we pass, then why should Congress make an
effort to improve the reporting of disqualifying records to NICS. The
more than $1 billion in federal tax dollars spent on creating and
maintaining the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is
rendered useless when a prohibited purchaser can just as easily procure a
firearm from a gun show or an internet marketplace without a NICs check
as they can at gun stores.
And there you have it. One of the staunchest pro gun lawmakers in the Senate has just confirmed that background checks are good
for law abiding gun sellers who don’t want to sell to prohibited
people. He has just shown that the argument that expanding background
checks is unconstitutional is completely incoherent unless you also believe the current background check system is unconstitutional and support repealing it.
He has knocked down one of the silliest arguments of all — “criminals
won’t obey the law, and criminals won’t submit to background checks, so
why expand them?” — by pointing out that if you believe this, it would
be folly to support improving data sharing within the current system, as
many Republicans do in lieu of expanding it. After all, why do that, if
criminals won’t submit to background checks? And he’s knocked down that
talking point by also pointing out that the very reason
criminals can continue to avoid submitting to background checks — and
continue disobeying the law by procuring guns as prohibited people — is
that the loophole enables them to do so more easily.
A PDF of Sen. Coburn’s full letter to colleagues is
Here.