The best way to sum up UBCs is that they are designed to change the definition of possession of a firearm from the current definition used by BATFE and pretty much everyone with more than three working brain cells — “ownership” — to “physical possession” of the firearm.

Example 1:

I own a firearm, say a nice Glock 19. I know I own the firearm because 1) I paid for it and 2) it was transferred to me by an FFL dealer. ..you ask to se my new Glock 19. Sure. I take it out of the safe and hand it to you. You ponder it for a few minutes, say, “Wow! It’s a Glock!” and hand it back to me.

Under sane laws, there was clearly no transfer of ownership of the Glock 19. I did not offer to sell it to you; you didn’t not offer to buy it; no filthy lucre changed hands. However, under the universal background check proposals that are being tossed around, in the above situation both my guest and I would be guilty of federal felonies:

  1. By handing my friend the Glock, my friend and I have executed a “transfer,” which under UBC laws can only be done by an FFL dealer. We are both guilty of an illegal transfer, even though there was no change of ownership of the firearm.
  2. When my friend hands me the gun back, we are now guilty of another illegal transfer.

Example 2:

Let’s say you and your spousal unit are not married but share a home…while you are not home there is an attempted break-in and your spousal unit picks up the bedside gun to defend himself or herself. Well, if the gun is yours, that is, if it was transferred to you through your FFL or has been in your ownership for a long time, your spousal unit is guilty of a federal felony and could well do more time in the slam than the person breaking in.

 

Example 3:

It gets worse…much worse. The original Bloomberg-drafted law was so broad that even if you have a person house-sitting, or you are military and deployed, and your guns are all in a safe where the person minding your house does not have the combination, an illegal transfer — one for every gun in the safe — is deemed to have taken place. Notice that there has been no change in ownership and, in fact, the person minding the house does not have access to the guns…just by being on the property of the gun owners, the house-minder is now guilty of a federal felony.

 

Read it All