Common sense gun legislation?

Great Debates
1

Mr. Obama brought it up a couple times last night–careful to say it was the realm of the legislative branch and not HIS job to offer a solution.

I’m pretty hip to guns and how to use 'em and how not. I know what and where I’m allowed to shoot. But what I really don’t have a handle on is what sorts of solutions are couched in the language of “common sense gun laws.”

Because, frankly, it seems to me either people get to have them or they don’t. The toothpaste is out of the tube, leaving the only real solution (short of gathering them up out of the general population, which has its own set of problems) of–no more sales. Or maybe, no more sales of guns and/or ammo without a license, the sort of which might be required for advanced-level rocketry or the possession and use of a belt-fed machine gun. And even then–the civilian handgun arsenal is already pretty well stocked. Is this a long-haul plan, where stuff is outlawed NOW, and then over the course of the next 50-100 years stuff gets obsolete or used up and the problem melts away?

2

There isn’t much. What I find to be common sense would be keeping guns out of the hand of the 3 Cs, Criminals, Children, and psyChotics, they have no right to possess guns. Good luck with getting anywhere on that. The NRA and the gun manufacturers who own it will not approve of anything that reduces the number of guns sold and they will fight tooth and nail against any legislation that restricts firearms in any way. After all if we stop insane criminal children from owning guns the next step is for the government to seize everyone’s guns.

3

Not saying it would be possible in the US, but Australia got serious about gun control in the 90s after a highly publicized massacre.

*The gun buy-back scheme started on 1 October 1996 and concluded on 30 September 1997. The buyback purchased and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, mostly semi-automatic .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. Only Victoria provided a breakdown of types destroyed, and in that state less than 3% were military style semi-automatic rifles.

After the buyback program, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia dropped by over 50% and hasn’t risen since. The buyback also resulting in a drop of 80% in firearm suicides.*

When someone says “common sense” in this regard, they may be referring to mandatory background checks for all purchases, reducing the availability of high-powered firearms (that out-gun local public safety officers), limiting the amount of ammo one can purchase at one time, gun owner databases, etc. All highly problematic for the pro-gun folk here in the US.

4

Nice. :slight_smile: But it seems these folks tend to get access to guns from other sources who would not normally be restricted, as a class, to access. Maybe unremarkable parent or grandparent with a ‘legitimate’ right to own is a little sloppy with security, and one of the C’s gains a weapon and some ammo.

And I guess, for purposes of this exercise, let’s pretend the NRA and similar lobbyists can be shouted down and legislation is allowed to proceed more or less unhindered. (I do black hole GQs like this, drives the physicists nuts) What does that legislation look like?

I’m sure a good number of irons could be secured with a simple cash for guns deal, with the weaponry going through a shredder upon surrender. But still, there is the old “then only the noncompliant will be armed!” Which I believe is more of a bogeyman than an actual threat, but I also don’t want to get into that sort of a thread.

ETA: snowthx: I assume the buyback only works when there is a prohibition on sales to accompany it?

5

**Common sense gun legislation?

**“Handguns strictly registered and tracked, with permits hinged on aptitude tests. Long guns fine with the caveat that anything above and beyond what’s typically used for hunting is illegal.
If you have a problem with this, fuck you.”

Seems to be the most sensible scheme.

6

In a recent thread, posters from Australia were asked how things were going since the buyback, and how that all went down. Bottom line, people turned in their semi-automatics and used the money to buy revolvers, bolt-action rifles and single- or double-barreled shotguns, and there are now more guns in private ownership in Australia than there were before.

The big difference is, they fire more slowly, and people stopped killing each other with them.

7

I wouldn’t have any issue with this but I have several advantages; I’m white, very well educated, and connected enough to to society to understand law (in general) and its function. Most of the people I live around don’t have those advantages and the poor often don’t test as well as I do so ------- I see a couple problems with the idea should it come to pass.

8

How do you get around that pesky Constitution? If’n I had my druthers that’s what the law would be, but this was taken out of our hands long ago.

9

“Taken out of our hands” ? Is there some reason you can no longer amend the Constitution?

10

Here’s the Aussie gun buy-back thread for reference: Australian Dopers: How Did Gun Ban Work, on a Practical Level? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board

11

I have a Facebook friend in Washington who complains about the recently-passed referendum there. I don’t know all the details, but in a nutshell it seems to require that any transfer of a firearm (with a few exceptions) must be to someone who has passed a background check. He’s said that the law is bad and poorly written, and his hobby of making wooden pistol grips is now illegal. His latest was that a hunter handing his rifle to a friend while climbing over a fence is now a felon.

I haven’t asked him why he or the hunter can’t just have the background check done.

12

I’m on the record of supporting gun ownership, however I also do think that the regulations are really weak, and as the gun advocates point at places like Switzerland as great examples of how guns do not cause more killings the reality is that the NRA does not talk much about what the Swiss actually do.

I do think also that the piss poor mental health care that we have in the USA (and it means mostly that many do not have it or it is very expensive) should be improved so as to identify the ones that should not own a gun early, so then they will be monitored properly.

13

I think what it comes down to (IMvHO) is that many people would be okay if only the ‘good guys’ could have guns. For the record, I have one, but I don’t walk around with it. Technically it’s for protection, but it’s locked away so it couldn’t even be used for that. Someone could be outside picking my locks with a paperclip and I still might not be able to get to it on time.

Being tracked is interesting. It might limit straw sales if, somehow, people were required to register their gun with the local police AND bring it back in once every X years to prove they still have it. Don’t do that and face a stuff penalty (maybe $1000). If you ‘lose’ it or it gets ‘stolen’, I’m not sure. Maybe you still face the same penalty. Maybe you get a smaller penalty, but if it happens again you get a bigger one. If you don’t want to deal with that, don’t buy a gun. I don’t know, I haven’t worked out the details on this.

Also, I wouldn’t have an issue with EVERYONY being required to have a licences (let’s just ignore that that would be unconstitutional for the moment). I actually learned quite a bit in my CCW class. Even common sense things like ‘know what’s behind your target’. That is, if someone breaks into your house and you grab the gun and they enter your bedroom, don’t shoot at them if they’re backed up against the wall that you share with your son’. Honestly, I hadn’t thought of that. Now I have. Now I know if something like that happened, I know I have three directions to aim, if a bad guy is ‘that way’, no shooting, since a stray bullet (and lets be honest, most of them will be stray) will enter the kid’s room. There was lots more of good info in that class, but that’s just an example.
Like I said, I think many, even anti-gun, people would be okay if only the ‘good guys’ had guns. They just want the guns out of the hands of the ‘bad guys’. The people that might shoot up a school, the people that might steal their car, the people that might break into their house or rob a store. If I told them I only use my gun to go to the range a few times a year, I’d guess many/most of them would be okay with that. A subset of those, I’d guess, would even be okay if I went on to say “and it’s nice to know I have it should someone ever break it to my house in the middle of the night, but it’s not like I keep it loaded or carry it around, it’s locked in a safe”. But I do understand that many people would much prefer that there were no guns anywhere other than on police/armed forced

The problem is, how do you sell a gun to someone and make sure they’re a good guy and not a bad guy? How do you make sure he’s going to use it to protect his house or (legit) business and not his illegal business or that he wants it specifically because he’s got a beef with someone. That’s the tough part.

14

Tracking is interesting but it could just be impossible. There is no such thing as a list or database of all the guns I’ve legally purchased; you can’t enter my social security number and come up with a list of Y number of firearms I own even with registration and all we’ve had since 1968. So how do we start the tracking? How many people will either hide or black-market their guns rather than bring them in to be listed? Remember, we’re talking a basic shitload of legal firearms out there owned by a varied assortment of basically law-abiding citizens. And if we’re going to have the local police in charge of maintaining a national system, how do we ensure that some jurisdictions won’t be more (or less) enthusiastic than others in enforcing it? How do we ensure it won’t be used to target minorities in some places? Be used as probable cause to search or detain innocent people?

We also have the issue of what happens after someone dies. I have no kids so if I go last everything goes to a couple cousins. Currently their only obligation is to legally handle anything they find. Under new tracking-style laws such as you suggest are they going to be held criminally liable for any of my firearms they can’t find? What if I sold them off gray-market before I died? Are the fines against them personally or just against the estate? This one (this law) could easily run more pages than the Affordable Health Care Act by the time its done.

And we get to the point I can never quite get over no matter how much I want to; all this does nothing about the number of illegal arms already here and those that will come in after tracking is instituted - or created because tracking is instituted. Its why even those of us on the left keep coming back to harsher penalties for crimes with guns, including illegal sales, more than more laws in general.

15

Like I said, I really (really, really) haven’t given it any thought. I just came up with it when I saw ‘tracking’ mentioned upthread. I’m sure I could come up with a few solutions (and I have some thoughts) to a few problems but no matter what those solutions are, they’re going to cost someone some money, be it tax payers or gun owners. Either way, it’s probably beyond the scope of the thread and gets into a thread that would just deal with ‘how could be track guns’.

FTR, I don’t really care if a department is ‘less than enthusiastic’ about doing something they’re required to do. A)There’s plenty of new cops that would be thrilled to do it if it meant they could get on the force B)It’s theoretical anyways, so we’d have to pretend they’ll do it and C) There’s ways of ‘making’ them do it such as pulling federal funding.

16

He and his friend would have to leave the field and obtain government approval between the two of them for the transfer of that particular firearm. Then go back again and re-transfer it after they got over the fence.

Often the people who write these laws don’t think things through, or they do, and prefer those that make things as difficult as possible on gun owners as part of a general effort to reduce use and ownership. Usually the latter.

17

No there isn’t. Go ahead and try. I haven’t seen any indication that an effort to amend the Constitution will succeed. Do you plan to simply repeal the 2nd Amendment? I don’t think I could back that myself. If you have a new amendment to replace it with then tell us what it is.

18

I think repealing it is a fantastic idea. Repealing the amendment doesn’t mean you lose the ability to own a gun, it just means it’s no longer a Constitutionally protected right.

Think of all the categories that have no amendments backing them:

[ul]
[li]the right to bear clothes[/li][li]the right to own a car[/li][li]the right to own books[/li][li]the right to own a refrigerator[/li][li]etc., etc., ad absurdem[/li][/ul]

I don’t think there is either the political or cultural will to solve the problem by any means, much less Constitutionally, but that’s a different thing from what you said, which was that getting around the Constitution was out of our hands. It’s in our hands: we just choose not to do it.

19

IME whenever someone talks about “common sense (anything) legislation,” what they mean is “anything that fits what I already believe.”

20

You could try to change it, but I don’t think the republicans would put up far to large of a fight for that to happen. Gun Control especially, but probably any of the amendments. (Read this keeping in mind I tend to not know what I’m talking about when it comes to politics).