What’s the flaw in this idea, to reduce the frequency of prohibited persons acquiring and possessing firearms, especially those obtained from private sales:
• Every person upon turning 18 years old can go to a government office and be issued a firearms possession permit. Can be the post office or something. Basically, this is the current NICS check, supported by both the NRA and gun grabbers.
• A person must have the permit physically available while possessing a firearm, and produce it upon request of law enforcement. If you can’t produce the permit, they haul you down to the station and run the NICS check. If you’re clear, you’re free to go. If you’re a prohibited person, criminal penalties apply and are actually enforced.
• If you physically lose your permit, you go down to the post office and get a replacement. In and out quickly; it takes no longer than the current NICs check.
• The person keeps the firearms permit unless revoked by law. Upon conviction of a “prohibited person” offense, the convicted person must physically surrender the license. Failure to do so will result in criminal penalties.
• Private sellers will be required to verify the buyer possesses a permit. We could run a few sting operations for enforcement. This is admittedly a weak point: criminal sellers won’t care, but it will at least prevent honest sellers from unknowingly selling to criminals.
So simply: Everybody gets a permit almost automatically, until they legally lose it. If you have a gun, you’d better have a permit. And you’d better not sell to someone without a permit.
Yeah, that’s the other flaw: Many gun controllers are simply not interested in controls that improve things - they inevitability default to making any system that attempts to do so yet another bureaucratically complex system that supports their attempts to make gun ownership more difficult. Their goal is not to reduce gun crime, but rather to eliminate as many guns as possible.
The well’s already poisoned, I’m afraid. I can’t blame you.
I found it somewhat interesting that, in your original post, you referred to those on the other side of the issue as ‘gun grabbers’, and 18 minutes later they were ‘gun controllers’. Bit of a difference there, right?
Anyway, I would add a couple of suggestions to your original idea:
The permits would be issued by local law enforcement.
Permits would expire after a set period (3 years, perhaps?), and would need to be renewed at that time.
At the time of first issue and each renewal, the applicant/holder of a permit would be required to produce a signed statement from a licensed medical professional stating that the applicant is both physically and MENTALLY able to own, carry, and operate a firearm.
If you don’t have access to something then of course you can’t use it. However everyone will have access to a weapon if they try hard enough. Too many people have guns, all we can do in America is focus on the source.
Get rid of legalized bribery
Focus on social welfare, decreasing wealth inequality, reforming criminal system, etc…
We could go ahead and criminalize millions of people by passing laws banning guns, but that’s stupid. Sure it’ll lessen a few mass murders, but people will still have guns. Best option is to focus on progressive policy. The so called liberals in government need to be a little more liberal and focus on something new instead of beating a dead horse.
Gun control, aka reducing the number of guns out there, has been proven to reduce crime/suicide. Whether you think that is the best method is another question.
Who exactly will sign? What sort of rigorous examination would be necessary to deem an individual physically and mentally healthy?
Why would a “medical professional” choose to offer this service? There seems to be a huge potential downside for the doctor. He signs a statement and at some point the gun purchaser shoots people. The doctor’s name will soon be in the news.
This is a problem I see. Many, if not most people aren’t going to ask to see the other person’s permit. I think you’d be better off disallowing private sales. If you want to sell a gun to another person, have a gun store be the middle man. They can charge a nominal fee to hold the gun, do the background check and hand it off to the other person. Much like they do for interstate sales.
While that won’t stop some of the sales, it will help stop people that shouldn’t have one from just buying one from some unknown person. That is, if I wanted to sell mine, I don’t have to worry about making sure you have a license, making sure it’s valid, making sure there aren’t any other reasons you shouldn’t have one, worrying that you’ll just steal it since you know I have it etc.
This is the way it is in some states, IIRC, but I have no idea if it makes any difference. Seems like it would curb private sales of ‘good guy to bad guy’. It wouldn’t stop straw sales, where a ‘bad guy’ legally buys a gun at a store specifically to transfer it to someone that can’t have one.
If the sale can transpire between private people with such a check without the need of an FFL, what purpose does it serve to force the transaction through an FFL? Those inclined to follow the law would do so, and those that aren’t so inclined would not, FFL or no.
If prohibiting events were reported more reliably, and NICS were opened to private individuals, then the goal of universal background checks could be satisfied without the need to go through FFLs. The question is whether those for more gun control actually want UBC, or something else.
Ever since Democrats in congress rejected the Coburn amendment to allow private access to NICS, it has been transparent that universal background checks is not the goal - it’s merely a thinly veiled attempt to create a registry and add roadblocks for sales. Or reducing the number of guns out there as it were.
The purpose is it drives up the cost if illegal guns.
When the person selling the illegal gun is now on the hook for a criminal offense that person selling the gun illegally will want more money to cover their risk.
In Australia after their gun reform you could still get an illegal gun but its price rose from $2,000 to $15,000.
Lets say I have a legally owned gun and would like to sell/transfer it to you. I don’t know you, I’ve never met you but somehow we got in contact and made a deal. I don’t particularly want to have be responsible for something you do with the gun because you shouldn’t have had it. Letting an FFL dealer be the middle man takes that off of me.
Just because the sale can transpire, doesn’t mean it should.
That still involves me having to understand how all of it works, verify that the information you gave me is true and ultimately it still may be on me if I gave you this gun when you shouldn’t have had it. It could even be used as a way to legitimize illegal transfers. Without knowing how the system works, I’m wondering if there’s some way I could get the gun to you, or at least away from me, ‘legally’. Maybe we wet the deal up so it gets transferred, unknowingly, to a friend or relative. You take the gun and if something happens, I play dumb.
However that last part isn’t really part of the question since we (or at least I) wasn’t discussing how a ‘bad guy’ can get a gun from another ‘bad guy’. I was more thinking about making sure someone doesn’t unknowingly transfer it to someone that shouldn’t have it.
Having a business with a vested interest in not losing the FFL makes that a lot less likely.
In short, do you trust some random person to be able to transfer a gun to another person and know that it’s all above board?
I would say a warning for the first, and a small fine for later instances. You are supposed to have your driver’s license when you drive, you should have your gun license when you carry.
Would work better if their neighbors had it as well.
You could be correct that there are gun controllers who have some nefarious goals, but that doesn’t mean that there cannot be people who just want to see a reduction in gun violence. I am not sure the reasoning for dragging them into the thread.
That’s true of all laws. The problem is is that currently, you can legally sell a gun, or a bunch of guns, to someone, even if they are a criminal, as long as you don’t “know” that they are a criminal. There are currently people who should have very good reason to suspect that the guns that they are selling are going into the hands of people that shouldn’t have them, but as long as they don’t have to check, they don’t have to know. If they have to check, then they have to know, and that shuts down an avenue for guns getting into the black market.
IOW, there are people who are currently skirting on the edge of the law, just staying legal. If the law changes, most are not going to start breaking the law, they will stop selling guns to criminals.
You sound as though there is something nefarious afoot. That one cannot be fore a reduction in gun violence without actually wanting “something else”.
I really don’t think that this kind of thinking is useful at all in debating policy. There were many reasons that it was not well liked, one of the main ones being that there would be absolutely no incentive for someone to actually use it. With no form of registry, then it is impossible to really prove who sold a gun to who. It would have also involved the creation of a new portal that would be accessible to the public, not an easy or cheap task. That people were against it, doesn’t, IMHO, make someone act as disnegenously as you imply.
I really don’t get this whole ‘they are coming for our guns’ or ‘they won’t be satisfied with anything short of disarming the population’, when that’s not the case at all. It does nothing to further the debate, and only frustrates those who come to the debate in good faith, only to be told that they “actually want … something else.”
It would do no good for people on the gun control side of things say that because republican defeated the Toomey bill, that republicans are in favor of criminals possessing guns. It does no more good for when the democrats don’t go for a bill that the reason for it is because they actually want to disarm the populace, but if the pro-gun side will start casting aspersions and nefarious motivations upon their opponents, then I suppose the pro-gun-violence-reduction side will respond in kind, and there is no progress.
As a pretty strong majority of the population is in favor of background checks between private sellers, preventing that from coming to pass, and then saying that anyone in favor of background checks just wants to take all the guns away means that eventually, the moderates on the pro-gun-violence-reduction side will be drowned out by the people on our side that you have driven to believe that the only way to reduce gun violence is to get rid of all guns.
For a time, there was no long gun registry in CA, yet all private party sales had to go through an FFL. When I sold and bought private party, I used the FFL because it was required, and no honest person would suggest a sale that didn’t comply with the law. There was no registry and yet people still complied. Sure there were criminals who circumvented the law, but that will happen regardless. The law could easily be crafted to require an NICS check without the registry and it would accomplish the goal of UBC. But that was rejected. I’m not saying people are coming for the guns - Im saying, as you just did, that folks want more than UBC. As you identify - a registry. If UBC was the goal, that can be done.
If you feel uncomfortable, an FFL can still assist in the sale if you’d like. I believe in all 50 states an FFL will facilitate a private sale if asked and the fees paid. That doesn’t mean it needs to be a requirement.
My preference would be that individuals could utilize a mechanism to be satisfied their sale is to a non-prohibited person. The proposal in the OP would accomplish this. The Coburn amendment would have accomplished this.
Nope, in the USA there has been no significant reduction in violent crime in areas with stricter gun control
As for suicide, that is a basic human right. Perhaps tragic at times, but in no way does suicide by gun decrease the public safety. It is a red herring.
Can we instead focus on violence rather than “gun violence”?
Because that has been the stated goal of many gun grabbers. And the excuse “Oh strict gun control in Chicago didn’t work, but that’s just because other states don’t have strict gun control as well…”:rolleyes: