Arms, And The Regulation Thereof: Let's Come To A Consensus.

[ExTank]

Alessan: I agree with Stealth Potato and E-Sabbath that requiring a “qualification” on every single firearm a person owns is unworkable; quite a few people own firearms that they never intend to fire. I happened across a beautifully engraved 1911 for a very reasonable price; I’ve only fired it once, putting only 7 rounds through it, before cleaning it and shelving it.

Some cities already have their own sale taxes imposed on sales; whether there’s any additional taxes imposed upon firearms sales, I don’t know. I do know that in some states, there’s additional taxes on ammunition, which are putatively supposed to support wildlife conservation efforts.

And as far as open/concealed carry goes, popular “reaction” to it is a regional/cultural thing.

@Stealth Potato

My general opinion of what is reasonable / unreasonable:

Felons and the insane should still not be permitted to own guns, however, prohibition should be narrowed to only include violent offenders. Also, Congress should stop blocking funding to the investigation of petitions for relief from disability that are specifically authorized under 18 USC 925(c).

I had no idea this was happening. Assuming you have your facts straight, I agree with you.

@Stealth Potato

Assault weapon bans are both unreasonable and silly. Any ban on a general class of firearms should not be allowed. (Actually, I can see some such bans passing constitutional muster in light of the reasoning employed in Miller: no pen guns or cell phone guns, for example.)

E-Sabbath: your entire post #14 is pretty much the gold-standard of what gun owners need to be wary of. Would your stance(s) change any if subsequent case law worked to effectively “bitch slap” a frothing lunatic like Daley into submission in this issue?

@AHunter3

I support “shall issue” laws in conjunction with reasonable licensing structure that requires training and/or passing a test showing appropriate proficiency & proper use knowledge for the firearm for which one is being licensed. I support the registration of firearms.

Not sure if I’m understanding you here. Are you suggesting different levels of owner licensing by type? Like the way motor vehicle licenses are typed by weight/class?

@Steve MB

Nailing down the legal doctrine “the Second Amendment protects an individual right which may be subject to standard time-place-and-manner constraints but may not be curtailed to the point of a de facto gun ban” will actually make it easier to insist on some basic safety measures (e.g. proof of competence required to carry in public).

I don’t know what each individual state requires in the way of hands-on, range-time proficiency tests, only to say that some do, some do but it’s a joke, and some don’t. A nation-wide standard would be nice, but getting all 50 states to agree to a uniform standard that is fair, and no more restrictive than absolutely necessary to ensure public safety…

…well, not to be too pessimistic, just let me say that Cat Herding might be a more productive endeavor. Not that I don’t think it isn’t worth trying, though.

@Erasmus Darwin

Mostly correct, but not entirely. :snip:

Thanks for the correction, and the info.

@Erasmus Darwin

…and now on to the actual discussion:

This gives me pause. Such licenses have traditionally been limited to more restrictive states, such as Illinois with their Firearm Owners Identification (FOID). Even California doesn’t go this far. They require a Handgun Safety Certificate (HSC) for purchasing handguns, but there’s no on-going license to keep the gun.

You still have potential abuse with the CA scheme; a legislture has only to mandate onerous, unreasonable levels of “Safety Training” to effectively backdoor ban handgun sales.

@Erasmus Darwin

There’s a huge problem with this. Consistent licensing still leaves the actual carrying laws open to malicious legislation. There’s already a wide variance in where you can carry from state to state, and there’s nothing to stop a district from banning concealed carry within 5000 feet of a church, bar, school, or bus stop. So you’d need to standardize the carrying laws on a national basis, as well. This could backfire in that some states might end up with more restrictive carrying laws than they currently have.

And some will wind up with less restrictive ones. But I take your point; what state will want to needlessly tighten their laws just because another state won’t yield on some point?

@JXJohns

5. I have to take issue with both of these. The Feds should have no say in the sales of firearms between individuals. In my state it is MY responsibility to insure that if I sell a handgun to someone, that they have the proper permits to purchase or to carry. Were something to go bad with that person after I sold them the gun, it is MY ass. If Iowans can handle this, I would like to think that the rest of the nation could as well.

I feel much as you do. But rights come with responsibilities, and we can’t always trust everyone to abide. “Trust, but verify” is not, IMO, an entirely unreasonable burden, especially if it removes yet agin another talking point to the hardcore anti-gun crowd.

@JXJohns

6. I take even greater exception with this proposal. I am surprised that you are even in favor of such. The 4473 is a file that is kept by the dealer in their own filing system, ONLY to be recalled should a gun that passed through their inventory be recovered or used in a crime. At that time, any pertinent info about the seller would be readily available. An “E” form is the first step in an “E” list, which I am vehemently opposed to as well. A picture is just window dressing and unnecessary.

Think of it less as a serious proposal on my part, than an idea tossed out for public consumption.

I would like to see a mechanism by which law enforcement can better track (and therefore curtail) the flow of firearms to violent criminals. I would especially like this mechanism to be as hassle-free to law abiding gun owners as humanly possible. It is easy to dispose of ideas, harder yet to come up with practical solutions to (most) everyone’s agreement; this, more than anything, I would like to see from my fellow (and fellowette!) “gun nuts.”

@JXJohns

Regarding full-auto fun guns, the states should have no restrictions greater than the Feds in the licensing/ownership of said guns. To that end, all state must allow ownership. (Including the Tall Corn State…)

Any gun bans based on cosmetics or other such nonsense are out as well. Far from reasonable to ban a gun by the way that it looks.

Personally, I agree.

I’ll be back with more,. later.

[ExTank]

Forgot half of my post! :smack:

Good responses, to which I’ll respond by category, before addressing individual posts:

Licensing: I agree that a right is not something to be licensed, at least not lightly. My thought was to enable some mechanism by which firearm owners and prospective firearm owners would get some bare-bones safety training in the handling and storage of firearms.

The potentntial for abuse in firearm-unfriendly jurisdictions is still there, of course, but I don’t think that’s something we’re ever going to get rid of. Hence my idea of something like a federally-hosted conference of all 50 states to arrive at a uniform consensus.

On reflection, though, I think I’d like to see how litigation subsequent to Heler shakes out, to maybe gauge The Opposition a little bit better.

Registration: My thoughts behind a registration mechanism was to help curb the flow of firearms to criminals by allowing law enforcement to track the flow of firearms to criminals better. I think a national firearms registry, if it was a point-of-sale registry, might have a decent intermediate-term effect (6 months to a year) in curbing the flow of “Straw Purchases.” It will have little if any effect on stolen firearms (stolen from homes, gun stores, distribution centers, or from the factory itself).

Again, it would be nice to see how some subsequent case law settles out from the Heller case. A registry is a poweful tool for those intent on banning “bad guns.”

WRT subsequent case law: my fear is that a city, perhaps D.C., or Chicago, will alter their bans to licensing schemes, where you can only apply on one day a year, with a $5,000 licensing fee. This is an exaggeration, of course, but it is not inconceivable that unduly onerous licensing requirements will supplant the current bans in those cities (not unlike Ney York city’s current system). Heller may only be the tip of the iceberg of decades of litigation on a state-by-state, city-by-city basis.

[E-Sabbath]

@ExTank

E-Sabbath: your entire post #14 is pretty much the gold-standard of what gun owners need to be wary of. Would your stance(s) change any if subsequent case law worked to effectivel

I’m not sure, because, to use a metaphor… I ain’t real pleased with the idea of licensing my printing press. Or the tools I can use to make a printing press, which is basically, a pipe, two clamps, some wood, and a nail.

Our government is built to foster revolution. Communication and guns are the two most key parts of it. Not always against the government, but against society at large. Desegregation. Interracial marriage. Gay marriage. Non-christian religions. Women. Nonlanded men.
Sometimes, the pen is enough. But if there is no fear of the sword, then the pen will not stop people from robbing your house. It is not good that it is so, but it is so.

What I do know is that local government is sometimes part of the solution. But many times it is part of the problem as well. People were outraged about the Dems and the money needed for the Philly Machine.

The smaller you go, the worse it gets. Remember the confiscations of New Orleans.

Guns are not a solution to a problem. The pen is. But guns are a solution to a problem right now. Sometimes, you have to solve things that way.

And the Milita was designed to support the states against the government. I don’t much like the idea of a federal registration for that reason.

So, if you can’t trust the locals, and you can’t trust the feds, what can you do? Sure, the courts will cure things after the fact… but if you could wait that long, the guns wouldn’t be necessary.

I still think of Tasha’s 90 year old grandmother neigbor who was shot down by local cops on a faked warrant.

If the cops won’t respect the citizens… and they don’t… they should at least fear attacking people in their own home.

Edit: Oh. And how does any licensing scheme deal with my father’s friend selling my father a old shotgun for $60? Do we have to go hunt down a gun store to do it? Remember, all the gun stores got pushed out of my county eight years back. Fun law issue.

[Erasmus_Darwin]

@ExTank

Not sure if I’m understanding you here. Are you suggesting different levels of owner licensing by type? Like the way motor vehicle licenses are typed by weight/class?

Which, as a quick aside, is how they do it in Canada and the UK. I could see different licenses as a way to slowly shrink the gun hobbyist pool, especially since handguns are usually more convenient to shoot but also more tightly controlled when firearms are restricted.

I don’t know what each individual state requires in the way of hands-on, range-time proficiency tests, only to say that some do, some do but it’s a joke, and some don’t. A nation-wide standard would be nice, but getting all 50 states to agree to a uniform standard that is fair, and no more restrictive than absolutely necessary to ensure public safety…

There’s actually a quick and easy solution (besides the obvious solution of not requiring certification): Have the law explicitly allow NRA-certified courses by NRA-certified instructors as one of the ways to fulfill the requirement. It does put part of the law in private hands, but it does so in a way that’s actually less susceptible to hijacking than keeping it purely public.

I can’t take credit for the idea, though. I stole it from Florida’s law covering shall-issue concealed-carry licenses.

And some will wind up with less restrictive ones. But I take your point; what state will want to needlessly tighten their laws just because another state won’t yield on some point?

True. I have to confess a bit of selfish bias in my view here. I live in Florida, so any national compromise on where it’s permissible to carry is going to end up being more restrictive than what I’ve got now.

Of course that being said, there are places with parts of their carry restrictions that’re more favorable than Florida, but I seriously doubt those would win out in a widespread compromise.

I would like to see a mechanism by which law enforcement can better track (and therefore curtail) the flow of firearms to violent criminals. I would especially like this mechanism to be as hassle-free to law abiding gun owners as humanly possible. It is easy to dispose of ideas, harder yet to come up with practical solutions to (most) everyone’s agreement; this, more than anything, I would like to see from my fellow (and fellowette!) “gun nuts.”

I think the current system represents a compromise that I’m at least comfortable with. Law enforcement obviously knows who manufactured a given firearm, and the manufacturer knows which FFL the firearms were shipped to. From there, they can request the specific 4473 and follow up. However, a centralized or preemptive registry is banned even though there’s a paper trail for firearms that haven’t been sold privately.

It’s not as stream-lined for law enforcement as I’m sure they’d prefer. It’s also not as privacy-preserving as I’m sure some of the gun owners would prefer. Still, it does seem to provide a reasonable compromise that allows for tracking in the event that it’s necessary, and it’s a bit too inconvenient for the records to be used in a NOLA-style gun confiscation (which E-Sabbath reminded us of).

And speaking of which, it would have helped restore my faith in humanity a bit if there had been criminal charges from that. At the very least, there should have been perjury charges relating to NOLA’s defense against the injunction barring them from confiscating firearms, which was “But we aren’t confiscating firearms! Honest!” Until the government can show that it’s willing to police itself and better protect my rights, there’s no way I can even think of giving it as dangerous a tool as a centralized gun registry, and even then, I’d still be wary.

[E-Sabbath]

How do you track my Mossberg, which was bought in 196X in an unknown state by a dead man? Even if it had a serial number and was testable ballistically, it’s still 40 years ago. The dealer it was bought from is probably gone. The owner died, having forgotten he owned it. What do you do at that point?

[Johnny_L.A]

@ExTank

Johnny L.A. is a self-professed liberal, as well as being one of us “gun nuts,” and has staunchly defended the 2nd Ad. here on the SDMB for a good long time.

Yep, Universal Health Care-supporting, College Education For Every Citizen Who Wants it-wanting, Let Gays Get Married-favouring, Capital Punishment-opposing, anti-Bush’s War, Obama-voting, Liberal. With a gun. Or two. Or thirty-something.

Lots going on in this thread, but let me tell you about registration…

I have a Ruger Mk.II .22 caliber pistol. A roommate removed it from the apartment (after I specifically told him not to). Long story short: The cops search his car. They find the gun in the trunk. They confiscate it. Now, new handguns have to be registered in California. (At the time long guns would be ‘registered’ with the DoJ, but would supposedly be trashed after a couple of weeks. The DoJ kept/keeps records for handguns.) No crime was committed. My roommate put the gun in a box, forgot it was there, and put some laundry in the box. (He says. He is a pathological liar. But he’s also a flake, so I could see it happening.) No crime was committed. All the cops had to do is run a records check to find out who owned the gun. They could have informed me that they had it. Instead they planned to keep it for a certain amount of time and then destroy it. It took me six weeks to get it released to me.

I’m not convinced that stolen/lost/misappropriated/whatever firearms will be returned to their owners, or that the owners would even be notified, if registration is required. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Bobotheoptimist]

Well, my insulting term certainly wasn’t aimed at pro-gun-rights types like Johnny. I’m probably one of the more liberal types on arfcom and I dislike the Republicans just as much as I dislike the Dems, but I reserve the right to call gun-grabbers names. I’ll just refrain from doing it in polite threads like this one.

The majority of my guns are like E-Sabbath’s (untraceable, that is), I currently only have about 10 that were bought through an FFL. Heck, I’ve sold that many to “some guy with a motorcycle” or “this one computer geek with a mullet and a Yukon”.

[E-Sabbath]

I’m not even calling it untracable. I’m going for the point of where it was ten years ago, when the owner died, having used it maybe twice.
Status: Bought from ‘someone’, unknown who, forty years ago. And then what?

[ExTank]

“Grandpa’s Guns” is certainly an issue I never considered (all our family heirloom firearms were stolen from my Dad’s house in the late 70s).

One group I’m not hearing from here is the types who are, generally speaking, more in favor of more restrictive types of gun control laws. Where’s our “Loyal Opposition?”

Erasmus: I have no problem with an NRA-certified & -approved training course. Do you think folks like Sarah Brady, Chuck Schumer, or Hillary Clinton would ever approve of such a proposal? How do you think something like that could be “sold” to the traditionally “more control” types?

Oh, before I forget:

Glossary Update:

Assault Rifle: a select-fire (semiautomatic, 3-or-5-round burst fire, or fully automatic) rifle or carbine, firing a light to intermediate caliber cartridge (typically 5.56mm/.223). Typical features: bayonet lug, flash suppressor, matte black finish, shoulder stock w/pistol grip, detachable box magazine.

Assault Weapon: a semiautomatic only version of an Assault Rifle.

[E-Sabbath]

It sure is a handy gun to use as an example in a debate, though, isn’t it? Entire gun can be rebuilt with trivial ease to the point where it no longer fires shells but is, instead, a grappling hook launcher. Obvious military use, too. (See: Mossberg 590A1). Even mounts a bayonet in some bizarre versions. Converting from normal stock to pistol grip is about the same amount of work, and it can go from full 30" barrel to a highly illegal 10", say, in the same five minutes.
Edit: And most importantly, it can go back.

[Erasmus_Darwin]

@ExTank

Erasmus: I have no problem with an NRA-certified & -approved training course. Do you think folks like Sarah Brady, Chuck Schumer, or Hillary Clinton would ever approve of such a proposal? How do you think something like that could be “sold” to the traditionally “more control” types?

Well, technically, that proposal would be more control for most states.

In a more general sense, you aren’t ever going to get their approval. Schumer and Clinton even voted against the Vitter Amendment (which prohibits the confiscation of legally owned firearms during an emergency or natural disaster). That takes a special level of gun hating dedication and an extreme disregard for civil rights. They’re lost causes. The important people are the middle ground – those who may not have a strong stance either way but who might be compelled toward a greater recognition of gun rights based on the Supreme Court’s decision.