“The term “indictment” includes an indictment or information in any court under which a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year may be prosecuted.”

I’ve never heard of an indictment coming from anybody but a grand jury. My state, Texas, uses both indictment and information:

“An ‘indictment’ is the written statement of a grand jury accusing a person therein named of some act or omission which, by law, is declared to be an
offense.”

“An ‘information’ is a written statement filed and presented in behalf
of the State by the district or county attorney, charging the
defendant with an offense which may by law be so prosecuted.”

Again, an information is a bit more formal than an arrest. An information is written by a district attorney who intends to prosecute a person for some crime. A cop can arrest you and charge you with whatever he pleases just because he doesn’t like your face. NICS denials based on a mere arrest go beyond the federal law. If federal agencies can make up their own laws, shouldn’t we stop paying those bozos in Congress?

Well, that’s not exactly true. I was looking at subsection (g) of 18 USC 922, which lists nine classes of persons forbidden to possess a firearm. I should have looked at subsection (d), which lists nine classes of persons to whom one can’t sell a firearm. The only difference in the two lists is that subsection (d)(1) says, “is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”

There’s a big difference between being charged and being indicted. An indictment is issued by a grand jury after a formal legal proceeding. Any cop can arrest anybody on any charge at any time. Sometimes grand juries refuse to indict people who’ve been arrested. An indictment is disqualifying. An arrest, in itself, shouldn’t be. If the ATF regulations disqualify a buyer for an arrest without an indictment, then the ATF is making up its own laws.

It really is quite insane. It would have been nice to get a standard written into some legislation, rather than being left up to the whim of the ATF.

Another evil black shotgun becomes a Destructive Device.

Another spring becomes a machine gun.

Another regulation pops up changing the definition of a de-milled firearm.

Another random rule on what constitutes armor piercing handgun ammo.

Meanwhile, back in the Constitution; you know, the Supreme Law of the Land, in Article I, Section 1, (being first after the preamble, so it’s probably pretty important), it says:

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

I don’t see diddly-squat about the power to delegate lawmaking powers to the Executive Branch. Doesn’t that violate separation of powers?

But the NRA got significant concessions.

(Hanging together vs. tough love blog post being written right now)

I don’t like it either, but that’s what the law is currently.

Most bills find their way to the Thomas site shortly after submission. The problem is to sort the wheat from the chaff. Most bills filed have no chance of passing. Some might be added as riders to massive appropriations bills; members vote on them without reading them. But given a bill number, you can usually find the text.

Where are you finding the full text of the bill? I haven’t seen it anywhere except an excerpt on Hardy’s site.

If we’re going to let the same group who says that a shoestring is a machine gun also say who and who is not mentally unqualified to own a firearm, we are in big trouble.

Heh.

Oh and everyone needs to go to therapy, or at least try some kind of legal chemical enhancement to get themselves over life’s little rough spots.

Oh and we really need to have some sort of state sponsored Hillary-care to take care of everyone. That’s a right. Oh and don’t worry about privacy, we’ll just prosecute the holy hell out of anyone that does anything like that, right Tgirsch?

Mark Klein’s leak about NSA’s network monitoring hardware used to spy on American citizens. AKA Room 641A (PDF)

We’re from the government and we’ll never misuse your private medical records.

Census Bureau data misused to help round up American citizens of Japanese descent

And remember kids, meth = bad, prescribed Ritalin = good.

It seems that the WaPo wants violent felons to get their right to vote back*, but they want people who get convicted of assault against a domestic partner (which could be as simple as tossing a glass of water in someone’s face and a call to 911) to lose their rights to effective self-protection forever.

The Post even gets it right with the minority angle, historically using minor infractions to purge the voter rolls in teh southern states. Why they can’t see the exact same bias with early “gun control” laws is beyond me.

* And please note that the title of this story is “Why Can’t Ex-Felons Vote?”. Yea, ex-felons. Well ex-felons can vote, except the ranks of ex-felons include Mark Rich and Bill Clinton’s brother. Pardon me.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks.

That means that the NRA really did get “significant concessions” OR that the WaPo is spreading the NRA’s talking points.

Far from being the standard mischief, the thought that the WaPo is the NRA’s propaganda arm is like snowflakes in hell.

The initial section of the bill is mildly amusing. It seems that out of 49 million firearms sales reported to NICS, 916 thousand, or 1.9 per cent, were denied. How many of the denials were legitimate, rather than cases of mistaken identity, is not reported. (Before I obtained my Texas CHL, I was routinely delayed by NICS, purportedly because I have a common name.) How many persons denied by NICS were prosecuted is not reported, but zero is the most likely number. The purpose of the law is merely to harass the law-abiding.