Imagine being an elderly woman. Imagine your husband lost both legs to diabetes and that you do not possess the strength needed to defend yourself against younger, stronger opponents and you decide to purchase a tool that will give you leverage you need to defend yourself and the one you love.
You decide on a pistol.
Now the phrase Shall Not Be Infringed is pretty straightforward. It doesn't say Shall Not Be Infringed After a 3 to 10 Day Waiting Period, Shall Not Be Infringed for the Non-Elderly, Shall Not Be Infringed so Long as the Police Chief Says It's OK or Shall Not Be Infringed for Those Without Vagina, but reading this story, you'd probably not know that
Gun purchase glitch raises questions Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.
Gun purchase glitch raises questions
Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.
I wonder if they also block transactions because someone is too black or too gay...
Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August. Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction. An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle's age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.
Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August.
Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction.
An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle's age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.
This is beyond pathetic. It's bad enough I have to submit to a background check that assumes I'm guilty and forces me to prove myself innocent, there's no way in hell I'm going to accept that some pencil-necked anus-wombat in a secured call center (protected by door locks and lots of firepower) should have the power to decide wether or not I get a weapon based on their own warm fucking fuzzies.
"To be very honest with you, we have a legal obligation under the law to do approvals," MacLeish said. "We also have an obligation to make sure we're safe, and paying due diligence."
Let me get this straight. Some minimum wage phone monkey sits around and makes decisions based on thinking someone might be too old and too labia'd and that's due diligence????
"I believe there was caution taken on behalf of the call taker," he said. "It was done without malice."
Well, we're constantly told we need laws to protect ourselves from our own stupidity, too bad we can't use laws to protect us from those who are supposedly there to make a better decision for us.
Vansickle's purchase was eventually approved -- 10 days after the initial application -- after she and the dealer were interviewed by police about the purchase. A normal delay is three days.
This, my friends, is why I argue against background checks, useless waiting periods, and practically every other roadblock put in place to supposedly "keep guns out of the hands of criminals" because invariably that doesn't happen. In the time it too Ms. Vansickle to get her .22 pistol, hundreds of criminals in her area purchased much higher powered firearms without going through any of the hoops. Instead of tracking down the criminals and putting them in jail, all the police have managed to do is stop an elderly woman who wants to be able to defend herself.
Now, I bet you're thinking "This story cannot possibly get any worse." If you are, like Obama on the price of arugula, you'd be wrong.
Word of the delay rebounded around Delaware's small-firearms community, eventually making its way to Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor. Lawson spoke to his former colleague Nefosky about Vansickle's dilemma, Lawson said. Lawson said what Nefosky told him revealed there was a much larger problem in the firearms approval unit than keeping a small-caliber revolver out of the hands of an 81-year-old woman. Lawson said Nefosky told him he searched seven years of firearms transaction records to see if Vansickle had ever bought a gun before.
Word of the delay rebounded around Delaware's small-firearms community, eventually making its way to Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor. Lawson spoke to his former colleague Nefosky about Vansickle's dilemma, Lawson said.
Lawson said what Nefosky told him revealed there was a much larger problem in the firearms approval unit than keeping a small-caliber revolver out of the hands of an 81-year-old woman.
Lawson said Nefosky told him he searched seven years of firearms transaction records to see if Vansickle had ever bought a gun before.
Emphasis mine.
No matter how well intentioned, no matter how many promises that the records will not be kept, no matter how many times we're told that yeah, we kept the records but we didn't do anything with them, when the system breaks down it will invariably harm the innocent.
I do not argue against these things because I want more guns in the hands of criminals or children, I argue against them because they fail more often than not and prevent the law abiding from obtaining firearms while completely missing the true source of crime - the criminal.