Rep. Maxwell Frost was the first member of March For Our Lives to be elected to Congress. This was a big deal for the organization and as the first Gen Z member of the House of Representatives, there’s a lot of pressure on him to lay the groundwork for the rest of his age category.
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To be honest, though, he hasn’t exactly been impressive so far.
Last week, for example, we got to deal with him going on about “zombie guns,” which might be the most unintentionally cool name for a category of gun that never existed before. I only assume they’re particularly adept at headshots.
If he did nothing else, that would be enough to make him look like an idiot. However, he’s not remotely finished making a fool of himself.
Much like an over-21 sibling or relative buying alcohol on behalf of their below-21 friends or relatives, people will purchase firearms on behalf of people not legally permitted to own one, known as “straw purchasers.” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) has introduced a bill aimed at hampering this phenomenon by punishing gun sellers who enable straw purchasers, saying it would “get to the root of the problem and hold gun retailers accountable for their part in enabling straw purchasing and for the pain and hurt they inflict on our people.”
Named the Prevent Illegal Gun Resales Act, the bill would tighten license application requirements and increase licensing fees. Additionally, Rep. Frost’s Act would include definitions for “high-risk dealers” who have had a known violation or warning from authorities within three years, had guns lost or stolen within the last year, and if firearms used in crime could be traced back to their store.
Other provisions would require the modernization of recordkeeping and an increase in security measures, such as keeping a gun store’s stock in a safe after hours, designed to prevent theft.
Rep. Frost also cited a statistic showing that 90 percent of gun crime is enabled by 5 percent of gun dealers who do not adequately counter straw purchasers. In 2015, Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) repeated the claim. However, the Arizona Republic ruled the claim inconclusive because the original data was from 1998, and no new data has been collected.
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This isn’t surprising considering how often anti-gunners like Frost hold onto old statistics that just happen to benefit them in some way, shape, or form.
Yet we need to remember a few facts that Frost is either unaware of or thinks that everyone else is unaware of.
First, knowingly making a straw purchase is a crime, as is knowingly facilitating it. We’ve seen cases where gun dealers knowingly did so and were prosecuted. As a result, there’s absolutely no need for this bill even if you think the issue is a serious one. There are already laws on the books for this.
Second, Frost wants to put gun dealers on a list because they were victims. If a store is the subject of a theft, he wants to put them on a list as “high-risk dealers” without any regard to the facts of the case. I’ve looked at a lot of gun store burglaries. How is a dealer supposed to prevent someone from crashing a car in through the front door? How is it his fault if someone smashes through the cinderblock wall with a sledgehammer?
This is victim blaming and we do not allow it elsewhere in our legal system, and for good reason.
“But they’d have to keep it in a safe after hours.”
And who is going to pay for that? Oh, they all have safes, sure, but look at the total amount of inventory in an average gun store. Now think about how many people are working there at a given time. One or two people are going to move hundreds of rifles into and out of the safe without there being a cost associated with it?
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Then we have those going on the same list simply because a gun was traced to the store.
When dealers sell a gun, they lose all control over what happens with that gun. If I buy it, then my gun is stolen, why should that dealer end up on a list because my gun was stolen? Hardly.
Frost is an extreme leftist who favors things like the Green New Deal and emptying our prisons. The fact that he always wants to screw ver gun dealers is, at least, on-brand for him.
Yet all it does is make it much easier to recognize that the burning stupid behind his “zombie gun” thing isn’t an isolated incident of idiocy.
