Quote of the day—Jawhorse

The only persons who fear firearms background checks are people who cannot pass background checks.

Jawhorse
April 2, 2015
Comment to Gun background check hearing: Does bill close loophole or create unenforceable law?
[This is another one of those mental defects who believe they can read the minds of other people.—Joe]

Share

30 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Jawhorse

  1. Oddly enough, the people who push for gun control generally can’t pass a background check, or are directly covering for people who can’t and are violent.

    notable examples: Snoop Dogg, and Plaxico Burris. Also Mike B was an admitted drug dealer and junkie.

    Joan Peterson can probably pass a NICS, but boy is she carrying a TON of water for her dead Brother In Law, abusive psychopath, as she attempts to blame her sister’s death on guns, and only guns…

    • Where do you come up with this stuff? I could definitely pass a background check and so could a lot of other people who are for gun control. You are picking out the exceptions, not the rule — something you accuse gun controllers of doing when they point out all the people with CCWs who have committed crimes. Shame on you.

        • Also Ubu’s below bootlicking of the various criminal activities of the US government prove me right.

          Not that I think the Big Daddy .gov is the only criminal enterprise she has invested herself in.

  2. We can put the quote into the proper perspective by restating it thusly;
    “The only persons who fear the yellow arm band requirement are filthy Jews.”

    History shows us very clearly what happens whenever such an attitude is given any deference or appeasement.

    There was a time, though I suppose most people have forgotten, when we were taught in public school about the folly and stupidity of jawhorse’s quote (with regard to the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascisti).

    He probably thinks he made it up. That’s one of the tricks that evil plays on its unwitting servants– you end up repeating the age-old thoughts and phrases of tyrants and murderers, thinking you just made them up all on your own out of cleverness and “progressive” thinking.

  3. Yup. The obvious correlation is with the logical fallacy “the only ones who fear inquiry are those with something to hide”.

    In both cases, breathtaking hubris is required to state, as is stated here, that there can only be one reason for doing something. Can “jawbone” not imagine someone who fears background checks because he legitimately has something to hide? Is it that difficult to understand, and respect, a desire to maintain one’s privacy?

    It can make a person feel smart, and smug, to say “I know what motivates you, and it’s not what you claim it is”. But making up motivations to explain other people’s actions is, in fact, the easiest thing in the world. (Here’s a fun Landmark exercise. Pick an action you took recently, e.g. deciding what to have for lunch. Then list at least ten reasons why you might have decided to do that. Have fun with it. You may be surprised to see just how easy it is. )

  4. “Can “jawbone” not imagine someone who fears background checks because he legitimately has something to hide?” — it seems to me that’s exactly what he/she/it is doing. The real point is that he needs to imagine someone who objects to background checks while NOT having something to hide. That probably covers most of the contributors to this blog, after all.
    Objecting to government snooping is a good analogy, of course. Would jawbone use that same argument to authorize the authorities keeping watch on him and those he meets? Better yet, what about random searches of his home? “The only people who insist on the 4th Amendment are those who have something to hide” — would he say that? Perhaps yes, but if so that would brand him unambiguously as an evil fascist.

    • “The real point is that he needs to imagine someone who objects to background checks while NOT having something to hide.”

      I think those people are a minority and I believe a lot of them are paranoid. For some reason, they think they are far more interesting than they really are.

      It’s just like the NSA spying stuff. Do I care if the NSA spies on me? Not really. What are they going to find out? That I like purple nail polish more than I like blue? I can’t imagine a more boring person to spy on but if they want to, they can do it.

      • Ubu52:

        your way of thinking is exactly why tyrants are able to take over nations and turn them into shitholes. You are an enabler of those types of power hungry people. Too many of your type here in the USA now, which is why we are rapidly heading toward disaster.

        You, of course, will never comprehend this, because history is dead to your type. Last week, year, century, millennium, doesn’t really exist to those who think the same way, so nothing can be learned from it. And that is why nations continue making the same mistakes over and over and over…

      • You miss one big point UBU. Maybe you’re not doing anything ‘illegal’ today.

        But, and a BIG but is this: If, for instance, the NSA has compiled your complete life history, who’s to say that some day in the future .gov will decide that something you’ve done WAS illegal, or is now considered to be illegal.

        Are you (yes you apparently are) willing to give .gov unfettered access to your life, not knowing the consequences?

        Also, I’m almost certain that, with ‘ignorance of the law’ being no excuse, that you – Yes You – have violated some federal regulation at some past point in time. Are you willing to bet your future on that being true or not?
        If I were You, I would not.

        And don’t come back with ‘ex post facto’.
        We have federal laws on the books – right now – that penalize a person’s past actions when at the past point in time, there was no penalty.

        Shall we hear a response, or chirping of crickets?

        • I’ve done plenty of things in the past that were legal when I did them but are illegal today. For instance, I drank hard liquor when I was 18. That was legal in the 1970s. I drove without a seatbelt legally in the 1970s, illegal today. I don’t see the government knocking down my door over these. You say there are laws. Show me.

          • The inference is you don’t understand, but that’s your schtick. We all here understand your supposed denseness and general disingenuousness.

            The prime example (which I’m sure you actually are quite well aware of and probably heartily proclaim is a perfect gun control law) is the Lautenberg Amendment 18 USC.
            What was legal (firearms possession by a person with a misdemeanor DV conviction in the past – and the definition of that is quite wide sweeping – or restraining order) is now a federal felony. It made new members of the class of people prohibited from possessing firearms who never were before that was passed.

            Some say that the law is an example of ex post facto and should only pertain for misdemeanor convictions after the amendment was passed, but it wasn’t written that way and has been found constitutional by SCOTUS.

            If that type of law can be passed, any law for any reason like that can be passed.

            Lets use for example your admission to consuming alcohol at age 18.

            All that has to happen is for a law, similar to Lautenberg, to be passed.

            Say if underage drinking for youth came to be *the* political meme in the U.S. and juvenile prohibition with a law stating anyone under the age of 21 that had ever consumed alcohol had committed a crime.
            And the meme is so powerful that all the capabilities of that government would be used to root out anyone that ever violated that law.

            You’re out of luck now. You admitted it online, and online is forever.

            Even better, your past financial transactions, movement by vehicle license plate viewers and the GPS in your cell phone to see if you ever were in the vicinity of a liquor store in the past could be checked to see if you should be subject to further colonoscopy.

            You might even be more suspect if your political viewpoints didn’t happen to perfectly align with the party in political power at that point in time and get a laser beam focused at you to see if you might need more ‘attention’.

            See how it can go? And it doesn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you’re on. All you have to be is on the ‘other side’.

            Now, I bet your retort will be something along the line of: “Well that’s not happened.”

            So?

            Think it’s not possible?

            Think again.

      • Interesting that you are so boring, and have nothing to hide, but you post under a pseudonym, and won’t even say what city you live in.

        Ironic, nee?

        • Nothing to hide from the government. You are not the government. (I’m sure they know who I am.)

          • And, pray tell, how does a figurative and literal badge – that the entity functionally gave to itself – make the “government” any better than any other group of people?

          • In general terms, knowledge is power. When someone knows things about you that most people don’t know about you then that someone has power over you.

            Examples:

            1) If you are genetically predisposed to some disease you may be less likely to get job or good rates on health insurance in a free market.
            2) If you are cheating on your spouse some employers will fire you, you can loose your government security clearance, and you are susceptible to blackmail.
            3) If you are secretly a homosexual you are susceptible to blackmail, or in some places subject to death if you secret isn’t kept.
            4) A politician is not going to want his opponents to know of his treatments for STIs, her abortions, or their weekly purchases of alcohol.
            5) And what of the school transcripts of politicians? Maybe a “Constitutional Scholar” barely made it through law school.

            Control of government changes over time. Don’t imagine what the current people in power would do with that private knowledge. Imagine what your worst enemies would do with that knowledge.

          • Joe,

            Thinking about what you posted here — only the “wrappers” of government change. The underlying “government” (the people who actually make it function) don’t change that much. That’s why someone like Newt Gingrich can slide from elected politician to defense consultant (dealing with all the same people) simply by walking down the block. Once Newt lost his elected position, did he leave government? Not really. Taxpayers are still paying his salary, maybe not directly, but indirectly via contracts with the government.

          • But UBU, exactly *what* does that have to do with the subject of this except as some kind of diversionary tactic?
            Hmm?

          • …except as some kind of diversionary tactic?

            You’re catching on (or have already caught on).

            She’s not here for the hunting. Never has been.

  5. I think there are a lot of UBC advocates that have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the legal underpinning of current background check system works: the requirement for an FFL to perform a background check is a requirement on the FFL as a condition of his license. Congress has exercised its authority to regulate interstate commerce to do this. (Arguments as to the merits of this exercise of power set aside for now.)

    It’s not that you have to get a background check to buy a gun. It’s that the dealer has to do a background check to sell it to you.

    Now, why isn’t it the other way?

    Well, on one hand, because Congress forbade by law the direct selling of firearms from one non-FFL person to another non-FFL person in another state, there is no legal non-FFL interstate firearm commerce, so Congress does not have power over the intrastate commerce. (Yes, I know there are some emanations and penumbras resulting from some truly twisted New Deal era rulings that made precedent that strictly intrastate commerce affects interstate commerce by making the interstate commerce not happen. I’m sure Congress would love to have that can of worms re-openned by the NRA and possibly overturned.)

    Next, I think the Fifth Amendment is in the way. The reasoning of Haynes vs US (1968) make it clear that the government, INCLUDING state government, cannot punish a person for not participating in a process that is equivalent to making an open declaration of lawbreaking. If universal background checks are legally mandatory by state law or federal law, then you can only punish those individuals that could pass the background check, but don’t get the background check. Those that can’t pass the background check can be prosecuted for ‘prohibited person in possession’ (if you catch them) but you can’t prosecute them for either not getting a background check, or for failing one. Now, Haynes vs US is, narrowly speaking, about mandatory gun registration schemes. The reasoning of the controlling opinion, however, is all about the Fifth amendment, not the Second. If laws make background checks a legal obligation of individuals, then the reasoning is entirely congruous.

    Thus you get a system that creates a legal hazard ONLY for people that aren’t the problem, and no increased legal hazard for the people that are the problem. It’s a politician’s dream bill: Makes a lot of flash and noise, inconveniences people that don’t vote for them, uses public funds to create and support a dependent voting bloc (the bureaucrats that administer the system), and best of all, does nothing to alleviate the problem the bill was said to be targeted at so you can go back to the well for more later.

    How’s this for an alternative: an absolutely universal background check system. A system that is universally available to everyone, works 24/7 at approximately the same cost to run a static content website, can even work without immediate communication capability, inherently has no tracking of background check attempts, and based on the Public Key Infrastructure that is used to secure web sites. It would not be mandatory (except on FFLs, that stays) BUT because it is so simple, available and costs the checker nothing, if a felon is found in possession of a firearm, and they track it back to the person that provided it, ignorance wouldn’t be a defense. The trick is to make the background check process nearly costless, but the penalty for transferring a firearm to a prohibited person more consistently applied. What a prospective gun owners would experience is going to the FFL once to start the background check, just like they do today, except he might not buy the gun at that time. A few days later, after passing the background check, he gets a credit card sized piece of plastic from the FBI. On the front, it has his name and address but no picture. Instead, it describes the picture ID that must be presented with this card, same one shown to the FFL. There is also a certificate serial number and the serial number of the FFL clerk that started the background check. On the back is an optically read QR code with the certificate and digital signature on it such that a smartphone with a camera app could read the certificate and work out the check of trust. (No RFID.) A code word is necessary to add to the certificate to get it to decode, further protecting the integrity of the system. If all the certificates are valid, all the way back to the FBI’s root signing certificate, then the background check is good. If they don’t add up, or a certificate along the way has been revoked by the FBI, then the checker is so informed. He can proceed or not proceed at this point as he see fit, but the hammer will drop on him if he makes a mistake… so the good folks will send the prospective buyer off to get his chain of trust issues fixed at the closest FFL. There’d be a back-up phone based system, but it would be operated by the NRA or ACLU instead of the government.

    • No.
      Anything that creates a record of private transaction that is directly tied to firearms purchase is merely another way ’round to registration.

      If there would be an online background check system accessible 24/7, where Name/DOB/SSN(if desired) could be entered for simply a record check, maybe.
      You could go to the library or internet cafe, enter details and see if that person is ‘prohibited’. Any name, any time, any where. You can print that out, if desired.
      That system could be used for daycare workers, household workers, employees, anybody for any reason.
      Then; Maybe.
      If done, I’d personally start background checking everyone I could think of, from multiple locations, just to make sure the system would be making so many checks that no entity could come to any conclusion about why that person had been checked.

      • My idea would have you go to the FFL to start a firearm related background check, but you wouldn’t actually be buying a firearm at that time. So the purchase would be unlinked from the background check. The role of the background check is only to determine if you’re a prohibited person. The card is to reference back to the original background check.

        After that the verification process is to check the revocation lists of everyone up the chain. You’re not checking to see if the end purchaser’s certificate is good. You’re checking to see if the FFL clerk’s revocation list has the purchaser’s cert serial on it, then if the FFL has the clerk’s certificate serial on its revocation list, then if the FBI has the FFL’s certificate on its revocation list. The most you’d be able to get out of the verification process is that someone that FFL clerk had once processed wanted to buy a gun.

        Furthermore, because the revocation lists themselves are digitally signed, they can be cached at non-government proxies so the government never sees 98% of the requests for the revocation lists.

        If the FBI does get information about a newly prohibited person, they check their database and put that person’s certificate on the revocation list for their next step up issuer certificate. The revocation lists are just lists of serial numbers, no personally identifying info so they can’t be data-mined by third parties.

        The advantage of this system is that there can’t be any record keeping by the government because the system doesn’t work by running everything through the government. It works by having a mathematical relationship from one certificate to another certificate to another one, and each step can be independently verified in the field without asking a government server for anything directly.

        So I said we should tighten up the enforcement of “transferring a firearm to a prohibited person”, but how would a good person defend that charge if a person they sold to subsequently became a prohibited person? Simple, provide the date of the transaction and the name of the person you sold it to, as you read it off his background check card. The FBI has the complete change logs for the revocation lists. They can take that name, find his certificate good for that day, and check it versus the revocation lists of that day. If he would have passed on that day, you’re off the hook. If you want to be doubly careful, when you sell the gun and verify the chain-of-trust, your smartphone app can give you the serial numbers of the revocation lists used. That combination of information would be a unique identifier that you made the effort to check.

        • “The most you’d be able to get out of the verification process is that someone that FFL clerk had once processed wanted to buy a gun.”

          Even that is too much for private sales, and I think a lot more could be determined by collecting and correlating that person’s other activity. You have no idea what can be figured out if .gov wants to figure out where you’ve been, who you’ve been with and, from there, pretty much, what you’ve probably been doing.

          “Furthermore, because the revocation lists themselves are digitally signed, they can be cached at non-government proxies so the government never sees 98% of the requests for the revocation lists”

          You’re much too trusting that .gov wouldn’t hack into any database, accessible online and simply copy all transactions.

          This isn’t paranoia.
          I know, to a certain extent, .gov’s “cyber” and intelligence gathering capabilities. I’m retired from the civil service, had a TS/SCI clearance and had some rather close contact with ‘intelligence’. I have no assurance those capabilities wouldn’t be used unethically for any and all purposes, no matter what law is passed. This is what concerns me about the NSA’s facility in Utah, but I digress.

          Only if a background check database is accessible as I specified previously, would I be anywhere close to being in the comfort zone.

          • You’re not the only person with Intelligence/Security exposure, but I got mine from .mil.

            The system I describing has no database for the government to hack into. There is one database, and it’s run by the FBI. It is only used to manage the certificate system, and it can’t be accessed for the actual background look-up part. It is only used to generate the updates.

            The actual certificate revocation lists would be exported from the FBI’s system daily, if a particular CRL or certificate needs to be updated.

            The publicly accessible part is just text files on an absolutely locked down web server. How locked down? I’m talking about GET requests only, no CGI input, no cookies. It has to work like that, because any other kind of web site could be hacked, theoretically, if it parses anything from the client. You can ask for a specific CRL or certificate, which is for the FBI, an FFL or an FFL’s clerk, or a compressed archive of the whole set. The individual user’s certificates are NOT in here. Wild guess, the amount of data we’re talking about, after compression, would be less than 10 megabytes. Any request that doesn’t look like “GET /F1234567812345678/C1234567812345678.crl HTTP/1.0” gets dropped, no response.

            But the government’s web server is only the origin content server. The day to day requests are handled by servers run by the NRA, NSSF and ACLU (if they want to) that mirror the CRL data. Not a full database: just a flat file listing, like a gzipped tar file. These web servers don’t keep access logs, and all requests are encrypted and pass through web application firewalls and various other security technologies to defeat DDOS attacks and the like. Even if you hack them, or simply run into the datacenter and pull the server out of the rack to mess with at your leisure, there’s nothing to get that isn’t already public and non-identifying.

            If you really want to be paranoid, your smartphone app could download the entire compressed flat file set daily. Then they only know that you’ve downloaded the data… and they have no idea what you’re doing with it, or if you are. If you’re an FFL going to work a gunshow with no wi-fi or cell signal, you’d do this before you went to the show so you could operate from an offline dataset, entirely independently.

            Maybe it would make more sense to you if if describe the back-up system. It works like the main one, just less fancy:

            The back-up phone system, also run by the NRA or NSSF, would prompt you to punch in the serial number of the issuing certificate off the card through your phone keypad. That serial number starts with a C, for clerk. (FFL serial numbers start with a F, for FFL, so they can’t get mixed up). The system checks to see if there is a certificate with that serial in the store, and if it is still good. If not, it tell you to stop right there: the chain of trust can’t be verified. If it is good, the phone system pulls the CRL list out of the filestore and asks you to send the last four digits of the serial number of the card you want to check, which starts with a B for ‘background check’. If any of the entries in the revocation list end in those last four, it prompts you to enter the second to last four. If there are still matches, it asks you to punch in the third to last four, then the first four in the sixteen digit serial number. If they all match one of the entries, the system tells you that serial number is revoked. But for 100 million Americans, the chances are pretty darned low that their background check serial number is on any one particular FFL clerk’s revocation list. For them, chances are pretty good that they will be passed after the first prompt. So you don’t even enter in the complete information before you can pass most Americans. It’d be one in a big number of people that would have to have their first four digits entered (fourth prompting) and still pass the background check because he shared the same last twelve digits in his serial number with someone else that’s a prohibited person that was checked by that same FFL clerk in the same year.

            Why sixteen digits in a serial number? It’s not like there are that many FFLs, or that many FFL clerks that will ever work at a single FFL, or that many gun owners that will get their first full-on background check in this system from that clerk. It’s for validation of the serial numbers, something similar to the Luhn algorithm used for credit card numbers. Not every sixteen digit number passes the checksum, so you can only use the ones that do. Additionally, the B background check numbers can be re-used, but for any individual, their complete serial number is that of the FFL plus the clerk, plus their background check. But that’s not on the card: only the C and B numbers are, with the F number being implied by the C number. Lose the card? Go to an FFL and pay your $25 to get a new background check card with a new serial number. The FBI will revoke all your previous certificates in the process.

            There’s a reason I don’t like your idea of a universally available last name, first name, SSN system: it allows for someone to mine the database to find out who might have guns. They’d just have to enter names and SSNs as they find them, and SSNs are frankly just not secure because they’re used everywhere.

  6. Basically, we’re getting too deep into the subject for posts on a blog, not of our own.

    I will comment on you own blog post, which is of this subject.

    • Well, that won’t work since your blog requires credentials that I don’t, and feel no need to, subscribe to.
      Joe, since you have access to my email address, you have my permission, if you desire, to send it to Tirno.

Comments are closed.