Common sense reasonable gun laws

Great Debates
1

OK a few points of reference:

I live in CA

I am a gun owner and am not a huge fan of the idea of significant new gun legislation.

However, I have little issue with the current state of CA law (the testing provisions that make it annoying/difficult to get many limited issue items irks me but such is life).

I am doing my best to set aside my biases to discuss what exactly does everyone mean by “common sense” and “reasonable” gun laws. I feel like people throw these terms around to feel like they are doing something but have zero idea what might work. People want something done, but they dont know what, thus this phrasing is tossed out. I as a gun owner would most likely have little issue with a few changes, however I am not going to go out of my way to be harder on myself at the ballot box either.

So the debate:
What should some examples of these provisions/laws/regulations be?

Just as an example of my feelings, any new laws should be:

Objective, not subject to the whims of someone processing a registration.
Address the actual problem (idiots and assholes getting guns and or shooting up a place)
Not turn an existing gun owner into a criminal.
should not cost an existing gun owner significant additional money.

An example I can get behind: locked storage requirements, a gun should be stored in a way it is very difficult for a child or guest to easily aquire and or use it. Something as simple as a locked metal or heavy plastic box, like one of those little cash boxes you can get for like $7 on amazon or a basic hard rifle case that can be locked.

Another example that has aspects of the gun control pipe dream an option to aquire:

A heavy duty federal registration/permit/package:
Person goes through full background checks, psych screening, range testing, colonoscopy, taste in music, post a liability bond, whatever.

However with that enhanced evaluation/screening/ you are given a 5 year registration that entitles you to:

A Federal level concealed and or open carry permit good in all 50 states. (subject to existing rules WRT courthouses, federal buildings, etc.)

A Federal firearms Dealer/collector licence, bypassing waiting periods, deal in/posses automatic weapons, extended magazines, silencers, body armor, etc.

Anything else that may arise as useful to gun owners I am not considering but should be available to those who have been subjected to such scrutiny.

Renewal requires a repeat of the review process.

2

What i feel, as a gun owner, is that the current laws are laughably weak and loopholes so massive that they really render any laws we currently have completely void. I am a gun owner who is pro common sense gun laws.

To me common sense gun laws have safety and responsibility at their core. That firearms not necessarily be registered but should ALL be required to be bought or transferred though fll dealers. And the license or other documentation showing that you legally owned the weapon would be required when you are asked to produce it. Otherwise charges filed and gun confiscated. I feel like, being pro gun, that its irresponsible to think that everyone right to life is less important than everyone’s right to a gun. I think we should do what we can to keep dangerous people from owning guns.

I also think it would be responsible to tax guns and ammo to help offset the cost of protecting public places such as schools from those specific threats. Maybe manufactured bullets should have a detectable material with detectors placed at school entrances. Obviously not metal detectors but something that is specific enough to not have to search many people. Only the ones who actually have ammunition on them. Any other ammo would be ilegal to manufacture or sell.

Just some ideas. But something should be done.

3

This I think is a good example of something else I can agree with including familial transfers although I think his recordkeeping should be a form of registration/chain of ownership for that firearm.

I dislike the “guilty until proven innocent” aspect of this. If all guns start running through FFL systems, granting police departments a search system that can be quickly verified via a smartphone/car computer/call in to dispatch center should be a simple thing. It will take a while, but eventually as they are inherited/sold/whatever they will get into the system.

For example, I own a handgun I purchased like 18 years ago I have moved half a dozen times since then, I have no idea where the paperwork is and the shop I purchased it from is no longer in business. This is part of my concern WRT turning a gun owner into a criminal.

4

Lead detectors! Considering how we as a society are avoiding lead wherever possible, that might be a good thing to try and key on. I am unfamiliar with the mechanisms by which you might detect a specific element like that in a sensor array people will walk through.

5

That makes a firearm almost useless for self defence. In the event of a robbery, a shopkeeper, carjack victim or sleeping homeowner would need to find a key, place a box on the table or car seat, open the box and remove the firearm before they can even *think *about doing anything else. That’s completely impractical.

The same objection is raised with hunting. Farmers keep a rifle in a rack behind the back seat when they’re driving around so if they see vermin they can shoot it. If they have to find a key and open a box to do so, the animal is gone.

The only way I can see you could make firearms practical for vermin control and self-defence is if you define “storage” as only applying when the firearm isn’t being used for self-defence or hunting. But that means that anybody who wants to can keep an unsecured firearm behind their truck seat, in the glovebox of their car, under the counter of their workplace or on their bedside table and simply say that they are using it for self-defence or hunting.

This is where “common sense” so often starts to fall apart. People have an idea about how firearms are used, and assume that everybody else must use them the same way. the fact that the constitution specifically protects personal self-defence as a legitimate reason for owning a firearm means that most attempts to mandate secure storage is going to impractical and nonsensical.

You might be able to tighten things up to a degree, such as mandating certain storage requirements for firearms left in vehicles that are unattended for more than an hour. but anything beyond that is going to be difficult if you want it to be common sense and practical.

If I want to keep a shotgun in a rack over the front door so to use if I come home and find someone in my house, that’s legitimate self-defence usage. If you require me to keep it in a locked cabinet you are rendering it largely useless for self-defence.

If I want to keep a pistol in the glove box to defend myself against car jackers, that’s a legitimate self-defence use. If you want to tell me I need to remove it from the car when I walk down the street, then you need to give everyone in the country permission to carry a pistol down the street at almost any time. Place more than a few restrictions on carry firearms in public and forbid them from being left unattended in vehicles and you have rendered them useless for defending vehicles.

6

Quick release safes and such are an option and not horribly expensive if speed of aquisition was an issue. I was only giving an example of an inexpensive solution that would comply with a safe storage law. I currently have a gun that would not comply with such a hypothetical law , its concealed, but not locked. Demanding someone spend thousands on a full size safe would be onerous IMO.

7

I would consider a gun inside a locked car to meet a minimum standard of “secured” against casual handling by unintended people.

8

I agree with the sentiment here completely I am more concerned with unattended.

I am kinda grey area on this, I understand the perspective, it is out of reach to little kids, and it is inside your home (where many laws go by the wayside anyway) I can envision a few ways to latch a gun to such a rack that might be quickly released but not going to argue a point I agree with.

9

There actually are safety trigger mechanisms that already exist in which a bracelet must be worn by the person operating the firearm. You could leave the loaded weapon lying on the floor in the mall and no one could operate it except the person wearing the bracelet.

10

I’ll give this a cautious thumbs-up. I’ve always maintained that if you fear the irresponsible ownership of firearms, the answer should be more responsibility, not less ownership. I’m just a little leery of requiring a federal license to own and carry a gun; maybe if it was done as a modern version of the Constitutional provision giving the Fed the authority to prescribe the requirements for militia training- provided that was inexorably linked to the Second Amendment to prevent that authority from being used to enact a de facto ban.

11

I don’t have a solution to all gun violence, but here’s an idea:

If you have no criminal record or history of mental illness, you can own up to six guns (hunting rifle, shotgun, handgun, nothing that can be easily converted to full auto, no military-grade assault rifles) without law enforcement saying “boo.” Between six and twenty guns, you’re on law enforcement’s radar. Twenty-one guns or more and you need to explain to a judge why you need that many firearms. You can keep or lose them at the judge’s discretion. (Most judges in western states are elected and sympathetic to gun owners’ concerns.)

Every time you get a new gun, you get a pin-sized hole in your driver’s license or comparable ID. If the police question you about a recent shooting, they’ll have a pretty quick idea whether you’re a law-abiding sport hunter or a psycho gun hoarder.

Pick this apart and tell me the problems with it.

12

So, you have to wear a Scarlet Letter for exercising your right to bear arms? Until we get rid of the 2nd amendment, those actions fall foul of the constitution.

13

Your detector would kill more people than the guns would. Anything that can detect a piece of lead inside a metal box at range is going to be putting out enough radiation that you’re probably justified in shooting anyone who points it at you.

14

I identify myself pretty blatantly when I enjoy my first amendment rights, or my fourth or fifth. What’s your point?

15

Universal background checks seem to enjoy very broad support. Or at least background checks that are very near universal–maybe exempt Little Johnny from having to have a full background check when Grandpa buys him his first .22 (but note that such exemptions are loopholes, and immediate families may well include a mixture of people who don’t have criminal records and aren’t prohibited possessors and people with criminal records who aren’t legally allowed to touch firearms, so be careful you don’t make the exemptions too broad). There would have to be some creative thinking as to how we implement universal background checks for private sales without creating a de facto registry–registration is not really an infringement per se, but in the current political climate it’s a non-starter politically with a large segment of the population and likely to remain so for quite some time to come.

We’d also have to make sure the laws don’t make it a crime for Bob to let Joe take a look at his new gun down at the range, or for Bill to grab John’s gun and use it when the zombies or rioters or whatever the hell are kicking down the door. Those strike me as issues that could be handled with a reasonably well-drafted law.

Another issue with universal background checks is mental health–the problem’s not so much on the criminal justice/gun side as it is on the mental health side; I don’t think there’s anything like a centralized database of psychiatric records in the country. Quite understandably, people in the field are pretty leery of compromising the privacy of their patients, and going much beyond “involuntarily committed” is likely not possible. (I think records of criminal convictions are already pretty well systematized).

Safe storage could be better addressed by having strict liability for gun owners with respect to injuries to residents and invited guests in their homes from the gun owner’s weapons. A woman who lives alone and keeps a gun in the night stand for self-defense wouldn’t need to be burdened with a lot of requirements for gun safes or trigger locks, but if she has a two-year-old wandering around the place, she’d damned well better keep the guns secure.

As to mental health screening–is there really some easy test we can do? IANApsychiatrist, but I suspect mental health screening will either be absurdly cursory and pointless; or incredibly expensive, time-consuming, and personally invasive. We don’t have some brain scanner which can tell if you are or are likely to become homicidal (and it would be kind of sci-fi dystopian if we did).

I don’t see any point to restricting numbers of weapons. If someone is hell-bent on killing people, he can really only use one gun at a time. (Two if he’s actually living inside an action movie.) Conversely, one gun is enough for a criminal or crazy person to kill people with. I also don’t see much reason to focus on weapons types, at least not this side of rocket launchers. Plenty of people have been killed with revolvers, shotguns, and “hunting” rifles. If someone can’t be trusted with an “assault weapon” I don’t want him having a “hunting” rifle; and if someone can be trusted with a weapon that can kill a deer, anything that can kill a deer can kill a human, and I really don’t care if your rifle has a wooden stock versus being a Scary Black Rifle with a bayonet lug. (This is a “military weapon designed to kill people!”, and rifles like it were used to kill a hell of a lot of Germans, Japanese, North Koreans, and many others.)

In a way, universal background checks take the NRA at its word: “Guns don’t kill people–people kill people”–so let’s at least try to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the people who are most likely to misuse them.

16

Your real name is “Horatio Hellpop”?

17

So you have no problem with Jews being forced to wear a yellow star, Catholics being forced to wear a red crucifix and so forth?

Because you already blatantly identify yourself when you exercise your freedom of religion apparently.

The whole concept of forcing people to carry identity papers in order to exercise their rights is fascists lunacy.

18

I get where you’re going here and on one hand in makes sense. I personally don’t plan on owning more then 5 guns (concealed carry pistol, revolver, 308 bolt action, shotgun, 22 plinker) unless my kid’s or my wife’s guns count against me and I currently own two. I can understand people saying there in no need for more then that since it covers everything I’d want to do with a gun but those I know that own more fall into two categories; collectors and perfectionists. For me my 308 can kill anything smaller then a moose at less then 300 yards, it may be over kill if I start hunting white tail or antelope or if I wasn’t a bison it’ll be too small but for mulies and elk it’s perfect. My perfectionist friends want the perfect gun for each hunt. They have a stand hunting rifle for white tail that is different then the rifle they’d pack in to back country hunt elk, just to hunt antelope, white tail, mule deer, elk, moose and bison they’d want six rifles and that’s before you get into small game or birds not to mention recreational shooting (trap, target, plinking) six guns would severely limit what they do for fun. The collectors are fairly obvious and have every type of gun imaginable and love the history and stories behind their guns.

Neither of these reasons for owning multiple guns should be a reason to need to be on the police’s radar let alone talk to a judge. Secondly what are you trying to prevent with the limit if it’s insurrection then I would submit the normal solder will carry two guns, a rifle and a pistol. Once they own those two I’d be more concerned about rounds of ammo then how many guns they own since insurrection is more about the number of people and the number of shots not what do you do after your fifth gun fails. If you’re attempting too stop a rampage then again assuming the psyco has a gun in each hand and two back ups for each I don’t see what you are accomplishing stopping them from getting their third backup piece. Over all I don’t think your idea is onerous I just don’t think it would accomplish anything.

Generally I support licencing and registration but either one can quickly led to confiscation and prohibition. If they were to be enacted we would need to do it on the federal level and roll back and city or state regulations that were more restrictive. I think we need to do something to educate more people about guns so that they aren’t some scary thing that red necks and gang banners use to make the world a worse place. I think if more people knew what a gun could be used for besides murdering bambi’s dad, suicide and murder then there could be more rational conversations about how to keep “the wrong people” from getting guns.

19

So, you’re OK if we put a pinhole in your driver’s license every time you exercise your first amendment rights, and once you reach a certain number of holes, then the police have you on their watch list? Of course one might ask why you even need to have a driver’s license to exercise your 1st amendment rights in the first place…

20

I’m not aware of a safe that can reliably be opened surreptitiously from underneath a counter, can be opened one handed without taking your eyes off an animal or that can be reliably opened in the pitch dark by someone who has just woken from sleep. But if such things exist and can be purchased at a reasonable price then I have no particular problem with them.

Yet the same gun in a house doesn’t meet that minimum standard? I would suspect that a child is more likely to find a gun in the same car with them than they are to find a gun in the same house with them.