Quote of the Day
Massachusetts law prohibits the issuance of a firearms license before the State Police complete a background check based on an applicant’s fingerprints. For individuals residing in Boston, after an application is submitted to the Boston Police Department, the Department’s Licensing Unit makes them wait for many month before they are provided with an appointment to have their fingerprints taken. It is currently estimated the wait time is more than six (6) months for an appointment.
Prior to this litigation, the Licensing Unit engaged in a practice that made individuals seeking licenses wait for months on a “wait list” to merely submit their applications – a practice that was abandoned in response to litigation from some of the Plaintiffs in this case. The Boston Police Department has seemingly traded one mechanism to effectuate lengthy delays with another, all in an effort to prevent peaceable Bostonians from obtaining firearms.
Second Amendment Foundation
August 31, 2024
White v. Cox – Second Amendment Foundation
People who do this sort of crap should be prosecuted.
Ask permission and wait in line for your human rights? OK Boston!
But a cartel member can drive into Boston with a load of drugs, and the city would probably send the police to help him unload it.
Guns and all.
How many of the world’s “machete caste”, has Boston imported in the last four years?
Does it ever occur to honest people that communists want them dead? (Probably, that’s why they want the gun permit, right?)
And that communism is what’s running our government?
It seems like the whole country is on some kind of nationwide suicide watch, so we don’t miss our execution date.
There are enough illegals flowing into MA that the state’s shelter system is overwhelmed, and homeless MA residents are crowded out. The state isn’t really interested in fixing the problem; they keep bleating about “need more money” rather than the obvious “revoke the ‘right to shelter’ law”.
That’s an easy fix. It’s formally known as the Martha’s Vineyard prison colony. (Now, Cannibal island.)
You get a boat ride over. You got to swim off. (Beware of rednecks practicing their “fish in a barrel shooting tactics”.)
I wonder, what reasonable purpose does a fingerprint-based background check serve that a name/DOB/SSN/physical-description background check doesn’t?*
Other than to add unnecessary delays as the fingerprint technicians get “flooded with higher-priority cases”, that is?
One of these days, a high court — possibly the Supreme Court of the United States — is going to issue a ruling that isn’t so narrowly tailored, that won’t leave room to replace one unconstitutional delay/deny scheme with another on the grounds that the new one wasn’t explicitly called out.
In the context of this post, when Boston PD says applicants must be wait-listed for months before they can apply, and the courts say you can’t delay them like that, and Boston responds by taking applications immediately but making people wait for months for a fingerprint appointment, the courts could strike that practice down. Boston might then direct applications away from their in-house fingerprint techs to an external entity which wasn’t named in the lawsuit but which will make them wait months, and the courts could strike that practice down. And then Boston might increase “processing time” and continue to make people wait for months.
One day the courts will have enough of it and say, “You cannot intentionally delay firearm permit applications in any way, for any reason,” and something like “You get 45 days; if you can’t get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision in that time, it defaults to ‘yes’ and you SHALL issue a permit.”
Or better yet, “Because of your willful obstinance regarding firearm permits and your continuing attempts to make exercising 2nd Amendment rights as long and difficult a process as you can by replacing one forbidden delay with another in perpetuity, you shall not require permits to exercise a Constitutional right at all.”
And then, if ANY shenanigans continue, declare all those responsible in contempt of court, order the U.S. Marshals to arrest their @$$es, try them under 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242, and render them ineligible to hold any office of authority anywhere in the U.S.
The delaying and denying of Constitutional rights will continue until there are real consequences for doing it. And by “consequences” I don’t mean a token fine paid from taxpayer money; I mean permitting schemes wiped out, jail time measured in years and decades, 6-, 7-, and 8-figure class-action fines paid from personal accounts directly to aggrieved parties, and scorched-earth destruction of careers and reputations.
The message needs to be clear: You. Do. Not. F**k. Around. With. Constitutional. Rights.
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* – Yes, I can see that they might find a fingerprint match to an open investigation in which they previously did not have a match. But if that were going to happen, would the citizen seeking to exercise his/her 2A rights even submit an application? How many cases have been definitively solved based on these fingerprint-based background checks for firearm permits? I’m guessing, just like with keeping gun registries to “solve open investigations”, close to zero.
The only reason any state would have any form of permit process is to deny civil rights to its citizens. There is already a Federal background check system (not sanctioned by the Constitution, of course); any state system is merely duplicative and a clear attempt to interfere with the rights of the people. Basing it on easier stuff like social security numbers, or imposing a deadline (say, 5 days — 45 is way out of line) would help somewhat but not cure the underlying defect.
I generally agree. That’s why I put that “Or better yet” paragraph in. But it’s highly unlikely, at this stage in 2A jurisprudence, that the courts will strike down an entire permitting scheme in an “as-applied” challenge (all of these are “as-applied” — most courts won’t hear “prima facie” challenges to gun laws, they want “standing” and “injured parties” before they’ll hear a case); they’ll strike only the specific requirements that are being challenged.
The only reason any state would have a “may-issue” permit process is to deny civil rights to its citizens. As for a “shall-issue” permit process, it’s less bad, but it’s a registry of gun owners (even if not a registry of their guns), so it has its own negative implications.
I agree on the times, too. 45 days is the limit Oregon law prescribes for CHL applications, so it’s fresh in my mind and — given that it already exists in statutory law — it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the courts to use it as a soft precedent. In a sane world, it shouldn’t take anywhere near that long; the “three-day proceed” that also existed in Oregon law until recently (under which, if the “instant” background check hasn’t produced a definitive “yes” or “no” in three business days, the FFL may proceed with the sale and transfer the firearm) is usually more than enough time. But we rarely live in a sane world.
I’ve run the numbers. For a federal impediment to exercising your 2A-protected rights, the restitution per day would be just under $1500. I’d have to recalculate MA’s or Boston’s restitution rate based on their violent crime victimization and dependency rates. Since the national rate includes all the peaceful places that aren’t Chicago, I’m thinking the restitution rate would be much higher.
Prosecution is not going to happen in MA. Probably won’t happen with the Federales even should Trump win. The Deep State will prevent action. The Supreme Court will rule no standing. The answer is for decent people to exit from MA and like places.
“The answer is for decent people to exit from MA and like places.”
Were you going to go? Communism will soon follow.
Ma. needs party like it’s 1775. So does the rest of America.
I am willing to bet that if a waiting period and background check requirement was established before anyone could post anything for any reason on the internet or publish a newspaper, magazine or book; we would find out, in very short order, that leftist judges actually do understand the meaning of infringement.
I think a system like that is exactly what they want to control Mis-information. (Bad stuff about them they don’t want you to know.)
Remember, it’s not an “infringement”, if their the one’s controlling something you need.
Until the petty bureaucrats ( is there any other type) suffer personal and painful consequences for engaging in such willful abuses nothing will change, nothing will inprove.