Illegal to the criminal, sure. But perfectly legal to the person who sells or gives his gun to a criminal. The infamous “gun show loophole.”
Because if you have laws against having certain types of guns in certain areas, you can enforce those laws. If it is perfectly fine to open carry an AR-15 down the street, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it until they start shooting people. If it is illegal to have certain guns in your possession, then you don’t have to find out whether they are allowed to have those weapons before you take legal action against them.
How would you determine that? Do we have a US without a law against murder to compare it to? I would agree that laws against murder decrease the number of murders, but for the same reasons that I would say that a law against guns would decrease the number of guns.
Yeah but that’s ok since guns correspond directly to gun deaths. More guns = more gun deaths. Pretty straightforward really and should not surprise anyone.
Any transaction that involves transferring a firearm to a prohibited person is illegal. Your statement is simply false. In case your memory is that short:
" …it is not breaking the law to sell that gun to a criminal in the first place."
Actually what I said in the first place was " If some sort of responsibility was on the owner of the gun when he sold it to ensure that it was not going to a prohibited person, and hold them liable if it does, then that would cut down on the trafficking of guns. As is, since the person selling the gun is not liable in any way, unless you can prove that they knew that the buyer was prohibited from having a gun, that leaves a massive loophole for getting guns into the blackmarket."
That you removed it, and asked a question about the rest of it out of context doesn’t mean that you have somehow changed the meaning of my words. My words are still right there for anyone to read. Your little game fools no one.
If you sell a gun to someone who is a criminal, but you “didn’t know” that they were a criminal when you sold it to them, exactly what law have you broken?
“The problem is not that a criminal is going to break the law, and therefore get a gun illegally anyway, the problem is that it is not breaking the law to sell that gun to a criminal in the first place.”
My apologies. The statement of kb9friender (as it stands now), taken in full context, has a different meaning (with which I agree):
“The problem is not that a criminal is going to break the law, and therefore get a gun illegally anyway, the problem is that it is not breaking the law to sell that gun to a criminal in the first place. If some sort of responsibility was on the owner of the gun when he sold it to ensure that it was not going to a prohibited person, and hold them liable if it does, then that would cut down on the trafficking of guns. As is, since the person selling the gun is not liable in any way, unless you can prove that they knew that the buyer was prohibited from having a gun, that leaves a massive loophole for getting guns into the blackmarket.”
“The problem is not that a criminal is going to break the law, and therefore get a gun illegally anyway, the problem is that it is not breaking the law to sell that gun to a criminal in the first place. If some sort of responsibility was on the owner of the gun when he sold it to ensure that it was not going to a prohibited person, and hold them liable if it does, then that would cut down on the trafficking of guns. As is, since the person selling the gun is not liable in any way, unless you can prove that they knew that the buyer was prohibited from having a gun, that leaves a massive loophole for getting guns into the blackmarket.”
That being said:
It is not uncommon, in my experience, that private sellers of guns will mandate a concealed carry license as a prerequisite for a private sale, to voluntarily insure that the buyer is not a prohibited person.
I’ve also seen it suggested that some mechanism be created that would open the NICS system to private sales, to be accessed with consent of both the buyer and the seller. This seems like a good idea to me.
I really wish this knife = gun as a murder weapon thing would just die.
To put this in some perspective, the Las Vegas shooter fired > 1,100 rounds. 58 people died and 851 were injured. This took 10 minutes.
One of the deadliest knife attacks ever, a group of 10 knife wielding assailants attacked Kunmin railway station in China. 35 died, 4 of whom were bad guys, and > 140 were wounded.
10 people with knives in an enclosed area killed slightly more than half as many as a single person with a gun from across the street and several floors up.
In post #64 I quoted the following which puts paid to the notion that knives are as much a threat as guns:
"Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.
They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns."*
So guns are the problem. Not knives. I am pretty sure the Brits have easy access to knives.
T*o begin with, here’s why I focus on total homicide, rather than gun homicide or all gun deaths. First, few people care much about whether they are stabbed to death or shot to death. And even if gun restrictions do decrease gun homicides, that effect may well be offset (or more than offset) by an increase in other homicides:
Some killers would kill with knives or other weapons instead of guns.
To the extent that today some attempted killings are stopped by defenders who have guns, those attempts might succeed if the guns become harder enough for defenders to get.
To the extent that today some potential killings (or attempted robberies, rapes, or burglaries that lead to killings) are deterred by attackers’ fear of running into a gun, it might be that fewer will be deterred if guns become harder enough for defenders to get.*
I am willing to concede that knives … and cars…and bombs… and whatever wont take the place of guns. But there’s the self defense angle and frankly I think that is pretty serious.
Otherwise, why is it that gun control laws do not reduce violent crime?
For what it’s worth, I’m somewhere near a small l libertarian myself. I think gun control laws do (or at least can) reduce violent crime, but I’m against strict gun control. To me, the liberty issue is more important than the safety issue. I feel the same way about cigarettes and alcohol. It’s much more comfortable for me to argue against gun control from this position than to try to defend a position that states guns are actually safer than no-guns.
Your source is an opinion piece from a politically conservative strongly pro-gun columnist, who by his own admission did not attempt anything close to an academically rigorous analysis. Here’s something a little more thorough regarding the correlation between state homicide rates and gun ownership.
Gun control works. America hasn’t had any real gun control so there is no evidence for or against its effectiveness in America. There is plenty plenty of evidence that gun control works worldwide. America is not a special snowflake.
It may be that gun control doesn’t reduce “violent crime,” but the lethality of it. I think it does reduce certain categories of violent crime, such as terroristic mass shootings.
As for firearms being used to deter criminals, the same can be said for bladed weapons.
Who is putting law-abiding citizens in prison? Are you speaking of a hypothetical gun-owner who is required by an hypothetical future law to turn in his gun and refuses to do so? If he does disobey that law, would he still be a “law-abiding citizen”? Are libertarians exempt from obeying laws they disapprove of?
Note that my question may be more about logic or English usage than politics, let alone guns.
I really think your claim needs explanation. Promote yourself to an upper-case Libertarian if that helps.