So, CA can no longer ban 50 caliber weapons, prohibit mail order ammunition, require pistols to be proven ‘not unsafe’, limit purchases to 1 per month, separate DROS fees for long guns and handguns purchased at the same time, impose penalties for unlocked storage, magazine limits, have possession of firearms be probable cause for search, etc? It depends on what the uniform laws across the country would be. If they suck, then no.
I think this will eventually be litigated away anyways, so this isn’t a big deal and not really much of a compromise.
Same as above, not much of a compromise and this alone is probably a deal breaker for gun control advocates. If instead you said that any select fire weapon was now not subject to NFA and were treated the same as any other firearm, then we’re talking.
Later you added subject to a restraining order which I think is shit so that’s a no. If you strike that, and the license is shall issue then we’re talking. Should be no harder to get than a driver’s license. Background check is fine. Fees need to be low just enough to cover direct costs.
Only if it’s made explicitly unconstitutional to ever confiscate, at any level of government, with no immunity for government agents who attempt to do so.
Of course we wouldn’t totally eliminate the flow of guns into criminal hands but it would severely restrict the flow of guns into criminal hands. Its not like we are going to end up with enough fake gun thefts to match the current level of straw sales. I also don’t think that actual gun thefts would go up enough to make up the difference.
The fact of the matter is that most gun crimes are committed within weeks of the crimnal getting the gun (I think they even have a term for the period of time between purchase of the gun and the criminal use of the gun, I forget the term).
There will be significantly more risk for everyone in the supply chain and will be MUCH harder for a criminal to get a gun.
I’m afraid the unlucky bastard that keeps getting his guns stolen is going to have to deal with just such an investigation. If someone kept stealing your car and committing hit and run on pedestrians, the cops might believe the car was stolen the first time, but by the third time, they’re going to dig a little deeper.
There are always going to be people at the extreme and that over time gun regulations have only gotten stricter over time so why give up so much now when they are never going to give up their efforts to push regulation ever futher? I guess because I think it would reduce gun violence and I would resist any attempt at further regualtion (to the point of not voting for Democrats generally).
With preemption, there would be no other gun laws. No other restrictions. You have a valid license for that gun? Yes? Thats the end of the conversation if your license is valid.
I can’t prove beyond all doubt that forcing you to put up with the incobnvenience of getting a license and registering all your guns would reduce gun crime but studies going back as far as the 1960’s show that licensing and registration would reduce the flow of guns into criminal hands.
LBJ tried to get licensing andregistration after MLK and RFK were assassinated. Licensing and registration would probably not have done anything to prevent those two particular assassinations but it was believed that it would reduce gun violence genrally. Maybe significantly so.
Sorry, I forgot that the original plan was that CCW would require taking a test. personally, I think everyone should take gun classes, it should be taught in schools and offered at community colleges, I’m a pussy that way. If the notion of taking a writtena nd practical test for a CCW offends you, then ignore it. There are plenty of states that think that CCW is a constitutional right and I don’t think that the training is what would make gun grabbers who don’t like the idea suddenly lie it or vice versa, I put that in there because I like it.
Just as an aside, training classes are worth every dollar. Every gun instructor I have ever met has confirmed this.
Why?
To me, a lot of this is statistical. Hentor is probably going to drop by and tell me why I am wrong in a minute but in a nutshell: we have a really good idea of who is likely to commit gun homicide, this includes felons, people who are under restraining order, people with a history of domestic violence, etc. So while these people may or may not one day assault someone, they are much more likely to than the average joe and if they havea firearm, theya re much more likely to use a firearm in the assault.
If you wanted o create a registry of everyone who owned acopy of Mein Kampff or the communist manifesto, then I would object. I think this is different.
Whoa.
I think there is a difference between the nation at the federal level (with a majority of states being fairly pro-gun and the state level where you have some states that are dominated by gun grabbers. Unless the political climate across the antion starts to resemble California, I don’t really se a problem.
I don’t think there is much of slippery slope or much opportunity for nibbling at the edges. In fact I think you will start seeing a gun rights version of the Hatch amendment inserted into every peice of legislation that comes out of congress.
YOu can possess a firearm as long as you have a license. You must change registration upon change in ownership. So no you don’t have to invite an FFL to Christmas morning but you have to get the gun registrered at some point. You can fire your buddy’s gun, you just have to show him your license.
I’m not sure how that would be a problem for licensing and registration.
You are making thngs much more difficult for the supply chain that takes a gun from a law abiding citizen to a criminal.
The NICS system performs about 99% of what a national registration system would require. Adding a licensing requirement would make the registration process even faster and easier.
Well, people seem open to the idea. You’re never going to cvonvince everyone.
Some people have poor impulse control. This doesn’t make them such a danger to society that we have to keep them permanently incarcerated but they are statistically so much more likely to commit gun violence that I have no problem preventing them from owning a firearm beyond the term of their initial incarceration.
Licensing and registration would severely reduce his access to firearms.
The point of liceinsging and registration is to leave the law abiding citizenry as armed as it wants to be while disarming the criminals by drying up their access to guns.
Nope. Mass shootings can happen with revolvers. Or hunting rifles. Take for example, a Winchester Model 1894, chambered for .357 magnum. Holds ten rounds. Pair it with a couple of revolvers chambered for the same round. Throw in a few speed loaders for the revolvers.
Okay. That’s a fuzzy distinction at best (Are Claymore mines militia weapons? Can I have one please?), but if you’re going to pin your defense of firearm ownership on the militia part of the Second Amendment, it’s a very poor argument against a registry. A registry would likely help in the organization of a militia. If you’re pinning firearm ownership to the militia portion of the amendment, registration seems absolutely permissible, as long as ownership isn’t limited.
If Michael Bloomberg could tell me with a straight face that the purpose of NYC registration is so that he has a quick reference of gun owners in case he needs to form a militia, then I might support it just for his acting skills. But I’ll bet that he would start laughing half way through.
– Fewer guns into criminal hands in states which today have high gun ownership rate
Minuses, for me, of the proposal:
– More guns, because it will be much easier to keep and bear arms in areas like Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, California, and New England where there now is significant handgun control.
– More successful suicides, because of there being more guns.
– Possibility of more guns in criminal hands in places like Hawaii and New York where there are, today, very few legal handguns that can get fall into criminal hands. The percent of guns getting into criminal hands would decline, but that will be of no help where the number of available guns skyrockets.
– Because of the M16, more people killed in gun massacres.
– Because of the M16, the average gun smuggled into Mexico will be more powerful
– The federal government, which should be discouraging gun ownership because of the safety issues, would instead be subtly endorsing it when it hands out licenses
– States lose ability to experiment in order to find gun policy that works best for their local conditions
– More people in prison because many gun owners will not voluntarily comply with licensing
– Many otherwise law-abiding people now can’t ever get a decent job because they once were arrested for a gun licensing violation
– Higher deficits, or more taxes, because of the last two factors mentioned
The proposal would likely lead to more people being shot. I’m against it.
Define “change in ownership.” Define “at some point.” In legally-binding, enforceable terms.
I’m not sure how that would be a problem for licensing and registration.
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The crux of my argument. Licensing, registration, and background checks are all unicorns and rainbows in theory, but once you get down to the practical matter of defining the nuts and bolts of the law it starts to look like a mess. One of the recent gun bills, in attempting to define what constituted a legal transfer and what kind of grace periods were reasonable, had the unintended side effect of making it illegal to go on vacation for more than 7 days without legally transferring every firearm you owned to your roommate. Of course, that also required transferring them back, with a nice FFL transfer fee for each.
The devil’s in the details. Make the definitions too rigid, and law-abiding citizens suffer. Make them too loose, and criminals will smoothly dance through the new Christmas Morning Loophole or the It Was Just a Loan Loophole.
This is why I like the theory of licensing and registration, but in practice it starts to fall apart. The current system we have today is a compromise on these issues: the majority of firearms today have been purchased with an accompanying background check, but the laws aren’t too onerous. But from here on out is diminishing returns, and every law we pass will cover an ever-decreasing number of the already minority number of un-checked firearm sales, while making the hassles that law-abiding owners have to go through increasingly painful. That is unless someone can come up with some pretty clever wording of laws - something we haven’t seen yet. Show me some of the beautiful prose that makes the laws reasonably painless, immune to misuse for the gun-grabbing agenda, yet still has enough teeth to actually make a dent in illegal gun ownership, and I’ll show you a Yes vote.
I don’t see how. The vast majority of guns used in crimes are acquired using already illegal means: mostly straw purchases or crooked FFLs selling to known prohibited persons. If someone is already willing to commit a crime to provide a gun to a prohibited person, they’ll be more than happy to continue to do so, regardless of whether they are prohibited by the current system or by a shiny new gun license card.
IMHO, this is where we should be looking: not at “how do people get guns” but at “how do criminals get guns.” It turns out we already have laws covering the most popular methods. We just have to start enforcing 'em.
So, in the interest of preventing mass shootings, we should ban revolvers, hunting rifles, and speed loaders. All I said was that mass shootings required a gun capable of carrying out the act. You provided examples of guns capable of carrying out the act. So, we still agree. Do we agree that mass shootings are worthy of prevention? If so, what do you suggest we do toward that goal?
No, you specified large capacity and rapid to fire. Neither weapon I described fits that criteria. Both of those weapon types have been in popular use by civilians since the 19th century.
Okay. I agree that you pointed out that large capacity and rapid fire are not required criteria in order to carry out a mass shooting. I’m okay with that. So, are you arguing that gun control should include more weapons? If we are to conclude that lower capacity, slower to fire weapons have a use beyond mass shootings (and I would agree that they do), does that mean that no gun control of any kind is possible?
This is not the right board for you. You’ve been here two weeks, you have two warnings and a brief suspension, and you have no idea what’s allowed here. Bye.
Anything is possible, up to and including confiscation, via the legislative process and a constitutional amendment. In my view, no new restrictions on ownership are desirable.
I think part of the issue here is pointed out by this statement of Drum God’s:
and this statement of damuri ajashi’s:
On their faces these statements are true, but with a little bit deeper digging, there are issues with them.
Mass shootings are unacceptable. Mass shootings are also a vanishingly tiny number of deaths when compared to total firearm violence deaths, and they’re also not even a blip when it comes to the number of firearm crimes per year. In other words, they’re a total anomaly, and without exception point toward severe mental illness on the perpetrator’s part.
A huge chunk of what are classed as gun violence deaths are actually suicides- almost 20,000 suicides to roughly 11,000 homicides in 2010. Furthermore, those homicides are overwhelmingly perpetrated among criminals- in several cities, something like 3/4 of all victims were criminals.
So this whole thing boils down to trying to restrict or keep a lid on upwards of 300 million firearms in the country because there are some mentally ill people that kill a tiny number of people, and a larger number of mentally ill who kill themselves, or a small number of criminals who shoot each other up?
It seems like a problem searching for a solution, probably because a lot of the anti-gun folks aren’t looking at it like they’re trying to solve a problem, unless that problem is with the very existence and availability of firearms in general.
There are two contradictory ideas in the minds of many gun owners. One is echoed here, that if you don’t shoot yourself, and you’re not a gang member or a career criminal, the odds of you being killed by a gun are low. So low, that it’s a problem that doesn’t need to be solved.
At the same time, gun owners get CCW permits and EDC weapons to defend themselves from what is apparently a non-problem.
The fact is, gun crime is a problem in many communities. Not just for the criminals who get shot, but also for the innocent civilians who get robbed/mugged/carjacked/beaten at gunpoint; for the innocent bystanders who get caught in the crossfire; and for the kids who grow up in a culture of gun violence, only to repeat the cycle when they become teenagers. Growing up in an inner city, watching constant gun violence, seeing people get killed and shot at, it’s got to be nearly impossible to escape such a stressful environment and go on to lead a normal life.
For all of those reasons, making it harder for criminals to get guns is a noble goal, and to his credit, I think Damuri Ajashi’s registration and licensing plan would be moderately effective. The additional upshot of it is that the “non-problem” of gun violence affecting suburban people, which we know is actually a problem because suburban people feel the need to arm themselves against it, might actually become a non-problem. If gun violence is less of a problem, then fewer law-abiding citizens would feel the need to own guns. And if there are just plain fewer guns out there, then there will be fewer successful suicides (which is a good thing), and fewer gun accidents, like little kids shooting each other (which is a very good thing).
I suppose all that’s left is for you to disagree with the idea that licensing and registration would have an affect on criminal access to guns, but I think logic and science is on DA’s side here.
Thank you for your contribution to the conversation, complete with facts that add to the discourse.
You agree that mass shootings are unacceptable. I agree that, as a total percentage of overall deaths, the number is very small. Does that mean that nothing should be done (with regard to firearms) in response to this issue?
You mention the 2:1 ratio of suicide:homicide. However, you seem to indicate that the suicide by firearm rate is not an issue that needs to be addressed. I don’t think I agree. Suicide by firearm is an issue and addressing the prevalence of guns is one tactic to take in dealing with it. It is not the only tactic, but it is a valid and important one.
You go on to say that the majority of homicides are criminals killing criminals. Again, does that mean that no action should be taken?
All of that said, I disagree strenuously with your statement that gun control is a solution looking for a problem. The problem is “There are too many deaths caused by firearms.” Now, there are many approaches to take to this problem, but controlling the supply of guns is obviously one important piece. To say otherwise is absurd.
Well, I think that licensing and registration makes almost all other gun regulation moot but I figured the gun grabbers would have a collective aneurism if I simply opened up the registry to all machine guns going forward. If we eventually open up machine guns to commerical sellers, I would like to see the tax on machine guns somewhere in the thousands of dollars.
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I’m not 100% behind the proposed licencing/carry requirements. What I’d like to see is a background check on every sale, a national concealed carry license, and registration.There is effectively a background check on every sale because you have to run the ID card to see if its valid. Things like felonies or restraining orders will get your card suspended or revoked.
Well, if you’re going to get rid of the training or testing requirement would not be as important but having a periodic inspection of databases to see if you could qualify for a license on the renewal date does serve a purpose IMHO.
Why not have the same rules periodically for everyone? Local law enforcement would report things that would get your license revoked or suspended so why check again for CCW but not for everyone else?
I was proposing we keep the rules we have now which pretty much amounts to what you just said.
Its not easy to file off serial numbers from a gun. I’ve taken several guns apart down to its constituent components and every modern gun I know of has a serial number printed somewhere I can’t get to it without destroying the gun.
I think the 2nd amendment now provides for two rights. The right to effective self defense and the right of the states to a well regulated (i.e. trained) militia.
In today’s day and age, I think effective self defense means a firearm.
Yes I think the government can prohibit you from owning Sarin or Plutonium 239. The common foot soldier doesn’t need to know how to use sarin bombs. But having a population of people who know how to use a rifle or a handgun would be beneficial to any state that wanted to protect the security of a free state.
The law isn’t to dissuade Jimmy the Crack Dealer from breaking the law. It creates a paper trail so we have a better idea of who sold of gave Jimmy the gun and dissuades the transfer of guns from people who can own firearms to those who are prohibited from owning or possessing firearms.
You will find it much more difficult to get someone to give or sell you a firearm.
[quote=“Drum_God, post:60, topic:657138”]
[li]Mass shootings require a gun capable of carrying out the act (large capacity, rapid to fire, etc.)[/li][/quote]
I don’t think we all agree. As others have pointed out, the only way to prevent mass shottings is to go house to house confiscating all firearms other than muzzle loaders. I am pretty sure that a crazy person with a single shot shotgun in an elementary school is going to kill a lot of people.
I told you what the laws would be, licensing and registration of firearms and otherwise just the federal rules we already have in palce (repealing parts of the NFA). California could no longer have a different set of rules than anyone else on the purchase or possession of guns. If you want a rule for .50 caliber BMGs then get it passed at the federal level. You want to limit how many handguns you can purchase in a month, then get that rule passed at the federal level.
Why do you think this would get litigated away? Its been the law for 75 years without even an attempt to litigate it away, why do you think this would just happen anyway? Right now it takes about 6 months to get a suppressor.
Why do you think that we would get M-16s anyways? Once again its been 75 years without even a challenge and there is no challenge on the horizon. I think that machine guns are different than other firearms, I think it is worth taking an intermediate step between commercially available machine guns and surplus military. If we ever do go with commercially available machine guns, I would support a much higher tax for private owners.
Thats the law right now, and for good reason.
You take a written and practical test to get a driver’s license. Are you OK with a written and practical test to get a basic gun license?
I don’t think we have the ability to change the constitution the way you say but we can pass HIPAA type laws making it a federal crime to make unauthorized disclosures of information on the list. Confiscation could only happen if permitted by federal law (confiscation from felons, etc.).
Everyone has something they hate about this idea.
You seem to be under the impression that criminals in places like NYC have trouble getting guns because they are illegal in NYC. There used to ba a total ban oin guns in Washington DC and it served as no impediment to criminals getting their hands on guns. It will not increase the number of armed criminals in any of the 48 contiguous states. Alaska already has more guns than people. Hawaii may be the only state where gun restrictions have had a significant effect on gun crimes.
Right now the law of the land is that you can get a gun if you want (see Heller). You may have to jump through hoops in some states but you can get a gun. This rule would make you get a license and register a gun, most states don’t require even that. So how do you figure this would result in more successful suicides?
I don’t see anything reducing gun suicides unless you ban almost all guns. All it takes is a revolver and you can get that in any state now, even Hawaii.
Yeah? How many machine guns are being smuggled into Mexico right now? You do realize that there are several machine guns for sale on gunbroker right now, right? Why aren’t THOSE guns smuggled into mexico? I think its because they are registered to a particular owner.
What?!?! Licensing is generally considered to be pro-gun control. The states that require gun licenses tend to be the most anti-gun states. Does Utah require a gun license? No. Does Washington, DC? Yes.
Why should the federal government be discouraging the exercise of the second amendment?
What other constitutional rights do you think we should leave up to the states to experiment on? What you are saying is that you want to give some states the right to impose almost prohibitive restrictions if thats what they want to do.
If they are willing to break the law, why shouldn’t they be in prison? We have examples of licensing and registration in other states and we have not seen a flood of people being jailed for failure to comply.
Do you have a cite to all these gun license violators in states that currently have gun licensing requirements that are having trouble finding jobs?
Any support for that idea?
Probably the opposite. Your ealizet aht your side has alreadyn lost right? There is now a right to own a firearm in every state in the union and the District of Columbia. How does this proposal increase the number of people getting shot?
I think you are against it for the wrong reasons.
I think he is arguing that short of near total gun confiscation, gun control isn’t going to affect how many crazy people go on murderous rampages.
Its popssible, but it just wont do any good, at least not the kind of gun control you envision.
More or less, the answer is yes. You are basically asking, “how do we stop crazy people from killing a bunch of people in a crazy way?” Short of a near total gun ban/confiscation, you can’t do it through gun control; and short of repealing the 2nd amendment, you can’t have a near total gun ban/confiscation. Licensing and registration won’t help.
Once again, short of a near total gun ban/confiscation, what are you proposing? Licensing and registration won’t help.
