Wait…you shoot and you litter??!!?
Get a rope.
According to the OP, this legislation will help/make you take care of your shit better as to avoid said situation. God knows hpw many crimes will be prevented or solved if everyone just started doing a better job of policing their own brass.
It is obvious that the OP nor any other supporter of this crap has ever spent time at a high volume shooting range. Where when shooters are finished they are wading through piles of brass. Guess they better have a party afterwards and sort them all out. Now the shooters need to keep track of their serial numbers as well, on a bullet by bullet, case by case basis. Too bad for the guy who fires 500-1000 rounds in a session.
C’mon…
First off having a bullet tagged to you in a crime is a long way from proving you did the crime. It is merely a tool to possibly help police get on the trail of the bad guys. Just because “your” shell case turned up at the crime scene does not mean the bullet in the shot person will match or that you were in Timbuktu when the crime occurred and so on.
Can the bad guys spoil the trail? Sure. If they bother to think about it ahead of time and collect your spent brass and then make their own bullets.
But seriously how many people are going to do that? A career criminal maybe. A mafia hitman maybe. Most gun crime I think is more of the spur of the moment variety. Drug deal gone bad, guy finding his wife in bed with another guy, road rage and what have you.
Each of your points are legit.
Each of your points show why this legislation and “solution” is not.
So, wait a minute, am I reading this right? Pro-gun folks in this thread are now arguing that trying to decrease gun violence is an evil motive? Or that it would somehow be a bad thing if all firearms ceased to exist? The mind boggles.
No, what is being argued is that the scheme in the OP will do nothing to prevent gun violence or make it easier to find the criminals who perpetrate gun violence and will only inconvenience law abiding gun owners.
No, you’ve read no such thing. You created it entirely just now.
Feel free to try to substantiate it.
The idea that life would be better in a world with no firearms boggles my mind.
I have no idea what I would do with myself on the third Sunday of each month. (IPSC)
Where there is a demand, a supply will emerge.
In the case of cartridge marking (seeing as the actual bullets are made of a soft metal meant to deform on impact, quite probably obliterating any identifying serial number beyond recognition), let me paint all of you advocates of this scheme a little scenario.
Since Algher ventured a proposition for my “how to track a bullet” question, I’ll use him for my crash-test-dummy.
Begin:
Algher buys a box of ammo for his semi-automatic handgun; it is duly logged and tracked in the system.
He then goes to his local shooting range, and fires off all 50 rounds. Inspite of his best efforts, he only manages to recover 49 cartridge cases (the damned things will bounce to the damndest places…).
Now along comes Cletus the Redneck Meth Chemist and Bullet Reloader. He meticulously searches various shooting ranges for brass, especially marked brass, and reloads it.
Cletus runs into the city with his latest batch of meth and bullets, and sells them both to Lavon the Drug-Dealing Gangbanger. Lavon has had an itch to off some competition from one of the other gangs, but hasn’t been able to aquire “clean” bullets. Until Now.
Lavon does his thing, and bada-bing, bada-bang, the local PD now has a shell casing traceable to Algher.
Best case, Lavon is of the “spray-and-pray” school of marsmanship, letting the local PD recover multiple casings from multiple owners, and they realize they have “black market bullets” on their hands. At most, the PD will simply talk to Algher to confirm time/date of purchase, and the disposition of that group of bullets (“I shot them all up at the range, but couldn’t find one of the casings.”)
Bad case, the local PD drag in Algher, interrogate him, and perhaps try to link him to a black market bullet operation.
Worse case, they obtain a no-knock warrant, and burst into the home of a “armed suspect in an ongoing investigation” at 2:00 AM in the morning, and drag him and his family down to the station for questioning. His accounts are frozen, his assets are siezed, perhaps his children are placed with CPS, and even if he walks out 24 hours later in the clear if he’s lucky, he now only has to prove to an Asset Forfeiture Court that he had absolutely nothing to do with any crime, anywhere; if he’s unlucky, he may now have to fight to get his children back.
Absolute Worst Case?
Some nervous cop on the “Entry Team” of the no-knock warrant blows away Algher or one of his family members.
I don’t see the problem with this legislation either. I doubt it would get anywhere if it didn’t have a measurable success in identification, so I assume they have some plan to make it work. It wouldn’t stop people from using the ammunition legally. Of course, it wouldn’t stop crime either as there will always be ways to get around it, but it would certainly make it harder and more expensive for determined criminals to get unmarked ammo as their supply shrinks considerably. Also, many crimes are not planned and are more opportunistic, these would likely not be conducted with specially prepared ammunition. It seems like a nice initiative to me, even though it would add some cents to a bullet.
The problem here isn’t just the laser etching process (which in itself would merely be stupid and expensive, two characteristics we seem willing to tolerate in many actions of government), but lies mainly with this notion of registering every sale of ammunition. That is unacceptably intrusive, quite aside from being an enormous additional expense that the proponents of this system conveniently ignore when they talk about how relatively low the incremental manufacturing cost will be. (To say nothing of the retooling costs and the massive up-front investment that would without doubt drive the majority of ammunition manufacturers out of business.)
When I go to the sporting goods store (or hell, Wal-Mart) and buy a box of ammo, that’s my own business, same as buying a hammer at the hardware store, or checking out a book at my local library. If I later decide to sell that box of ammunition to another individual, that also is my own business. I will neither welcome nor tolerate the intrusion of government looking over my shoulder into any such aspect of my private life, not even when the intrusion is accompanied by nebulous claims about some vague possible public good.
But that, I think, is a fundamental break between the mindsets of some of the participants in this debate. Some people simply crave security above all else, and to get it (or even the illusion of it) they have no qualms about degrading individual liberty and privacy and making everyone live under the eye of an increasingly powerful state. They want government to mother them, to take their responsibilities from them, to monitor “undesirables” for them. It’s the same mentality that fueled the expansion of government powers after 9/11, and it’s one that fear-mongering politicians love to exploit.
No we don’t. No gun that I have ever owned has been registered, nor ever will be. My name has occasionally blipped through the federal NICS background check system (and then only for the purchases I have made from federally licensed dealers), but no government office has any knowledge of what guns I own, or even whether I currently own any guns at all. That’s exactly how it should be: the government has no business keeping a catalog of me or of my possessions. Right to bear arms be damned: this is basic privacy we’re talking about here.
Whether or not changing that would help solve crimes is irrelevant. You could probably fight crime much more effectively by doing away with pesky things like due process and search warrants, but we don’t even begin to talk about the “cost-benefit analysis.”
Bingo. That’s the whole drive behind this entire thing: one company wants to fleece an entire industry, and they want the force of unnecessary laws behind them. To do it they’re pandering to the anti-gun crowd, not out of any desire to improve public safety (I’m sure even they understand how useless their technology is for that), but simply out of a desire for illegitimate profit.
No kidding. Non-compliance like you wouldn’t believe. For those who support this ludicrous scheme, what makes you think anybody is going to dispose of their old ammunition? (At least, in any manner of which those advocating the disposal would be likely to approve… :eek:)
Another voice,Henrichek, heard from the cotingent who find it a thing of casual ease to spend other people’s money.
Here’s a thought: those of you who are convinced this is a great idea should finance it. Set up a nonprofit organization to buy the necessary equipment for each manufacturer and pay the costs of the records keeping. You can fund it all through donations out of your own pockets. If it’s actually about reducing crime, not harassing gun owners and ammo makers, you should be happy as clams to fund something so worthwhile.
Henrichek, the problem is -
A) It would cost way too much, crippling the ammo companies (which might be the goal)
B) It wouldn’t work. Even without reloading scenarios it’s naive. Partially because -
C) The database would be unmanageable. Billions of rounds are sold every year.
D) Is there any point in continuing? Or do supporters “feel” that it’d be a good thing, so any argument is obviously the twisted ravings of people who think reducing violence is evil.
Kalhoun, in post 69:
Scumpup, in post 70:
Now, it sure looks to me like the agenda Kalhoun wants to accomplish is a decrease in gun violence, and it likewise seems to me that Scumpup thinks that that agenda is a bad thing.
On a more current note (man, gun threads move fast!):
What’s the use of ammo if you don’t dispose of it? Isn’t that the whole point of ammunition, to be disposed of at several hundred feet per second? I think that the mandatory disposal with a limited time frame in the current version of the legislation is silly (if nothing else, it’d be impossible to enforce), but even without that, ammunition is a consumable, and will be eventually consumed.
Stamping all cases with information that only changes once per year would require simpler technology than stamping all cases and all bullets with information that changes every 60 cartridges.
To answer the OP this is a bad idea because:
-
History strongly suggests this most likely won’t help solve crimes.
-
It won’t help stop gun crimes.
I guess maybe the OP thinks this will work like a cigarette tax–if you raise the price people won’t buy as many cigarettes, people won’t get cancer as much, and nationwide we spend less money on healthcare.
Well, the thing is ammunition isn’t like cigarettes.
To be honest a large portion of gun owners rarely-to-never fire their weapons. A large portion only use them for hunting, in a whole season you will take very few actual shots while hunting. You will probably take a few shots sighting your weapon in and you’ll probably do some target shooting to get ready. Overall though, your average hunter actually doesn’t consume a large amount (relatively speaking) of ammunition on a regular basis.
The people who use a lot of ammunition are gun enthusiasts who spend time at the range as their recreational activity. So they use a lot of ammunition frequently and they buy a lot of ammunition frequently.
There are plenty of different “gun crime” scenarios. But I can think of very few common situations where the gun crime was facilitated in any way that would be impacted by a slight increase in ammunition costs.
For example, in “crimes of passion” the crime is often committed with a gun that happens to be “on hand” (owned by the perpetrator.) Since most gun owners aren’t gun enthusiasts who regularly fire their weapon, that means based on simple statistics most likely people who commit crimes of passion with their guns aren’t gun enthusiasts and are probably amongst the large majority of gun owners who rarely fire their weapons (and thus rarely buy ammo.) When ammo is a rare purchase, a small increase in its price isn’t going to affect anything.
In “elaborately premeditated crimes” where the perpetrator uses a gun and BUYS the gun specifically for that crime–well, premeditated murder is never facilitated by guns at all. If someone wants to commit a premeditated murder they don’t need a gun to do it. Finally, even if this person NEEDS a gun to commit his premeditated murder, if his desire is strong enough to kill he’s not going to be deterred by a small increase in the price of ammunition.
In “Columbine style” crimes, again, the perpetrators had a detailed plan and a strong desire. These are people who were willing to buy their weapons illegally to facilitate their crimes. These were not crimes facilitated by cheap ammunition.
In “Gang-banger style” murders again, you aren’t looking at people who make regular ammunition purchases. Gang bangers don’t practice their shooting, they buy the thing (legally or illegally) keep it loaded and ready to use, and that’s it. These aren’t people who train regularly to be the best gang-bangers they can be.
I’m a strong supporter of gun rights and I’m a gun owner.
But assume I’m willing to play Devil’s Advocate and agree that this is a good law. What is the basis for my argument that this is a good law? I’m genuinely interested in hearing it.
I can sort of see where you were going with the “tax it like cigarettes” approach, but as I’ve said–ammunition consumption is nothing like that. The only people who are regular consumers of ammunition are gun enthusiasts who shoot a lot. Most gun owners are not like this, most criminals are not like this. Guns are already expensive. If you were buying a gun just to commit a crime, then it is doubtful that ammo price would be a dissuading factor.
The problem is that Kalhoun isn’t proposing the taxation of gun violence to curb gun violence, he’s proposing the taxation of all usage of firearms to curb gun violence. Even ignoring the Second Amendment, that’s like using the taxation of petrol as the method to prevent hit-and-runs.
Doesn’t this argument work in favor of the law? First of all, from your comment it seems like a majority wouldn’t be negatively affected by this law as they consume only small amounts. More importantly, most “crimes of passion” would be perpetrated without specially prepared unmarked ammunition, so that would make them trackable.
Agreed. These uses are mostly impossible to do away by law or any means.
I have no idea of the feasibility of this, but what about a special ammo license for such people, which requires higher storage safety and other things? No… never mind, that would be a huge vector for criminals to acquire untrackable ammunition. :smack:
OK, so that would be a case where the negative effects of an idea outweigh the benefits. But that still doesn’t make the motivation behind the idea bad.