Gun Control and the Elastic Meaning of “Transfer”- Colorado Court Moves the Needle - Ammoland.com - READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE!!!

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- One of the laws championed by the gun-grabbing crowd is the so-called universal background check, in which private sales of firearms are subjected to a criminal background check, fees, and paperwork. What gun control advocates fail to make clear, though, is that their concept of “sale” extends to firearm “transfers,” being gifts, loans and any other transaction, regardless of how temporary, where possession but not ownership of the firearm changes.

A failed background check initiative in Maine adopted a definition of “transfer” that meant “to sell, furnish, give, lend, deliver or otherwise provide with or without consideration.” The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR), which drafted the law in Washington State, defined a “transfer” as the “intended delivery of a firearm to another person without consideration of payment or promise of payment including, but not limited to, gifts and loans.” The proponents of the Maine law misleadingly packaged the initiative as one that applied “to private sales.” WAGR likewise maintained that “simply handing someone your gun … is not a transfer” under their language, and scoffed that concerns about the law applying to temporary transfers between law-abiding gun owners were farfetched fear-mongering over “invented scenarios.” After the WAGR-drafted law was passed, it became obvious that opponents were correct and it did apply to “simply handing someone” a gun, as instructors and students in hunter safety classes for the state’s fish and wildlife department quickly learned.

The elastic concept of “transfer” was stretched even further in a Colorado criminal case, People v. Johnson, No. 18CA1212, 2021 COA 102 (Colo. Ct. App. July 29, 2021).

A state law on straw purchasing, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-12-111(1), provides that “[a]ny person who knowingly purchases or otherwise obtains a firearm on behalf of or for transfer to a person who the transferor knows or reasonably should know is ineligible to possess a firearm” commits a felony.

Click the link to READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE!!!!!:   Colorado Court Moves the Needle