But how do your square this position with this one
And this one:
If theft must be blocked as vigourously as the other vectors,
And if the way to block theft is to punish gun owners who are found (after the fact) to have failed to store their guns in locked safes,
And finally, if punishing after the fact does little,
how will your proposals stop gun theft?
Punishment does little to deter those with criminal intent. Laws however generally guide the behavior of those who are law abiding. A tautology perhaps, but for the law abiding, having it as an expectation, with civil consequences hanging out there, will quite likely be enough.
I think keeping my house locked up is sufficient. A gun safe means I can’t use any of my guns for self defense, and quite honestly it’s an expense that should be voluntary not mandatory.
This whole ‘If you don’t want it stolen you should lock it up in a vault.’ sounds a lot like ‘The criminals aren’t responsible for their behavior, you are.’ The attitude that having firearms in my house but not in a safe makes it my fault if someone steals them is exactly the same as the attitude that if I’m wearing a short skirt and a low cut top to a party I was ‘asking for it’ if some guy rapes me.
Considering that at least two prominent Senators (Kennedy and Feinstein) want a total ban and confiscation, how in the holy hell can you call it ‘irrational fear’?
We look at historical examples and they have shown that registration has led to confiscation. We look at current senators, and they want a total ban. We conclude that registration here is likely to lead to confiscation. It’s a very rational and logical process.
How? All of your suggestions are infringements upon my rights.
No it won’t. I’m not going to go buy a gun safe because somebody like you thinks they know better than me what I should do with my property.
This is my house. If I want a shotgun in every corner, that’s my business. Not yours, not Diane Feinstein’s, and certainly not the law’s.
Hmmm.
Registration, gun safes.
So registration would be a way to worry gun owners into investing in a safe. Like catsix said, making them all but useless for defense.
If some one where to burgle my house, I suspect that the guns would be sold or pawned. I wonder how many stolen guns there are, and how many of them are then used in a crime? I suspect many of them are simply pawned.
Gun registration would prevent them from being pawned, and make the thief sell them on the street to acquaintances. Possibly other criminals. Yeah, that’s a bit of a straw man, but something to consider.
I’m a law abiding guy. The worst I have done is a speeding ticket. I would have to think long and hard about registration though. It may mean that I could get my guns back, or It may mean I would have to pay civil damages caused if the gun is taken from me.
If I did not register them, and they got stolen, what should I do? Not report the guns? It’s an option some people may take. I don’t know about myself.
No I don’t have a gun safe, but have been thinking about it for a few years. I frankly don’t have a good place to put one at this time. They aren’t small, and aren’t light and ideally should be bolted to the wall with bolts inside the safe. If I had a good place to put one, I would have already purchased it. For the long guns.
And I own my home. What about apartment dwellers? What about the guy with a single shot .22?
Where is the line drawn? How do you define ‘secured weapon’? Trigger locks will help keeping your kid from killing a friend (education will do a better job IMHO), but it would not keep it from being stolen.
The pistol is a different story. A quick access safe is available, and I have been thinking about that as well. I don’t keep any guns loaded, but there have been four instances when I wish I had.
What about my car? It could be stolen and used in the commission of a crime. Am I responsible for that? Call that straw if you want, my cars or my guns could be used in the commission of a crime. They’re both tools.
DSeid I’m from Park Ridge. Me and Hillary.
Ehhh. Going camping today, so this may be it for me for a while. Depends on how fast I can find all my camping stuff.
Still waiting.
enipla - Gun registration wouldn’t prevent burglars from pawning your gun- since already thieves don’t pawn things that can be traced. Even without registration many owners keep a record of their firearms, and when the theft occurs give that record to the Police. When you sell an item like a gun to a Pawn shop, they have to check your ID. So- there is already a sytem in effect that helps prevent gun theives from easy disposal of stolen firearms. Of course under DSeids proposed law, many legal gun owners would be afraid to report the theft. After all- it is totally ridiculous to say that a gun owner is responsible for a crime commited with a gun after it was stolen from him.
Sigh, Dr. Deth, I thought that I had made my position clear.
Guns are often recovered from the scenes of crimes and after the fact. Tracing those guns informs as to where illegal guns come from. You can only do something about diversion if you know where they are diverted from and how. Registering all transfers eliminates the ability of strwman purchasers to work via a less regulated and rigorous secondary market. Negligent owners or dealers should be held responsible for the consequences of their negligence. Not reporting a gun as stolen should be held as a significant offense if such a gun is later recovered and traced back to that owner.
“it is totally ridiculous to say that a gun owner is responsible for a crime commited with a gun after it was stolen from him.”
catsix, sorry I attributed that sentiment to you. But I knew it was coming. And I never said that what I would propose would not infringe on what you consider your rights. I said it would not infringe on your ability to own a gun.
We really repeat and repeat ourselves. The apparent fact that Feinstein and Kennedy want to ban 'em all is notable because they aren’t proposing that even though they would like to. Why not? Because the vast majority of congressmen do not want to do that, nor do the vast majority of the American people. They just want some balance between gun rights and the public good.
These are red herrings and irrational fears as much as is the public’s fear of “assault weapons”. No one is going to invade home to inspect for gun safe use. No one is going confiscate your guns. No one is even going to propose legislation to do that because they know it can’t pass. There are not a lot of deaths from home invasions that necessitate an unassailable need for defensive gun use, as much as some people are pulling them out frequently in believed self defense. “Rights” are not absolute. We infringe upon them all the time when a greater good is at stake. Freedom of speech does not allow yelling “fire” in a theatre. We merely require that a greater good be great enough to justify the level of infringement.
I feel that responsible gun owners should have the right to own their guns as long as they do so … responsibly. I believe that such responsibility includes the willingness to work hard at keeping them out of the hands of criminals. I can think of no means less intrusive than what I have proposed to accomplish that.
Then having a law requiring it is far less than useless unless you want to persecute legal gun owners for the actions of other people. You want to punish me if I am the victim of a burglary. This is exactly the same kind of bullshit Sarah Brady spews.
Really? Then why are guns banned in cities like Washington, D.C.? I’m tired of hearing ‘it won’t happen’ as the camel continues to shove its nose under the tent.
Nor do you get to duct tape someone’s mouth shut as they enter a theatre to prevent it. What you want is the firearms equivalent of the duct tape: to render our firearms useless to us.
I keep my firearms on my person or inside my house. I don’t sell them to criminals. I have kept them out of the hands of criminals, thank you very much.
You could keep your nose out of my house and stop attempting to keep government files on me. My firearms are not the business of you or the government.
But there are other problems with this proposal. What sorts of proof will you accept before imposing these penalties. How will you gather it without inspections? Also, what will you do if these sorts of penalties are not sufficient?
Quite the contrary- guns (except special “throw-away” guns, which are known to be “clean” )are almost never found at the scene of a crime- well, excpt those where there is no doubt who did it, such as the body of a man holding a gun after he killed his wife and himself. Gun registration would not solve any significant number of crimes.
“Not reporting a gun stolen…”- how woudl the police find out that the theft had ben found out? Some dudes have things stolen but they don’t know about it untilt he police inform them they have recovered it. I had a CAR stolen and I didn’t know about it until the Police informed me that had recovered my car. And, if you punish dudes for not keeping a gun “safe enough to not be stolen”- who would report it?? All this would only be an unnessesary burden for the non-criminal- and would make criminals out of many now 100% law abdiding citizens. That’s the whole problem with Gun laws- they are of very little use against CRIMINALs- all they do is ahrrass 7 criminalize dudes who otherwise would be law-abiding.
Sin, this is misleading. The figures that actually MEAN something are the per capita figures, that show the US as eighth!:
From the same web site where you got your figures
I suppose the rest of your stats will fare the same. The United States is NOT the most violent country. But you seemed to be trying to prove that.
caught you!
There is just no way to guarantee secure storage.
I could pull the barrels off of most of my guns. And ‘hide’ them. The lever actions and the revolver is a different story.
Where do we keep the key to the safe? Or the combo?
What’s to stop a gun owner from having a safe and not using it? If the guns are stolen, you could simply say that a thief found the key. What is considered ‘secure’ gun safe key storage?
This is where (or at least one place) being held responsible for something stolen from you falls completely apart.
Do we know how many guns used in crimes are stolen? It may be sold and never used in a crime.
Since ‘secure’ residential storage is impossible to enforce, the next step would be third party storage. And if all the guns are registered, it will be easy to enforce.
Oh c’mon. There is never any guarantee of absolute security. I already stated, some reasonable achievable standard of secure storage to be decided upon after full consultation with those who know guns and gun storage systems. I’ll make the analogy to how some people store their nice bikes in my neighborhood. The garage is locked and the bike is U-bolted to a post inside the garage. More than just your door locked. Less than absolute.
Negligence would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt for criminal charges … very hard to do, and if I understand the the law (and “I’m a doctor not a lawyer Jim!”) to the preponderence of evidence for a civil case. Talk to the lawyers about what would qualify.
The BATF keeps stats on where recovered guns come from already, and they recover quite a few. Currently stolen is far from number one. It is easier to find a corrupt dealer or get it on the secondary market via a variety of strawman purchasing arrangements. But if they dried up the temptation to steal them would go up. It must be blocked pre-emptively.
Now I’ll be busy for a while, so my apologies if I don’t stop back too soon.
Thanks for the discussion.
. Well, your talking to people that know guns and gun storage systems.
Right here on the dope.
This one thinks your wrong. I own guns, and happen to use them. Most folks would consider me biased because I own guns. I think most gun owners would be very critical of your suggestions. Yet, only gun owners will really be able to answer the questions such as lethality and secure storage.
That was proved by the folks that wrote the AWB legislation.
Who can find these non-biased consultants?
I don’t buy it. It isn’t going to do anything but cost honest folks to spend a bit or a bunch of money. And it is still no guarantee that the gun won’t be stolen, or there is a woops… I lost the key. Guns in my house are secure. They are behind my doors.
I sure as hell hope that no jury would convict anyone of the crime of having their property stolen. I doubt they could. So, to me, these ideas are a sidestep, perhaps not by you DSeid, but the anti-gun folks in general. A way to get them registered.
**DSeid - ** To continue, I do respect your opinion, and you are one of the more moderate voices in the gun control debate. And your ideas seem clear, and to the point.
However, I don’t believe your ideas would be effective. Legislation such as ‘secure’ gun storage would be impossible to write, and even harder to enforce.
People could be threatened with punishment for unsecured guns, but It’s going to be hard to prove or convict. More laws that don’t do anything.
And , I honestly don’t see that there is a gun problem in the US so I speak to these issues with skepticism and suspicion towards people that claim there is an epidemic of gun crime (not you DSeid).
SnakeS -
Catsix said: “Yet again, you are someone who wants us to give up our firearms, but you can’t point out any facts as to why you think we should.”
I presented a list of facts demonstrating the number of humans who now cease to exist, due to your right to have guns.
I then pointed out some of the statistical problems whith the data.
The number of people who may be alive now if there were no guns in the US, would not be demonstrated by the per capita figure - thats why i didnt include it.
But i thank you for bolstering my argument, SnakeS, where on your linked per capita stats, is the UK?
And my final para still stands (“Also, the US keeps regular company at the top of these lists, with nations which are not on a par with its wealth, standard of living or level of democracy. They are countries which have large drug trade / production problems, large areas of “bandit country”, poorly resourced police forces, or are suffering the after effects of civil war ( eg Columbia, Thailand, Mexico, South Africa, and the Balcans”)
with the per capita figures:
Also please link to where i said the US was the most violent country. Whilst you must be proud of your top ten status, putting words into my mouth to make yourself feel better isnt nice.
I doubt if you could catch a cold SnakeS.
sin
Unless you are accusing me of homicide, you should retract this. No one has ever ceased to exist because I own firearms. Ever.
How rude! Are all sinical brits so rude? I ought to call Hannibal and tell him about you.
Anyway, I provided a link to the statistics, please look it up yourself. I’m not your servant.
And as for putting words in your mouth, please link to where I said you said the US was the most violent country. Putting words into my mouth to make yourself feel better isn’t nice.
FOR THE RECORD!
I’m not posting in or reading this thread any more. We have demonstrated that Guns are not just for cowards.
If you wish to discuss guns with me, go to
What relationships exist between crime and firearm ownership? Should we do something?. I will answer any posts I can there. It’s two confusing posting in four similar threads.
SnakeSpirit
Well first of all, I can defend myself my fists, havent had to in a long time though. We can also make fire by rubbing two sticks togeather but we’ve evolved and we can use tools now.
Often, a gun is the best means of defense.
Room mate of mine woke up from a nap and found a strange man in our living room, after me and her boyfriend left for work. He came at her until he saw her pointing a gun at him. Now, yes, she could have used pepper spray. At the time me and her boyfriend worked for a security company and our company was the first to have it in our part of the country. We were the distributors in fact. (capstun, before they lost the patent and everybody started making it). then she would have had to deal with this guy thrashing around in her living room, and he was between her and the phone. by having a gun handy she avoided all that, he ran away.
One night I came upon a guy trying to kick my neighbors door in one night. He had a big butcher knife in his hand and was seriously altered on something. My neighbor was his ex wife. When he saw how big a coward I was holding a gun in my hand, he fled. The cops went to the wrong apartment complex, so if I hadn’t been such a coward and had a gun she would be dead now. If I had pepper sprayed him maybe it would have stopped him, maybe he would have starting swinging the knife around in a blind panic and someone could have gotten hurt.
I’ve used a gun in self defense, both on the job doing security work, and on my own, and every time the alternative would have gotten someone hurt if I had been forced to use hands on force to settle things. In using a gun for self defense, I have never had to fire a shot, the person either ran, or waited for the cops to come haul them off.
I feel no need to prove I’m macho and fight someone with my fists. If someone trys to harm me or my family, my only concern is how to end the situation quickly and with as little risk of someone getting hurt as I can.
In five pages of posts, this is clearly the best rejoinder to prove that having or using a gun does not make one a coward.
IMNSHO, the best post in this thread. Thanks.