Jazz Shaw:
It was almost the perfect plan. And if it weren’t for those darned kids at the FBI, Michael Bloomberg might have gotten away with it.
By all accounts, the billionaire dropped at least $20M through his various anti-Second Amendment groups in an effort to get Ballot Question 1 passed in Nevada. The proposal would require virtually all private transfers of gun ownership to be contingent on an FBI background check. And on election day, the measure passed. Great news for gun grabbers, right?
Well… it was. That is to say, things were looking good until the FBI came along and said they wouldn’t be participating in the program. (RGI)
The expansion of gun background checks approved by Nevada voters last month will not happen as expected, based on an opinion released Wednesday by the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.
Ballot Question 1 requires that private party gun transfers – with a few exceptions – be subject to a federal background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System administered by the FBI.
The FBI sent a letter Dec. 14 to the state of Nevada’s Department of Public Safety saying it would not conduct these checks. The department asked for a legal opinion on the letter’s ramifications.
No matter how the vote went, this announcement basically imploded the entire program. Having the plan in place only works as long as the facilities are available for sellers to obtain the mandated background check and the only avenue provided under the legislation was to have the FBI do it. But they don’t have the resources available to cater to this program so they won’t be participating. This leaves a situation where otherwise legal sales couldn’t take place due to reasons beyond the control of the seller. In other words, the measure is completely unenforceable.
Our colleague Bob Owens at Bearing Arms is clearly finding more than a little amusement at Bloomberg’s utter collapse in this battle after apparently making it across the finish line.
Like good little liberals everywhere, Nevada’s anti-gun Democrats expected someone else (in this case, the federal government in the form of the FBI) to foot the bill for their edict.
The feds have rejected it outright.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt has noted it is entirely unenforceable (PDF).
Mike Bloomberg is out the $20 million or so he spent pushing this faulty referendum into being.
We could spend another year debating the need for a father to get a background check on his son or daughter before passing on a hunting rifle to them, but that’s really not the point here.
I hope Bloomberg continues to loose millions on his futile campaign to repeal our 2nd AMENDMENT rights i hope he flushes more money down the john and he fanily leaves america for good
The measure barely passed. With the suspected amounts of vote fraud coupled with illegal immigrant voting and bussed in Californian Democrats, ( it is possible that with fair elections and ensuring that those voting were eligible, that the measure might have failed.)
In none of the deluge of advertising that Bloombum’s gun grabbers flooded the media with, did they ever once provide or even describe the actual wording of the Ballot Question. The only thing they talked about was “gun show loopholes” while there is not a single mention of “Gun Shows” in the Ballot Question’s language. It was pure bait and switch propaganda, for useful idiots who never read what they are voting on.
Also odd (and IMO suspicious,) is that in Nevada, the rules are that most Ballot Questions have to be given to the voters and voted for in more than one election for it to take hold. That was not how it was done with Ballot Question 1.