Let’s talk about Rep Dan Goldman’s (D) great idea
(NB: As of Jan 19th, this tweet has been removed from Goldman’s timeline. Thousands of people called him out, and he earned at least one community note.)
https://twitter.com/RepDanGoldman/status/1747309037912264939
Aside from the fact that Goldman – the epitome of privileged, rich white guy – doesn’t apparently know what a layaway is (hint: it’s not “buy now, pay later”), there are several layers of egregiousness with this scheme. What appears at first glance merely to be sheer stupidity actually has a few layers of genuine deviousness.
The surface layer is simple economic discrimination; by preventing financing, they’re suggesting that poor people who can’t afford a gun outright also can’t be trusted with a gun. There is no way to hide this as anything but classism, and it probably accurately reflects the Democrat view of voters overall – low-income people are simple feeders for votes, but they’re not actual people.
Underneath that is the hubris of trying to tell people what they’re “allowed” to buy and how. Injecting false morality into rulemaking is no different than using religion to dictate laws. While beliefs and faith can and should help guide difficult decisions, they must not be an excuse for avoiding intellectual review on the basis that some holy politician has a direct connection with their creator. Using terms like “meant for” implies a superior knowledge, but it merely reflects disdain for opposing views and a fear of critical thinking.
These two layers could be considered simple bigotry, easy to laugh off with a smirk. Unfortunately, the next layer is the real problem.
How would such a limitation be enforced? By federal law, it turns out. The scheme includes making it illegal for LENDERS to allow transactions, not individuals. Lenders would be liable for $100,000 fines for every transaction. That means there would be a federal code attached to firearms sales, so not only would you be denied the loan or credit, you would also be on record as attempting to make a firearms purchase completely aside from any registry.
The point of this approach is to avoid constitutionality issues. After all, the individual is not prevented from obtaining a firearm at all; the lender is prohibited from extending credit. While rational people recognize this as an infringement, at the transactional level it’s not strictly a prohibition on purchase, only on mode of payment. It’s not clear what legal structures are in place to allow this legislation, but it is clear that many financial service providers are more than happy to abuse your rights even without sound legal backing.
A few years ago, there was a voluntary movement within banking circles to create a new transaction ID that tagged firearms and related purchases. The idea was that vendors would adopt this tag so that lenders and creditors could monitor such purchases. Fortunately, it was never adopted though a few companies did create those tags. Financial orgs appear to be leaning into the idea of becoming tools for partisan politics, which invites questions about what they get in return. Possibly less oversight? Or merely ‘protection’ from audits, perhaps?
What we’re talking about is pure malice. Not only is the core assumption that guns cause people to use them for murder and that poor people are more likely to be mass shooters, but even worse is the effort involved in circumventing civil rights protections that include everything from circuit and US Supreme Court rulings right up to the actual language vested in the founding document of our nation. Language that was literally written at the birth of the nation, forming a core principle of our freedoms.
In other words, this proposal is literal economic terrorism. Representative Goldman is recommending war against civil rights.
Truly Unpopular 