But here, too, the devil is in the details. Toomey-Manchin requires a background check for transfers “pursuant to an advertisement.” What does that mean? Would a listing on a church bulletin board or hunting club’s e-mail list qualify? Does it matter whether the buyer saw the advertisement? The answers to these questions matter because a mistake would render the transfer illegal and could lead to jail time.
Toomey-Manchin also tasks the attorney general with enacting regulations that define its specifics, which means potential sellers would probably consult the final legislation as well as the Code of Federal Regulations to steer clear of risks. At that point, of course, most people would do the transfer through a licensed dealer. The bill hints at this likely result by including a carve-out for transfers among certain family members — an exception that would be superfluous if the bill were expected to work as drafted.
Like the Reid bill, Toomey-Manchin imposes what amounts to a tax on many private transfers of firearms by requiring them to go through a dealer, who presumably would expect to be paid. It allows the market to set the price, but the rush to legislate has precluded attempts to evaluate this burden, whether it would vary by region or whether alternatives might prove less onerous.
There are also privacy concerns. Currently, background-check records must be destroyed within 24 hours, preventing that data from being used for other purposes. But the Reid bill and Toomey-Manchin make exceptions for private transfers, and the latter also eliminates standard privacy protections for mental-health records used in the background check system; the attorney general would be allowed to use them for any purpose.
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