=========
=========
Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
=========
=========

The Democrats who control the House of Representatives are poised to bring the Bipartisan Background Checks Act (HR 8) and the Enhanced Background Checks Act (HR 1112) to floor votes:

The House is expected to vote on HR 8 and HR 1112 by Friday, which would require a background check for nearly every firearm purchase and a 10-day waiting period for firearm sales, respectively. While neither bill specifically calls for a national gun registry, GOP lawmakers argue neither could be enforced without a federal database in place.

The increased waiting period would give the federal government longer to perform the criminal background checks, which are sometimes not completed within the three days allowed under current law; if the checks are still incomplete after ten days — and that’s ten business days, not calendar days — then the feds get another ten business days in which to do so. Were I a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect that any Administration under a Democratic president would routinely take the full twenty days.

The Democrats, of course, think that this is just Common Sense Gun Control, to allow cooling off periods, to give the government more time to make sure that the bad guys don’t get their hands on firearms, something not meant to infringe on our constitutional rights, of course, but to reduce the danger to individuals and society.

But if ten-to-twenty days for the federal government to review applications to purchase firearms is simple common sense, and would prevent real tragedies, just think about the tragedy which could have been prevented if only we had Common Sense Press Control!

The Washington Post sued by family of Covington Catholic teenager

By Paul Farhi | February 20, 2019

The family of the Kentucky teen who was involved in an encounter with a Native American advocate at the Lincoln Memorial last month filed a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Tuesday, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of the incident.

The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump. Sandmann was one of a number of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats during a trip to the Mall when they encountered Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

News accounts, including in The Post, and videos of their encounter sparked a heated national debate over the behavior of the participants.

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint.

It added, “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

There’s more at the link.

It didn’t take long for the media’s original take on the Covington Catholic story to get ‘corrected,’ as the longer videos were made available, showing that Mr Sandmann and his schoolmates were not the aggressors in this incident, but that it was Nathan Phillips who got in their faces, not the other way around. Had The Washington Post and the other credentialed media sources been required to submit their stories to the federal government for a ten-day review period, they’d have had the time to get the stories correct, and the Covington Catholic students would not have been injured by the erroneous stories so quickly published. It would have even been a benefit to the Post — or at least the Post’s insurance company — by keeping them from having published slanderous stories.

That’s hardly the only case. The famous “Comey Letter” was sent to Congress eleven days prior to the 2016 election, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has blamed that event for her unanticipated defeat; others have done so as well.  A ten business days ‘waiting period,’ under common sense media control, would have prevented the media from publishing the existence and text of the Comey letter until November 10, 2016, in which time the stories could have been fully vetted to not only note the second letter, dated November 6^th, which stated, “Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July.” November 10^th was two days after the election.

Surely, surely! the left should see the tremendous value and benefit to our society from common sense media control! And if imposing a ten business day waiting period on one of our constitutional rights is reasonable, then it would be just as reasonable to impose such on other constitutional rights.

Right?

Of course, it’s not just the left who should appreciate the common sense of the ten business day waiting period; think of how it would help protect society in other ways. Persons taking the Fifth Amendment would be compelled to testify against themselves until the feds had completed the ten-day review to see if they would be allowed to exercise that right. Malefactors’ residences could be searched without the necessity of obtaining a warrant because they would have to wait ten days to be free from such searches. Illegal immigrants could simply be shipped back out of the United States, without any hearings, as long as it was done very promptly. Even so-called “anchor babies” could be shipped out, without obtaining citizenship, as long as they were gone within ten days.

Clearly, the Democrats are onto something good and wise with HR 1112, and it should be approved!
_________________________________
Cross-posted on The First Street Journal.