Short Stuff: HR8 Gun Legislation

Today we dive into HR8, a gun bill supported by 90% of Americans that will likely never get through the Senate.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff on Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's here in the saddle for Dave and this is
short stuff. Like I said, that's right, and we're gonna
try and get through this next twelve minutes without our
brains exploding and without screaming into the microphone and without
receiving death threats when this episode comes out. That's right,
because we are talking about h R eight. It is, uh,

(00:27):
the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. It is a bill that
originated in the House in the United States to try
and close loopholes on gun purchase background checks. And uh,
we thought this might be a good way to dip
our toe into the gun debate after the events at

(00:47):
Valdi and uh, here we go. Yeah, the the you've
all the shooting is definitely if you've paid any attention,
what's over to the news really kind of breathed some
um energy into the concept of background checks and some
bills that were already out there, like that HR eight. Um,
the Bipartisan Background Checks Act one was introduced in March,

(01:10):
and now all of a sudden, it seems like it's
got some legs like it didn't have before because of
that shooting, which is surprising to me, Chuck, because like,
we didn't do anything after Sandy Hook somehow, I don't know.
Maybe two is too many now, Um, who knows, But
it does seem like the zeitgeist is kind of shifted
after you've all the Yeah, I think so. Uh, just

(01:33):
nuts and bolts of the bill. It passed the US House, uh,
like you said last March to two oh three, but
of course died in the Senate, as so many bills do,
because it gets filibustered by the Republican Party and they
won't even talk about it. And there's a fifty fifty
chamber right now. We want to thank Patrick Kaiger at

(01:53):
how stuff works for this uh, for this Newsy article again,
and um, you know, Democrat wanted to. I think they
were hopeful that they could at least put it on
the UH Senate Democrats on the legislative calendar. That has
not happened. But let's talk for a minute on how
people buy guns in the US. Hey, UM, So when

(02:16):
you buy a gun, especially if you buy a gun
from a federally licensed gun dealer, Um, they say, here,
fill out this form, and this form is submitted to
the National instant criminal background check system, and it has
a bunch of different questions on it, rather personal questions,
but they make sense when you're buying a gun in
that context. They say, have you ever been indicted for

(02:38):
a felony, have you ever been convicted of a felony UM?
Have you ever used drugs? Um? Have you ever been
committed to a mental institution by a court order? Or
have you ever been dishonorably discharged by the military. Have
you been convicted of domestic violence? Are you a legal
resident of the US? Are You're gonna fill this out

(02:58):
and then the fire armstealers going to turn around, contact
the FBI, s n i c S Service and they're
going to run a background check on you, that's right,
and see if everything checks out and if you are
eligible to buy that gun. This was created in with
the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act because if we all remember,

(03:20):
after UH Ronald Reagan had an assassination attempt on his life,
there was gun legislation and they actually did something back
then about it, including Ronald Reagan and Republicans. Well, yeah,
because Brady was one of his staffers and he was
paralyzed UM as a result of that that assassination attempt,
and so any any gun control legislation that came after

(03:42):
that usually bears his name. That's right. We are in
a different place these days. It's a different um Republican
party and Savir emails. We're not just picking on one
party over the other. This is just straight up facts
on how these bills go down. UM a lot of
people and eventually we're going to get around to an
n r A episode in full. I guess a lot

(04:05):
of people will a lot of people will blame the
n r A, But I personally believe, and I've seen
articles sort of backing this up these days that like
the n r A has already sort of done its job,
and even if they went away completely, things would still
be about the same, because what they have created is
a situation where a more moderate Republican who might be

(04:28):
in favor of common sense gun legislation that anywhere from
sixty nine of Americans are in favor of UH won't
even consider this legislation because they want to hold onto
office because they will get primaried out by a further
right Republican who says, I will not touch any gun legislation,

(04:50):
So vote for me, and that's kind of where we
are today. So so back to background checks like that
and i c S service UM started. Um, there just
wasn't background checks before then. And since then they've done
three hundred million plus background checks for gun purchases. So
that means that at least three hundred million guns have

(05:13):
been sold legitimately since in the US, and that out
of those three hundred million, chuck one point five million
were flagged and were denied um that the ability to
purchase that firearm because they didn't pass the n i
c S background check. And so on the one side,
a lot of people say one point five million out

(05:33):
of three hundred that's pretty good math. On the other side,
they say, yeah, like a bunch of that one point
five million people were denied unfairly. There was, it was
ungrounded and there is a process to appeal your denial
if you are actually denied. But the point is is
society is saying there are certain kinds of people that

(05:54):
we don't trust with firearms, and we're trying to root
them out. In the best place to root them out
is when they go to buy a gun. It makes sense,
but there's a loophole to this that is so huge
that anybody, including convictive felons, can walk right through it
and purchase a gun on the other side. That's right,
We're gonna take a break, let you ponder that ridiculousness,

(06:16):
and we will talk about that loophole right after this,

(06:42):
all right. The big loophole is that there is a
lot of gray area of what constitutes a licensed or
a non licensed gun dealer. Uh. They talk about occasional
sales or purchases being exempt from the background check requirement,
and there is no real clear line establishing what that

(07:06):
even means. It's a rule of thumb. It's very vague.
Uh that someone who just sells a lot of guns
and they want to make their living selling guns or
make a profit selling guns. Yeah, not even make a living,
make a profit selling guns, has to be licensed to
conduct these background checks. But you've heard about gun shows
and the internet and things like that. If you sell

(07:27):
guns at a gun show, you can claim to not
be like, you know, like, hey, I'm just an occasional seller.
I just go to these gun shows and sell tons
and tons of guns for profit. And that enables people
to walk in there and buy a gun without having
any kind of background check. Yeah, so if you sell guns,
you're still selling a gun. But if you say I

(07:49):
only do it occasionally, the government basically has to say, Okay,
well you don't need a license, and there's no requisite,
there's no definition, there's no Like you said, it's a
very great area on what constitutes occasional or who who's
required to have a federal license. But if you aren't
a federally licensed gun dealer, that means that you can

(08:10):
go sell a gun without doing a background check. Right,
And uh, that's the most recent stat we have. Uh,
they estimated gun owners bought their weapon within the previous
couple of years without going through a background check. It
is undoubtedly bigger now because whenever there are mass shootings,

(08:33):
there is a rush on buying guns in the United States. Uh,
people don't back off from buying them, they buy more
of them. So I don't know what the percentages now,
but if even if we go with that's a lot
of people buying guns without a background check. So if
you're a person who you know that you are going
to be like you're going to be flagged by the
n i c S background check, all you have to

(08:55):
do is find yourself a gun show, or go on
the internet and find somebody who's selling guns on the
internet and buy from an unlicensed firearm dealer, and that
that ends up. And like I said, like with background checks,
were saying, society doesn't want certain people to have We
don't we don't trust them with firearms. And one of
those people are again convicted felons. They're not legally allowed

(09:16):
to own a firearm in the United States after they've
been convicted of a felony, unless I believe that there um,
they are granted clemency by the president or the governor. Right.
So um, there's a kind of an unnerving stat then
that that ties into that, and that is that in
that same two thousand, fifteen Annals of Internal Medicine study,
they found that nineties of prison inmates who had been

(09:39):
previously prohibited from owning a gun and that that was
the gun that they used in the crime that they
were in prison for. Now they'd obtain that gun from
an unlicensed seller. And that is a big problem for
every law abiding citizen of these United States, right, and
every law abiding gun owner. Frankly the citizens too. That's right,

(10:01):
if you are a UM, if you're thinking like, well,
there should be exceptions to this, like you should be
able to hand your gun down to your child if
you're a hunter, or sell your gun to your uncle,
if you know, instead of them having to go to
a gun shop. They can do that. They have carved
out some exceptions in h R eight that still hasn't passed. UM.

(10:23):
Law enforcement obviously could transfer guns without background checks. Family
members could gift them to family members or sell them
to family members. You could inherit a gun without a
background check, or like in the movies, if the zombies
are coming in and you throw somebody the gun and
they go, I don't know how to use this thing,
and they say, just pointed at them and squeeze the trigger.

(10:45):
You can even do that, uh, and not have to,
you know, face a penalty as long as after the
zombies are are killed off, they say, here's your gun back. Right,
Because anybody can agree the zombies would get to you
and eat your brain during the background check process. It's
not that fast, so they carved it out, especially if
there's a ten day waiting period, which is another House

(11:06):
bill that might be voted on in the Senate soon
along with HR eight, Right, um, this is not And
when it comes to polling the American public, this isn't
something where it's like, oh, it's it's like fifty six
percent in favor of UH. Pole after pole comes in April. Uh,

(11:26):
can a PIAC University poll? Can it? PIAC? How do
you pronounce that? Can? Can a pack? Okay, it's one
of those eight nine percent of Americans favored universal or
nearly universal background checks. Pole in March from Morning consult

(11:48):
h including seventy seven percent of voting Republicans, and then
a gallop pole the CRIM deal, a CRIM of poles
UH found that Americans favored mandatory background checks by to seven.
The role of our elected officials is supposedly to act
on their constituents desires. But again this is not happening

(12:12):
because of the things that I mentioned earlier. Now and
again I think it really bears repeating. There's nothing about
closing the guns show loophole for background checks that is
taking guns from people who have guns, preventing um UH
legal law abiding citizens from buying as many guns as
they want under the law. It's simply saying we're going

(12:35):
to shut down this huge loophole that allows people who
shouldn't have guns to go buy guns as many as
they like. Um, And yeah, that's just common sense, that's
extremely mainstream thinking. And it doesn't violate the constitutional rights
given by the Second Amendment in any way, shape or form.
And again it has the backing of the public. And

(12:57):
so again it's a it's about to go die in public.
They actually tied a blindfold around it and gave it
a last cigarette as they're shoving it out into the Senate. Um,
and it's just not going to go anywhere. But Joe
manchin Um apparently was quoted as saying he believes that
the Uvaldi shooting is going to is going to impel

(13:19):
the Senate to actually start cutting deals and that something
will get past, even if it's not exactly hr eight. Yeah,
I'm reading this on an hourly basis, and there are
bipartisan talks that seem promising. Uh, so we'll see, I
mean I read uh some someone in Congress was quoted

(13:40):
as saying, like, I've been here for many years and
I've never seen this, this genuine bar bipartisan conversation about
this in my life and my whole career. So it
does feel like things might be a little different now,
but yeah, we'll see. It's also possible that nothing will
change again. I know it's hard to even talk about
quiet Slee, and I don't think anyone is fool enough

(14:02):
to think that this and other gun legislation laws will
completely stop something like a mass shooting or in gun violence.
But it is something that can help curb these horrific acts.
And these these people in the Senate will have to
live with themselves for the rest of their lives if

(14:23):
they continue to sit on their hands. For sure, I agreed. Uh,
you got anything else, Chuck? Nothing? Well, since Chuck said nothing,
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(14:43):
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