It’s a common sentiment among gun owners, or at least activists for the right of the people to keep and bear arms, that many gun control proposals are intentionally crafted to harass / inconvenience / make life harder for law-abiding gun owners. In this thread, I’d like to discuss gun control proposals that do NOT harass / inconvenience / make life harder for law-abiding gun owners. I suspect adhering to that guideline in an absolute sense would be difficult, so let’s focus on proposals that maximize effectively reducing gun crime while minimizing the harm / imposition on law-abiding gun owners.
If you care, the genesis for this thread is this exchange I had with k9bfriender
The goal of this thread was summarized nicely by Miller:
A certain amount of burden will always have to fall on the law-abiding, since we need to make sure that the “law-abiding” aren’t funneling guns to criminals, even unintentionally. This means that once a gun has come legally into a gun-owner’s possession, he has to start playing the part of the gatekeeper, whether he likes it or not.
I fly airplanes for a living. A good case could be made that aviation is regulated more heavily than almost any other industry. Even more strictly in some ways than medicine - that from a doctor / pilot I know who has worked as a professional in both fields.
Do you know how many hoops a person has to jump through just to take a Cessna 150 around the patch on their first solo? And more to complete a Private Pilot’s license? Not a commercial, not a jet type rating, just the Private Pilot.
Well, it’s a lot. And it should be, despite the fact that a Cessna 150 and planes of its class are not very good weapons. But they can cause damage to people and property, thus many FAA personnel will tell you they’re not in the business of protecting pilots, they are in the business of protecting the general public FROM pilots. Again, as it should be.
So if gun owners, people who want to possess actual weapons designed to cause death, have to deal with some regulations that they consider a hassle… I don’t fucking care.
I used to be a more “reasonable” on this issue. I know how to shoot, and some of my family are gun owners. Now I say regulate the hell out of it.
The entire debate is utterly meaningless. There is no meaningful distinction between a “law abiding” gun owner and a “criminal” gun owner besides the fact that the latter has commited at least one crime. The nut who shot up Las Vegas was a law abiding gun owner, so was whatshisname who shot up the Aurora cinema while dressed as the Joker. As are the thousands of people who never did anything wrong and never broke the law until they shot their wives/husbands in the face.
Similar problem with ‘red flag laws’ and other such feel good measures. How often did a potential mass murderer actually show any overt signs of what they were planning?
Lengthening the time for a default proceed approval to buy a gun. Overwhelming the process takes minutes. For some the initial look has flags that trigger a need for further investigation but not an instant rejection. The government currently has three days to conduct that check. If the check isn’t complete in that time the person is allowed to buy the gun. Whether or not the person actually buys the gun at that point isn’t mandatory reporting from the gun dealer. The FBI is supposed to keep working the check for up to 90 days. If they find something they are supposed to inform the ATF who is supposed to follow up and repossess any gun sold based on the check. Extending the time before a default proceed could keep guns out of the hands of those that are actually prohibited. It would have small effect on most legal gun owners since most checks take minutes not days. Something as small as an extension to 5 business days or a calendar week could reduce default proceed sales to those legally disqualified from buying guns. Few legal gun owners would be tied up in the extra waiting period.
Reporting from states/territories of potentially disqualifying data can be spotty. Improving those state level systems can gun sales to people that already, by federal law, aren’t allowed to buy them. Accurate reporting of personal protection/restraining orders is at a minimum something a lot of states need to fix. In theory, for the length of time those orders are in effect someone is disqualified from buying a gun. The information has to be reported in a timely fashion for it to matter.
Close the “boyfriend loophole.” Federal law prohibits gun sales to those with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions involving a spouse, live in significant other, or someone you’ve had a child with. Have multiple DV convictions where you have assaulted non-resident partners or family members… here’s your gun! I’d argue those are one of the kinds of violent criminals that we should be keeping guns away from. Currently, we are not even trying to keep guns out of their hands.
universal background checks shouldn’t inconvenience the law abiding while keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.
bans on those convicted of domestic violence or violent crimes (I think many/most mass shooters have a history of this). However there is the issue of lots of combat soldiers and police officers committing domestic violence
stronger laws against straw purchases (possibly including gun registration so if a straw purchase is done, people can trace the guns buyer).
Having a gun is supposed to be a Constitutional right, like voting. Because I guess in the frontier days, being unarmed was basically like being crippled. If you didn’t have a gun you couldn’t scare off the indian raiders or stand up to cattle rustlers or the corrupt sheriff or whatever.
In the bad part of town, having a gun is the only thing scaring from breaking into your apartment and stealing your stuff, or robbing you on the street.
I don’t know what percentage of America is still this way, but I’m just saying, in the world these people are living in, taking away a man’s piece is a major infringement on his constitutional rights. The State better have convicted him of a felony beyond a reasonable doubt. (or forced him to plead to it, which is a far more common thing)
Ok that’s neat. But how often was this information made available to authorities before the attack? Most people aren’t going to rat out a friend. Especially in today’s world, where calling the police on someone is basically the same as attempting to kill them yourself.
I agree with Miller about the point of gun regulations, although I did not read the other thread. With regards to what such regulations might look like, I can only speculate. I think crafting such regulations would require collecting and analyzing data about who is buying guns and who is committing crimes with them. As such a good place to start would be with gun sellers collecting basic demographic information such as the buyer’s name, birthday, and address, along with background checks to make sure the buyer is not a felon and also has no history of violent misdemeanors. The latter prohibition is not currently in place anywhere in the US AFAIK. I think someone with a history of violence, even if it isn’t in the commission of a felony, should not own guns, unless the violence was in self defense. That’s just a start, but I think it’s a good one.
How about we implement the same laws as England, since apparently it is so hard for criminals to get guns there, they have resorted to using knives to commit crimes?
Dogs are required to have rabies shots and wear their rabies tags. But in over half of American cities, cops don’t bust down doors in pre-dawn raids looking to see that your dogs are properly tagged.
The law in those municipalities is enforced in the obvious breach. If you commit some other violation of animal ordinance (say, letting your dog run free, or harboring a dangerous animal, or the like), then in the course of the investigation the animal control officer will check your dog’s vaccination status. If you can’t produce it, the penalties pile up.
The effect of this ordinance is that law-abiding dog owners undergo a moderate inconvenience that results in widespread safety. Law-violating dog owners are likely not getting their dogs vaccinated anyway, natch–but now there’s an additional disincentive to being irresponsible.
So, yeah: let’s require gun owners to have the same level of regulation as dog owners. Take some basic safety precautions and get licensed for it.
The bad owners won’t do it, but they’re the ones who will bear the brunt of law enforcement. Owners who are just negligent enough not to get licensed won’t ever get dinged if they don’t run afoul of law enforcement for other reasons.
There are so many problems with the proposal. First, criminals are not now allowed to own guns. Since they do, clearly it must be made more difficult for them to get guns, but that will make it more difficult for non-criminals to get guns, and so is not to be allowed.
Second, a criminal is a law breaker who has been caught and convicted. In the real world many lawbreakers have not been caught yet. Clearly they must be allowed to purchase guns.
Third, what defines a criminal. Armed robbery yes. Jaw walking? Drunk driving? Spousal abuse?
How will the average gun seller determine if a purchaser is a criminal? Scarlet C’s on his shirt? How long must the law abiding gun purchaser be forced to wait until the seller can be sure he isn’t a criminal, and is this an infringement on their rights? If it is, how many guns do you think should get through to criminals in order to protect those rights?
That might be a political issue with passage. That is different than the question in the OP of what keeps the burden on the law abiding to a minimum.
I’m not sure it’s nearly as big a hurdle to implementation as you think it is either. We already have federal law that bans people for life from buying guns based on misdemeanor DV convictions. The NRA has had concerns about and opposed specific implementations with regards to DV convictions and restraining orders being bars to gun purchases. Still there was a survey in 2013 that made the wiki article on the boyfriend loophole:
Even just a more limited 10 year prohibition on purchases for a DV conviction would be a new gun control. It’s an area where we could potentially see some real effects on gun homicide numbers. It would only affect convicted criminal not law abiding gun owners. While it’s six year since the poll the majority of NRA members might still support that new gun control. This is literally an area where, carefully tailored, we might get an effective gun control with NRA support.
They do inconvenience the law abiding though. FFL holders charge for the service. Something like grandpa has decided he’s too old to hunt and wants to give his guns with family history to various children and grandchildren is an example. That can be quite a bit of hassle and cost hundreds of dollars to do with universal background check requirements. One way to address those kinds of concerns are close relation exceptions; it’s not really a universal background check at that point. Trying to use technology to craft a system that let’s private parties get an answer from NICS without involving an FFL holder is another possible change.
That’s already covered by the Lautenberg Amendment that prohibited gun sales to those with some, but not all, misdemeanor DV convictions. Those convictions are career enders. It takes a conviction though. A lot of domestic violence, even that which produces arrest, doesn’t result in charges let alone conviction.
Wow…just…wow. No difference between a ‘law abiding’ gun owner and a ‘criminal’. That’s…just unreal. It’s like saying there is no difference between a ‘law abiding’ black person and a ‘criminal’ black person. Seriously. No hyperbole. That’s really fucked up.
As for the nut in Las Vegas, the difference was, just like with any other criminal, the person in question went from being law abiding to a criminal murderer. You probably don’t realize this, but people aren’t born criminals, they become criminals by doing criminal acts. You don’t target citizens, even non-gun citizens (:rolleyes:) BEFORE they do something criminal, you go after them after they become criminals. And do all that trial and lock em up stuff.
As for the OP, I’d say that, as Llama Llogophile was getting at, a certainly amount of training and licensing might be worth looking at. IF it’s not being used as a back door to prevent gun ownership. It’s already the case if you want to carry concealed after all…there is a lot more involved than just going to the local sporting goods store and picking out a gun. I’m not sure how it would work in practice, and I doubt that either side would be thrilled with mandatory training and licenses…hell, not sure that would even pass muster, Constitutionally, though I think it might.
Barring that, other things I think that might make a small difference would be background checks prior to purchasing new guns. This is, again, something that is already being done in some cases, but not across the board.
None of this is really what the OP is asking about though, as all of these fall on the law abiding citizens, not criminals. To do that then I think you have to ramp things up wrt sentencing. Perhaps you craft laws that if you are convicted of a crime using a gun it’s a mandatory <insert harsh sentence here>. If you use a gun in a murder then perhaps you are given a mandatory life sentence with no parole. A mass murder is a mandatory life in a supermax prison with the whole 23 hours a day inside and 1 hour a day of exercise and whatever else harsh stuff you want to toss on top. Or, I suppose you could go with the mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of a mass shooting.
I’m unsure if any of that will really help, but it might cut down on things a bit. Personally, I think instead of focusing on guns we should focus on the root causes. WHY is America so violent? I mean, taking guns out of the picture, the US has more knife murders per capita than most other western countries…hell, we have more of nearly every kind of murder than most countries have for every kind of murder. Is it the drug problem? Income disparity and poverty? We should look at that, instead of at one aspect where we are trying to fix the symptom but the underlying problem is still there.
That said, if the burden to provide evidence that you are law-abiding is so much that someone will break the law to circumvent them, then you’re not so law-abiding now are you?
The issue then becomes what an undue burden is. Burdens are okay, undue burdens are not.
I have yet to see any serious attempts at reforming the nation’s gun laws to put an undue burden on gun owners.