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It is more correctly termed the “private sale exception”.Quick(ish) background in U.S. Federal gun law (if this is nothing new to you, skip to the bold text about halfway down). Two major laws in 1968, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act and the Gun Control Act, restricted interstate trade in firearms based on the Federal government’s Commerce Clause powers. The GCA established a licensing scheme, the Federal Firearms License, for those who made a living having to do with making, transporting or selling firearms, and the OCCSSA prohibited any interstate transfer of firearms, with the subsequent GCA re-legalizing transfers between FFL holders and additionally requiring firearms manufacturers to initially transfer their newly-manufactured guns to an FFL-licensed dealer before they can be sold at retail (different license types; a manufacturer license allows you to make but not sell and a dealer license just the opposite). It also heavily restricted imports of firearms using a “points” system specifically targeting small handguns, and, perhaps most germane to our discussion, it criminalized any sale, gift, or other permanent transfer of a firearm to anyone the transferor (seller, giver) knows or has reasonable cause to believe is a convicted felon.Now, that’s all well and good, until you try to actually enforce any of this. One of the biggest problems is that we do not tattoo “CONVICTED FELON” on the foreheads of convicted felons; something about the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, possibility of wrongful conviction and exoneration, the possibility and imperfect nature of tattoo removal, etc. Even the most advanced background check systems available to police were often not available to FFLs, and in the minority of cases where they were, they only covered that one state. It was therefore very hard for an FFL to demonstrate any due diligence in making sure their buyer wasn’t a felon, and if they did there were so many holes in the system that it was still a crap shoot whether a customer had a clean record. These laws were also ambiguous in several ways, like not defining who is “engaged in the business of firearms” and therefore needs an FFL, or what is or isn’t an “interstate transfer” of a firearm that requires an FFL to be involved in moving it; in the absence of clear definitions, the ATF got to fill in the blanks, and court challenges tended to go in predictable ways based on the ideology regarding guns in the local populace.The Firearm Owner’s Protection Act of 1986, or FOPA, is lampooned by many gun owners for its inclusion of the Hughes Amendment which bans all civilian sales of machine guns manufactured after May 1986, but if you look past that it did do a lot to actually protect gun owners. A “peaceable journey” provision made it clear that it was legal to cross state lines with a gun if you were travelling from anywhere you could lawfully possess it, to anywhere else you could lawfully possess it, and the gun was unloaded and in a locked case or separate area of the vehicle inaccessible to passengers. It also clarified that “engaged in the business of firearms” definitely does not apply to “occasional sales or trades in furtherance of a hobby or casual interest in firearms”. Still ambiguous, but easier to demonstrate that you weren’t running a gun shop out of your garage, as long as you didn’t have a sign over your garage saying “Buy/Sell/Trade Guns & Ammo”. Lastly, it contained other clarifications of terms and explicit limitations on their applicability which the ATF had been abusing to put people in prison for technical violations, like paperwork typos, not made in a malicious manner.However, the “knew or reasonably should have known the other guy was a felon” language of the GCA remained a problem both for gun dealers and the ATF. Where judges and juries leaned pro-gun, crooked FFLs walked, and where sentiment leaned anti-gun, honest business owners lost their license, their freedom and their gun rights because they sold to a guy whose rap sheet from three states over could never have been obtained by that FFL at the time, but in hindsight looks pretty obvious to a jury. The lack of a standard, nationally-available way to prove gun sellers were doing their due diligence remained a problem into the 90s.Enter the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, aka the “Brady Bill”. Background checks became mandatory for all sales of firearms involving or mediated by an FFL, which includes all sales of newly-manufactured guns, all interstate sales, and any resales of trade-ins or consignment sales brokered by the FFL regardless of the location of the gun’s previous owner. The Brady Bill also increased the criteria that made someone a “prohibited person”, including not just felons but drug addicts, legally insane persons, those involuntarily committed to a mental institution, non-citizens (exceptions for legal permanent residents). The Lautenberg Amendment would add domestic violence offenders to the list of prohibited persons in 1996.The Brady Act required all states to make their criminal records and other records of disqualifying statuses accessible to FFLs, and originally mandated a 3-day waiting period, which would be used by the gun owner to call around to all 51 legal jurisdictions in the U.S.. The NRA said “uh-uh”, and instead negotiated for the creation of a call center run by the FBI and connected to the FBI’s “Interstate Identification Index” and “National Criminal Information Center” databases maintained at a facility in West Virginia. This new “National Instant Check System”, or NICS, gave gun dealers a tool they could use to find information from all 50 states, DC, the Federal Department of Justice and Department of Defense criminal records that indicate the person is disqualified from owning or possessing a gun, and it made that information available on a while-you-wait basis.Once this system came fully online in 1998, the 3-day wait was dropped, and instead it became a crime for FFLs not to use it; transfers without a clean NICS check, or any other proof of a clean criminal/mental background as the States may see fit to provide or require, are a felony whether the person’s clean or not. The benefit is that if an FFL uses the system, it says “proceed", and it turns out the guy is actually prohibited, the seller is legally covered (which has unfortunately happened, most notably in the case of Devin Kelley, the Sutherland Springs church shooter, who passed at least three background checks despite a court-martial conviction for domestic violence resulting in a BCD).And now, we get to your question. FFLs are required to use NICS to vet their customers. However, those not “engaged in the business of firearms”, selling just one or two from their personal collection to another person that lives in the same state they do, do not have to use this system, and in fact the NICS system cannot be accessed by anyone without an FFL.This is the “private sale loophole”; one person who doesn’t buy and sell firearms as a reliable source of income can sell a firearm to another person living in the same state who also doesn’t deal in them for a living, and while it’s still a huge no-no for both people if the “transferee” receiving the firearm is a known prohibited person, a background check is not explicitly required in this case under Federal law. Most “private sales” are face-to-face transactions with no connection to an organized gun-related event.It’s commonly called the “gun show loophole” because of the mistaken impression that gun shows work like swap meets or flea markets, where people just show up and buy/sell/trade with each other. In reality they are little more than a collection of remote locations for local gun stores, and as FFLs those booth operators must still vet every buyer when selling an actual firearm, therefore better than 95% of all sales that occur at gun shows are vetted.The criticism, of course, is that anyone denied a gun purchase from a gun store because they failed their background check can just go find someone on Craigslist that is selling a gun, show up, hand over the cash and they have a gun. The lack of vetting of private sales also further enables “straw purchases”, where people who can possess guns legally buy them, and then turn around and sell/give them to people who can’t pass a NICS check. Even if caught, the “transferor” can plausibly say they didn’t and couldn’t know the guy was bad news*. Straw buys are believed to account for about 30% of all guns used in violent crime, second only to stolen guns (most of those also suspected of being straw buys with the “theft” being legal cover), so it’s a pretty big deal.Why don’t these transactions require a background check? Good question. Reasons:The bulk of Federal gun law, other than the NFA, rests on the Federal government’s powers to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. Several notable Supreme Court cases have increased the scope of these powers considerably**, however there are still limits. The question of Congress’s control over sales between two private citizens within one state (neither in nor affecting interstate commerce) has not been considered recently enough to take some notable Commerce Clause-related rulings like Gonzalez v. Raich into account, and it remains an open question whether intrastate private sales fall under Federal scope of authority under any combination of its enumerated powers. So far, Congress and the ATF have been unwilling to test these waters for fear of being rebuffed by SCOTUS, which would likely have broader implications on the Feds’ powers in general.More practically, as of its creation, the Internet was still relatively young, and service-based data interchange still a new concept. Now, of course, almost everything on the Internet has a service-based API, but in the mid-90s and even for a decade thereafter, the best available method for FFLs to access NICS was a call center, meaning it needs human staff taking calls, inputting information relayed verbally from the 4473 by the FFL and verbally giving the results of the check.For a “customer base” of 140,000 FFLs ranging in frequency from a couple calls a week to several a day, that’s manageable. Up until the runup to the 2008 election, new gun sales averaged about 3 million a year, which is about 8,250 calls a day, 820 an hour in a 10-hour day, each call takes about 15 minutes, so a call center pool of about 200 people can keep pace. The Feds have much larger call centers than that for the IRS, VA, USDA etc, and by the time gun purchases ramped up significantly in the Obama Administration, many FFLs had software that interfaced with “eNICS”, an online version of the NICS call-in that reduces turnaround time.For 70 million gun owners that would need to call in every time they sell, lend or gift a gun to a person not explicitly exempted by the law, a system plenty large enough for the FFL user base, even with the current electronic supplement, would quickly grind to a complete halt beginning around mid-September and continuing through January, as a combination of deer season and the holidays create a perfect storm of firearms transfers.Even with more modern communications channels allowing very high volume of requests and high rate of data transfer, in information security terms, NICS is an “oracle"; a source of information from “beyond”, useful for purposes beyond its intent including direct contravention of the very system the oracle is a part of. As just one example, all you need is a list of names, addresses, DOBs and POBs, and if you have NICS access and sufficient time/bandwidth to run them through, you now know who among those people can legally own a gun and who cannot. This circumvents the intent of the system from being used on a case by case basis for actual potential buyers, to become a means of publicly exposing people the government has some really good reason to deny buying a gun. Various media outlets have already shown themselves to be willing and able to abuse online databases in “doxxing” stories about people or issues of public interest, and guns are nothing if not an issue of public interest.Logistically, the 4473 form currently used by FFLs as proof they did their due diligence is identity theft on a silver platter. Full legal name, address, date of birth, place of birth, SSN/TIN, height, weight, gender and ethnicity; with a photo of a person roughly meeting those appearance criteria, you could take out a mortgage in that person’s name. FFLs are required by law to safeguard this information for a minimum of 20 years before it can be destroyed, the methods of safeguarding require physical and information security similar to financial and educational institutions, and they have a lot to lose if they fail in any way. Extended to private sales, you're now requiring that same level of protection of buyer information for everyone wishing to sell a firearm face-to-face, and there weren't any very good options to make that more convenient at the time the law was drafted.Enforcement of the existing law against buyers and sellers alike is really lax. In 2017, 8,606,286 NICS transactions were performed. Of those, 112,090 were denied, the most common reason being for criminal conviction, something you’re not likely to legitimately not know about. However, only 12,710 of those denials were investigated by the ATF, and just 12 were successfully prosecuted. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Sutherland Springs, the US Armed Forces JAG divisions ran an audit of courts-martial convictions, and found over 4,000 cases with dispositions that should have been reported but weren’t. That represents more than 6 entire calendar years’ worth of all cleared courts-martial cases across all five service branches under the UCMJ. So the JAG office wasn’t just missing a few disqualifying reports making Kelley’s omission a one-off; it wasn’t even trying. Various State Departments of Justice/Corrections ran similar audits and found more reporting gaps. So, if you’ve been convicted of a disqualifying crime since NICS went online, depending on jurisdiction, the odds may well be better that you’ll pass the background check than to be prosecuted for failing it.I mentioned a few points back that some people or situations would be “exempt” from this check even if it were “universalized”. That’s because any requirement that NICS be consulted every time a firearm changes hands between any two people is ludicrously impractical. People try out other people’s guns on the range all the time; I own guns, you own guns, so we must have passed our most recent background checks and not given the police any reason to round em up since, therefore the odds are pretty damn good neither of us is a felon, crazy, wife-beater etc. Other common exemptions are transfers between immediate family (how “immediate” depends on the exact law; spouses and children of the owner are generally gimmes, but I’ve seen state UBC laws where grandfather-grandchild is OK but uncle-nephew is not), between holders of state CCWs (the permit, especially the fact you still have it in your possession, is pretty solid proof in most states that you’re not even suspected of a potentially-disqualifying crime), at any time while under the owner’s direct supervision, and a few others that generally have too low a chance for abuse to justify how often a check would be needed if required. So, even “universal” background checks wouldn’t be.So, while we have the technology now to vet people from pretty much anywhere we have cell signal, and to provide mathematically provable authentic records of sale, these are developments that entered widespread use long after the Brady Bill was drafted.Since that time, those advocating for increased gun control tipped their hand to gun rights advocates a few times too many, primarily with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban which passed a year after the Brady Bill. The debate over the AWB, and at other times during the Clinton Administration, gave gun rights advocates some doozies in the quote department from gun control supporters, which give the lie in gun owners’ eyes to pretty much any statement made since that attempts to be any less extreme in goals or that describe proposals as “reasonable” or “common sense”. When gun owners have documented attributable quotes straight out of the mouths of sitting Congresspersons that they would pass broad outright bans if they could, that it’s not about crime, and that the master plan is a step-by-step increase in restrictions to get to a point where most or all guns are banned, it’s really hard to get gun owners to the table to talk about “this little piece of the puzzle that’s totally reasonable and common sense”.So, as a result, gun owners, and the representatives in Congress who know these people tend to be pretty motivated voters***, are fairly unilaterally opposed to any further gun control, including expansion of NICS and other background checks. Some, like myself, are willing to negotiate on a quid pro quo basis within the topic of gun laws; we might trade an agreeable implementation of universal background checks**** for, say, national reciprocity and deregulation of certain NFA categories like suppressors. Others, more hard-line, “want their damn cake back - all of it”.These sentiments have stymied pretty much any effort by gun control advocates to get anything new passed at the Federal level since the AWB expired in 2004, including any reform of background check requirements. The only thing that comes to mind that’s had enough support from gun owners to get through Congress is the Fix NICS Act, passed back in March 2018 in the wake of Sutherland Springs, which imposes actual penalties on State and Federal agencies and their management when NICS records for which they’re responsible are found to be out of date, incomplete or wrong. That Act’s primary opposition came from Senate Democrats including Dianne Feinstein, who threatened to kill it if it went to the floor coupled with an act forcing national reciprocity of concealed carry permits (which was the two-bill package deal that passed the House).Can we get there? Probably. But there are hurdles to overcome on both sides; skepticism from gun owners that gun control advocates won’t see an inch given and try to take a mile, and a lack of sympathy towards gun owners from gun control advocates who do not own guns and likely never will, and therefore will never have to jump through any existing hoops to say nothing of new ones. Really, I think the ball’s in the gun control advocates’ court; at a high level, the onus is on them to break the impasse by making some overt, material effort to convince gun owners that preserving gun owners’ rights under the Second Amendment is a priority and not just lip service to flip a couple moderate votes for another restriction. We definitely are not there yet.* IMHO, the primary difficulty in combating straw purchases is that it’s not a crime to have your property stolen. So, anyone suspected of a straw buy just has to say they bought it and then had it stolen by their live-in boyfriend who has dropped off the face of the earth, and of course they had no idea he was a member of the South Side Crips, and the prosecutor has to be able to conclusively disprove one of those two things to overcome reasonable doubt.** Wickard v. Filburn, decided in 1942, held that the Commerce Clause applied to actions affecting interstate commerce as well as those actually involving interstate commerce. Scarborough v. U.S. in 1977, held that regulation of things in or affecting interstate commerce does not have to be closely related in time or scope to the situation in which the article entered or affected commerce; the Feds have authority to regulate anything that has ever crossed state lines for business purposes from that moment until the thing ceases to exist as such. U.S. v. Lopez in 1995 further codified the ways in which an activity can fall under Commerce Clause powers in a three-prong test; if a law regulates or restricts something that actually moves or has moved across state lines, is of a kind that moves across state lines, or significantly affects interstate commerce while not moving in it itself, it’s a valid use of Commerce Clause powers. Gonzales v. Raich in 2005 then held that not only can the Feds use Commerce Clause powers to regulate what does move, has moved or in any way affects interstate commerce, it can also use the Necessary and Proper Clause in combination with the Commerce Clause to regulate things in situations where none of the first three apply, when and to the degree it is “necessary and proper” to do so in the course of enforcing the law in other situations definitely falling into one of those categories.*** The passage of the Brady Act and AWB are generally considered major factors in the GOP winning a bicameral Congressional majority in 1996 for the first time in 40 years, and the first sustained majority since the New Deal. It put legislators on notice that gun owners had more political clout than anyone was willing to admit at the time, and accompanied a “red wave” at the state level which among other things resulted in significant relaxation of ownership and carry laws in most states outside New England and California.**** What’s “agreeable” depends on whom you ask, but a good start is no centralized repository of records (under FOPA, neither State nor Federal governments can be the custodian of persistent records of firearm purchase or ownership because that is a “registry”, though State governments have given FOPA the middle finger pretty much since it was passed), no major long-term identity theft risks from the paperwork involved (name, address and DL# as of the time of sale would be enough for the police to find the next link in the chain, not enough to open a credit card), and not requiring every sale to be FFL-mediated (which would hopelessly clog gun stores with transfer mediation requests, and is a de facto ban on private sales as the FFL might as well be handling a consignment sale).

A Yankee aircraft carrier for the QueenUnited States provided its British ally with military hardware, logistical support and intelligence, which helped the British victory in the South Atlantic conflict.The offering of aircraft carriers to Britain, even if the offers were not accepted, shows that the Americans were willing to take their commitment to the limit.In this essay the negotiations involving the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Iwo Jima with its scope and limitations, are fully disclosed.The embassy party:On May 3, 1982, Sir Nicholas Henderson, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States, was hosting a party, which was taking place in the embassy grounds (1). Senior US government officials, including Alexander Haig and Caspar Weinberger, were present."Nico", as he was known, had been a career diplomat since 1946. although he retired in 1979 (2). Nico had been called especially by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher to cover the strategic embassy in Washington, where he was surprised by the crisis over the Falkland Islands.Although he was considered somewhat eccentric (a very British character), Nico was considered to have had the experience enough to deal with the turbulence that the conflict generated in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States, after presiding over the embassies to Poland, Germany and France, in addition to extensive contacts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the powerful FCO - Foreign and Commonwealth Office).Washington initially tried to act as a mediator, commissioning General Alexander Haig (the Secretary of State) for the negotiations. While this was happening within the US government, the positions that were expressed (mainly) by Jeane Kirkpatrick (i.e. the US ambassador to the UN) who was about to preserve the relationship with Argentina, as well as the other Latin American countries, and antagonistically clashed with the position of Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense).It is good to remember that, from the beginning, the United States was not impartial as, even when it tried to mediate, the USA provided logistics, communications and other points of support for the British forces; Weinberger channeled much of the US aid to the UK.By 30th April it was clear that no common ground would be reached so the USA abandoned its initial position and made explicit its support for the British cause. Henderson knew he wouldn't have much time to talk to Weinbergerat at the embassy party. The main task entrusted to it by the FCO, at that time, was to get the United States to prevent Argentine imports: given the intense commercial relationship, it was understood that this would financially stifle Argentina and would be one more reason for it to abandon its position in Falklands. The day before, Sunday 2nd May, Francis Pym (the head of the FCO) had been visiting Alexander Haig in Washington which involved spending two hours in the morning in a private meeting, without any adviser (3) or prying ears. In the economic sphere, Pym had asked for Argentine imports to be banned as the countries of the European Economic Community had already done (4). He even made it clear that Prime Minister Thatcher was thinking of sending a personal letter to Ronald Reagan (the President of the United States), making the same point (5).Also Pym had mentioned (among many other subjects) that if the British military operations were prolonged, the problem of the air cover of the fleet could be exacerbated. Although he did not mention any aircraft carriers, he pointed out to Haig that he could be thinking about a solution to that question6.Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr. signs the guest book aboard USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. August 1983. Photo: Department of Defense, USA.Anyway, Henderson's central problem that day was clearly to continue his boss's talks and to cut off imports from our country. With that issue in mind, he took Caspar Weinberger, the Anglophile, aside.Weinberger was very receptive but he did not focus (it seems that in an obvious way, since he was the Secretary of Defense ...) on the economic problem that beset the Queen's ambassador. However, he did take the glove when it came to air protection for the Royal Navy.First of all, he stated that he was more than willing to provide full assistance to the British forces and, to the surprise of his interlocutor, indicated that he would like to know if he could send an aircraft carrier to the South Atlantic: (7) this could serve as a mobile landing strip for British forces. The limitation, according to Weinberger, would be that US forces would not engage Argentine forces, even though (it seems) US reconnaissance flights were implicitly authorized. Navy departing from said platform. (8)That aircraft carrier was the USS Eisenhower and, according to Weinberger in the gardens of the British Embassy in Washington, it was in the vicinity of Gibraltar and, in 15 days, it could be helping the British cause over the Falklands (9).For him, "having an aircraft carrier available as an alternative landing strip would be much more effective than anything that could be done in the area of ​​imports" (10).Certainly, it would be necessary to agree (11).The Ike:It was not the first time that, in relation to the Falklands, the CVN-69 USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (familiarly known as "Ike"), was in the thoughts of Secretary of Defense Weinberger.On 30th April, in a meeting of just under an hour, chaired by Reagan in the Cabinet Room of the White House (12), in which it was decided to turn to Great Britain, Weinberger reported on the plans of evacuation of US citizens and embassy staff in Buenos Aires.Possibly still influenced by the events in Tehran (Iran) a few years earlier, it indicated that the Eisenhower would support this operation, at that time off the coast of Tunisia, making it known that (at 22 knots) it would take about 15 days to arrive to the Argentine coasts (13).He also noted that the sensitive material had already been removed from the embassy and that, at any event and if things got complicated (that is, if the Argentines resisted the evacuation), nothing could be done except an invasion to large scale of the Argentine territory.While in Washington, at 10:30 am, the meeting ended and the US government prepared a press release concluding the mediation tasks, the Ike crew was walking through the port of Naples, Italy. (14) The fact is that, contrary to what Weinberger informed the president, the ship had arrived in Naples on 26th April, where it would remain until 1st May.The 101,000-ton (nuclear powered) Nimitz class aircraft carrier, still active today in the United States Navy, entered active service in 1977 and, by 1982, was one of the most modern and powerful ships in the fleet.USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) in exercise DRAGON HAMMER '90. Behind, the silhouette of the HMS Invincible can be distinguished. Photo: Department of Defense, USAShe had departed on January 5, 1982, from the Norfolk base (in the State of Virginia) for a tour of duty in the Mediterranean Sea. On January 17, already in season, it had replaced the USS Nimitz, then becoming the flagship of the Commander of Task Force 60, part of the Sixth Fleet. The force included, of course, escorts in the form of cruisers and destroyers, in addition to the ever-present and necessary logistics ships.Its mission, for the 1982 deployment, was to "provide embarked tactical airpower for the defense of American rights to the freedom of the sea, as well as to protect the sovereignty of the United States" (15) and its main means of achieving it was Embarked Air Wing No. 7 (CVW-7).It included F-14A "Tomcat" interceptors (VF-142 and VF-143 squadrons), A-7E "Corsair II" attack aircraft (VA-12 and VA-66) and A-6E "Intruder" (VA- 65), electronic warfare EA-6B "Prowler" (VAQ-132), anti-submarine S-3A "Viking" (VS-31), early warning aircraft E-2C "Hawkeye" (VAW-121), reconnaissance EA -3B "Skywarrior" as well as antisubmarine helicopters (VS-5, with Sea King) and other aerial means. All this implied about 90 fixed wing airpcraft and helicopters available to fulfill the assigned mission.At the time that the guests enjoyed the British embassy party (around 3rd May), the Eisenhower was in the Tyrrhenian Sea (also at a considerable distance from where Weinberger placed it), participating in the important amphibious exercise "Far Drum "(" Distant Drum "), along with other NATO ships and forces.By 17th May, the exercise ended the day before, he had already returned to Naples.The offer:On the afternoon of the 3rd, the offer of a Yankee aircraft carrier for the queen, via a telegram encrypted from Henderson by means of 16, was in London and in the offices of various officials and even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (17).Through various channels, an attempt was made to establish what it meant to have a North American aircraft carrier. That is, if the offer was from the carrier only, or with its air group embarked, or (the best scenario for the British) it also included the entire Battle Group.As later stated by Admiral Henry Leach, then First Lord of the Sea (head of the Royal Navy), the proposal was only for the aircraft carrier, empty of aircraft or even personnel (18). It would be the responsibility of the seafarers of Great Britain to operate it.This was really impractical: it would have taken a long time to learn to operate such a large and complex ship, there were not enough personnel and, above all, there were no fixed-wing aircraft in the British Navy that would make the presence of a aircraft carriers of that size in the theater of operations useful (19).As a detail, during the meeting at the embassy, ​​Henderson had asked Weinberger about his opinion that Blackburn Buccaneer attack planes, operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF), should take off from the Eisenhower. Weinberger had no problem, but the truth is that the problems would have been operational.Certainly, Buccaneers with RAF personnel had never flown from aircraft carriers, and it would have taken a considerable amount of time to train for embarked operations.As early as 4th May, Leach considered that he was (at that time) against the American proposal (20) and, later, Thatcher evaluated it as "more encouraging than practical" (21). Henderson then waited for an answer that never came and interpreted the silence as negative. Certainly, there was no urgency on the British side in acquiring a replacement carrier.A few hours later, Admiral John "Sandy" Woodward (in charge of the Carrier Group in the South Atlantic Theater of Operations) reported to London that an Exocet missile had hit HMS Sheffield, which was in danger of sinking (which happened days later).What if the next missile sank one of its carriers?The deploymentHMS Hermes and HMS Invincible were the two aircraft carriers deployed in the South Atlantic by British forces.The 24,000-ton Hermes had been launched as a light aircraft carrier in 1944, but was not completed until 1959, various design changes through (22). In 1977 it became a helicopter carrier and, three years later, it received minor modifications to be able to operate the Sea Harriers, with vertical take-off.The Invincible was smaller (16,000 tons), but much more modern, having entered service in June 1980 (23). The first of its kind, to be complemented by the Illustrious and the Ark Royal, was intended to be sold to Australia as soon as its twins were operational. Like the Hermes, it could only operate vertical take-off and landing planes, even though both had a bow ramp to facilitate the deflection of the aircraft with some horizontal movement.Both carriers were the most important vessels in the Task Force: their Sea Harrier aircraft provided anti-aircraft protection to all British forces and they were useful as a platform for Sea King helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and transport and they would also embark Harrier Gr.3 aircraft of the Royal Air Force, with a mainly ground attack mission.British Sea Harriers operating from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in October 1984. Photo: Department of Defense, USA.The two ships had been on alert for 4 hours since the early morning (British) of 2nd April before the main Argentine landing (24) had taken place and they sailed a few days later: the Invincible with 12 Sea Harriers from 801 Naval Air Squadron (and 40 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles), as well as the Hermes with 8 aircraft (800 Squadron) and 30 missiles. 33 more Sidewinders would go south with the RFA Resource (25).With very little difference, they made landfall on Ascension Island and then left for the waters of the Falkland Islands in order to obtain the total blockade of the islands (the maritime blockade was imposed by nuclear submarines on 12th April) and begin operations that would end. at the landing, by the amphibious force.According to estimates made in the middle of April (26), the aircraft carriers could remain in station only until the beginning of August, when there would be significant mechanical and logistical problems that would seriously affect their operational capacity.Given this problem and that "aircraft carriers were crucial for amphibious operations and for maintaining air and naval superiority" (27), amphibious operations could not be delayed until the end of May, as a limit.Woodward and the fleet headquarters at Northwood were very clear that "major damage to the Hermes or the Invincible ... would likely cause operations in the Falkland Islands to be abandoned" (28).Obviously, mechanical problems and wear from prolonged operations in adverse weather were much less than half the issue. The big problem, externalized since 4th May, was the Super Etendard and their Exocet missiles.New and old alternatives:With mechanical wear as the main problem in the head of the General Staff (that is, before the attack on Sheffield), HMS Illustrious (i.e. an Invincible class aircraft carrier) was considered as the natural successor to any one of the aircraft carriers in the South Atlantic.In mid-April, it was understood that it could be operating the first days of August, but with a limited capacity, as it would not have completed the sea trials or the adaptation of its crew (29) to the new ship by that date. These times were acceptable for the fleet, since it was not considered that the Argentine forces could significantly damage the aircraft carriers.The paradigm shift changed the degree of urgency to have a replacement aircraft carrier in the South AtlanticOn 12th May, a meeting of Chiefs of Staff considered three alternatives (30) to be able to maintain an air-naval force in the theater.The first alternative was to further advance the date of entry into service of the Illustrious, something that was underway and was, in practice, difficult to achieve, since it involved carrying out the work scheduled for almost a year in a few weeks. To make matters worse, it had been decided, given the already experienced anti-missile deficiencies, that the new aircraft carrier would carry Vulcan / Phalanx guns (which were provided by the United States on 14th May (31) which led to modifications to the original design and its consequent delays.So much so that, even with an important reinforcement of the naval and shipyard personnel to accelerate its construction, the "Lusty" (name given to the Illustrious in the Royal Navy) did not leave for Falkland waters until 2nd August (32).The second option involved reactivating HMS Bulwark, a helicopter carrier not so different from HMS Hermes (of the same Centaur class, modified in 1979 for the antisubmarine role). The ship had been inactive since April 1981 and had one of its boilers damaged by fire but it was still inspected (it was in Porstmouth) and evaluated for return to service.However, after a year of neglect (and the use of many of its parts to keep the Hermes operational), HMS Bulwark deterioration was enormous and its recovery (in a short period of time) was considered impossible.The last option involved procuring an aircraft carrier in a third country, which could be operated efficiently, and in a reasonable amount of time, by the Royal Navy.Considering that the only fixed-wing aircraft to operate on board the Royal Navy were vertical take-off (be it the Sea Harriers of the Fleet Air Arm or the Harriers of the Royal Air Force), it was only natural that they began to look at with interest to the amphibious ships of the United States, on which the more than similar AV-8A Harriers of the Marine Corps operated.The order for an amphibious platform was then placed directly from Navy to Navy, with the intervention of John F. Lehman (United States Secretary of the Navy) (33). With the request being made to the Second Fleet (with responsibility in the North Atlantic), it was estimated that the USS Iwo Jima would be the most suitable option for the British request (34).In service since 1961 and with 11,000 tons of displacement, the Iwo Jima was the first ship in the world designed exclusively to operate helicopters (35) and, since 1972, it had the necessary modifications to ship up to 12 Harriers of the Marines.A bow view of the USS Iwo Jima, in May 1979. Photo: Department of Defense, USA.The Iwo was in port (on the East Coast of the United States) and ready to go into operation. Given the reluctance of the US government to provide personnel to intervene in combat actions, "contractors" began to be identified (i.e. retired sailors with knowledge of the ship) who would embark on it as civilians under the orders of (limited) British personnel. (36). The system was no different than the Flying Tigers of China in World War II.The terms of the American offer were not, then, so different from those of the Eisenhower: just the ship, no escorts and no planes. The problem of making them sail and fight remained for the Royal Navy, even though in the latter case an ingenious alternative solution had been thought of in relation to the embarked personnel.Hostilities ended on June 14, with both British aircraft carriers operational (still with mechanical limitations) and, with it, the planned alternative never materialized.It is also worth mentioning that the advanced air base in San Carlos (RNAS Sheathbill according to the Royal Navy and RAF Port San Carlos for the British air force) was declared operational on June 2 (37). From there, with a 260-meter runway, planes and helicopters could operate and resupply (but not reload weapons).The construction of this base alleviated the urgency to obtain another naval platform and perhaps it did not continue to deepen in alternative plans to replace one of the aircraft carriers if it were damaged.In retrospectThe United States provided a variety of logistical assistance, as well as very accurate intelligence information, which allowed British forces to prevail in the battle in the South Atlantic.Carrier offers to Britain, even if they did not materialise, show that the USA was willing to push its task in the shadows to the limit.The Falklands War was a war that the UK could not lose and if the UK had been about to do so, her great ally would have immediately come to her aid.In other words, if the Argentine pieces were in a position to checkmate, it would be Uncle Sam who would kick the board.BibliographyENGLISH, Adrian y Watts, Anthony. Battle for the Falklands. Naval Forces. Londres. Osprey. 1982FREEDMAN, Sir Lawrence.The official history of the Falklands campaign.Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005.THATCHER, Margaret. The Downing Street Years. Harper Collins e-books. 2010.WEST, Nigel. The Secret War for the Falklands. Londres. Warner Books. 1998.WOODWARD, John F y Robinson, Patrick. One Hundred Days. Londres. Harper Collins Publishers. 2012.1 Henderson, Nicholas en ‘The Falklands War’, seminario llevado a cabo el 5 de junio de 2002 (Centre for Contemporary British History), 2005, p.64.2 Su informe final confidencial, fechado el 31 de marzo de 1979 y dirigido a Sir David Owen (Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores Británico del momento), acerca del declive británico, sus causas y consecuencias se filtró a la prensa y causó gran revuelo por su franqueza. Ver The Economist (Londres), edición del 2 de Junio de 1979.3 Telegrama de Henderson, del 2 de mayo, en PREM 19-646. PREM es la sigla de clasificación que los National Archives británicos, en Kew, dan a los archivos correspondientes a la oficina del Primer Ministro. A su vez, DEFE son los archivos del Ministerio de Defensa, FCO del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, etc. Estos archivos, en lo que concierne al período de la guerra, fueron desclasificados (con algunas limitaciones) a fines del año 2012.914 Telegrama de Henderson, del 2 de mayo, en PREM 19-646.5 Lo que hizo el 4 de mayo, y amén de agradecerle las limitaciones que Estados Unidos ya había impuesto en lo que hace a venta de armamento, decía "Me gustaría urgir el tema, que vaya más allá, y que se imponga un completo bloqueo de las importaciones de los Estados Unidos desde Argentina" Ver PREM 19-624.6 Telegrama de Henderson, del 2 de mayo, en PREM 19-646.92 ESGN Nº 60 l Diciembre 20147 Telegrama de Henderson, del 3 de mayo, en PREM 19-624.8 Telegrama de Henderson, del 3 de mayo, en PREM 19-624.9 Telegrama de Henderson, del 3 de mayo, en PREM 19-624.10 Telegrama de Henderson, del 3 de mayo, en PREM 19-624.11 Hay que indicar que, en un seminario llevado a cabo en 2003, Weinberger afirmaba respecto la historia del portaaviones "…no podía recordar como empezó. Creo que en algunas discusiones con el embajador y probablemente con la Señora Thatcher y dos o tres otras personas, alguien me preguntó en broma: ¿Y si queremos un portaaviones? Y yo contesté: Claro, por supuesto, no hay problema". O Weinberber no lo recordaba, o no quería quedar, frente a la historia, como la persona que había realizado tamaña oferta. Ver Weinberger, Caspar en ‘The Falklands Roundtable, seminario llevado a cabo el 15 y 16 de mayo de 2003 (Ronald Reagan Oral History Project), 2003, p.20. A todo evento, los papeles personales de Weinberger se encuentran depositados en la Librería del Congreso (en Washington DC) y, pedida por el suscripto la autorización para poder examinarlos, la misma fue denegada por sus herederos.12 Reagan Library: Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting File (Box 91284) reagan Library: Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting ����������������File (Box 91284)9314 Naval History and Heritage Command (US Navy), Command History for USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) for calendar year 1982, archivo CVN69:114:gwf del 6 de mayo de 1983.94 ESGN Nº 60 l Diciembre 201415 Naval History and Heritage Command (US Navy), Command History for USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) for calendar year 1982, archivo CVN69:114:gwf del 6 de mayo de 1983.16 Telegrama de Henderson, del 3 de mayo, en PREM 19-624.17 Thatcher, Margaret "The Downing Street Years", Harper Collins e-books, julio 2010, p.8818 Leach, Henry en ‘The Falklands War’, seminario llevado a cabo el 5 de junio de 2002 (Centre for Contemporary British History), 2005, p.64.19 Leach, Henry en ‘The Falklands War’, seminario llevado a cabo el 5 de junio de 2002 (Centre for Contemporary British History), 2005, p.64.9520 Minuta del Chief of Staff Comitee, del 4 de mayo de 1982. En ALQ-050/1.21 Thatcher, Margaret "The Downing Street Years", Harper Collins e-books, julio 2010, p.88.22 English, Adrian y Watts, Anthony. Battle for the Falklands. Naval Forces, Londres. 1982, p.8.23Jane’s Fighting Ships, Edición 1981/82, p. 562.24 Freedman, Sir Lawrence. The official history of the Falklands campaign. Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005, p. 42.25 Freedman, Sir Lawrence. The official history of the Falklands campaign. Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005, p. 43.26 "Study into the scope for delaying landing operations on the Falkland Islands", borrador del 17 de abril de 1982, en FCO 7-45619727 Study into the scope for delaying landing operations on the Falkland Islands", borrador del 17 de abril de 1982, en FCO 7-456128 Woodward, John F y Robinson, Patrick. One Hundred Days. Londres. Harper Collins Publishers. 2012, p. 6.29 Study into the scope for delaying landing operations on the Falkland Islands" borrador del 17 de abril de 1982, en FCO 7-456130 Freedman, Sir Lawrence. The official history of the Falklands campaign. Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005, p. 381.31 Freedman, Sir Lawrence. The official history of the Falklands campaign. Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005, p. 329.32 Revista Navy News, Edición de Septiembre de 1982, p.5.33 USNI News, Reagan Readied U.S. Warship for ’82 Falklands War, 27 de junio de 2012, en Reagan Readied U.S. Warship for '82 Falklands War - USNI News34 Lehman, John F. Reflections on the Special Relationship, Revista Naval History (United States Naval Institute), Octubre 2012, p. 43.35 Jane’s Fighting Ships, Edición 1981/82, p. 669.36 USNI News, Reagan Readied U.S. Warship for ’82 Falklands War, 27 de junio de 2012, en Reagan Readied U.S. Warship for '82 Falklands War - USNI News37 Freedman, Sir Lawrence. The official history of the Falklands campaign. Tomo II. Londres. Routledge. 2005, p. 464.100 ESGN Nº 60 l Diciembre 2014

It’s definitely theoretically possible to expand the House of Representatives. But this kind of scale almost certainly wouldn’t work.Never mind all of the difficulties of having Representatives from everywhere else in the country weigh in on local issues like transportation department spending“The question is on approving the additional $50,000 requested by Hanford, CA, for a traffic study of Grangeville Blvd east of 10th Ave., for potential installation of another traffic light. The chair calls for the yeas and nays…”(For context’s sake, federal budgeting summaries don’t typically show amounts less than $100 million!)The bigger problem is that it would create a massive malapportionment problem. Some states tend to have more counties! Virginia, for example, is about 1/4 the size of California by area. But Virginia has 95 counties, while California has 58! Texas has 254!It’s already hard enough to get something through Congress; just imagine how much harder it’d be with another, what, 3,000 Representatives in office, each of them with hyperlocal concerns since they represent a county?I can get on board with some proposed reforms to the House, but I don’t think this one would go over too well.