Requiring a CCW to keep guns away from criminals would mean that criminals (people with a criminal past) would be weeded out and dealt with appropriately (something along the lines of criminals not getting handguns and people with a criminal act in their past, while sufficiently showing the character of an upstanding citizen would be more likely to get the nod for the permit). Either I’m not making that explicit or you’re not getting it. Chances are that it’s both to a degree.
Of course nothing is perfect, but as it stands, criminals (as defined above) can not legally own a handgun. CCW has nothing to do with it.
Requiring existing or new legal handgun owners to get a CCW on top of passing the background check will do nothing to keep handguns away from criminals.
Are you under the impression that they guy who has decided it’s okay to rob someone will have an attack of conscience when it comes to obtaining/carrying a gun unlawfully?
Restricting legal gun sales to attack illegal gun sales is irrational at best.
For reasons mentioned, many suspect it’s dishonest.
Increase the penalty for committing a crime using a gun. It may not work as a deterrent, but it means gun-wielding criminals who get caught are given longer sentences and kept off the streets.
The CCW is an attempt to make this entire thing more palatable. If there’s something else that we can figure out that’d be more appealing, I’m all ears.
I do still favor some kind of normalization of the CCW hoops, though.
1010011010: Harsher punishment doesn’t work. People that commit crimes simply don’t tend to think about the consequences. What you’re proposing is only treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease. Not only that, but that’s how we (in part) got to this current state of prison overcrowding.
Why are you repeating me? “It may not work as a deterrent,” but a “gun criminal” in jail is one less criminal on the street with a gun in his hands.
It’s already been discussed why “one less gun on the streets” does not map to “one less gun in the hands of a criminal”, as attacking “gun crime” from the gun side of thing tends to preferentially disarm law-abiding gun owners, not criminals.
Which would be an improvement over treating an unrelated condition rather than the symptom or disease. Incidentally, if individuals who have committed a violent crime are separated from the rest of society they can’t very well commit more “gun crimes”, can they?
Prison overcrowding can be traced to War-On-_____ thinking, “tough on crime” rhetoric, and lobbying by prison guard unions and private corrections companies.
If you’re arguing that a lot of “gun violence” can be linked to the criminal enterprises enabled by prohibition policies, you’ll not find much objection from me. Reform there could solve the prison overcrowding problem, too, making more room for violent criminals who are a direct threat to other members of society.
Ah. OK. Let’s be honest here. You just want more/strickter gun laws. Even if it does nothing to keep guns away from criminals. That’s been pointed out again and again, but you don’t seem to care.
This is why there is the lack of trust. You think that CCW sounds more palatable. In fact, all this would do is make legal gun owners jump through more hoops to own a gun. This would change nothing for illegal gun owners.
More appealing? More? Your proposal does nothing to keep guns away from criminals. All it does is make things more difficult for existing, legal gun owners.
LOUNE, I still don’t understand how your proposal keeps handguns out of the grasp of criminals. They’ll still get their guns, the same way they do now, generally.
You want handguns outlawed. But owning a handgun with a ‘stricter’ CCW license is OK. You see the conflict there I hope.
I’ve cited state law and the FBI restrictions on owning a handgun. I’m fine with those restrictions. You want it stricter? Then YOU need to make some suggestions.
More and more you sound like the typical anti-gun type that believes any obstacle or roadblock that makes it harder to legally own a gun is a good thing.
Once again, I ask – How would requiring legal gun owners to get a CCW permit keep guns away from criminals.
Let’s look at three people.
Fred has a CCW
Joe is a legal gun owner that does not have a CCW
Rick is a criminal that owns a gun illegally.
If you force Joe to get a CCW, what has been accomplished? Rick still has his illegal firearm. Joe has been forced to jump through more hoops for nothing.
I have no problem with doing this forever when the alternative is surrendering some portion of my freedom. Compromise benefits you, not me. Not doing this forever benefits you, not me. I don’t buy into either the idea that I win by doing what is right for society or that surrendering my rights is whats right for society.
Okay, then. If we’re going to halt handgun crime, how do we do it? If we don’t get rid of the handguns themselves, do we rely on stiffer penalties? Issuing everyone a gun?
Or, we put ‘handgun crime’ into perspective and live with it. Like we live with all of the other risks in society…many of which are much more likely to kill you or me than a hand gun is.
There is only so much you can restrict the ability of people to commit crimes before you are infringing the rights of people to be free. I do not think I’d want to live in a society where it was possible to “halt” crime.
Harsher penalties could help reduce crime by tipping the balance in favor of a lawful course of action by making the criminal option less desirable. It might be more effective to attack the lack of desirable lawful opportunities leading people to entertain a criminal path as their best option. If people already realize they’re making bad choices, but their situation leads them to believe it’s the best choice available to them, making things doubleplus illegal will not do much good.
Since your goal is not the reduction of crime per se, merely the use of handguns in crime, a campaign encouraging criminals to use some other tool probably wouldn’t go over too well. Harsher penalties for criminal misuse of guns would be the more direct approach.
Wouldn’t it lead to fewer handguns in circulation, which would make it harder for the criminals to get the guns in the first place? You’d be reducing demand, which would bring down supply.
Seems pretty binary to me. One either accepts risks or not. Society deems the use of alcohol an acceptable risk, even though the reward to society is hard to judge. Same with guns…or porn, or any other vertical item that some people disapprove of.
It all comes down to numbers. During Prohibition a small but vocal minority in this country fought for and got a ban on alcohol. The problem was, a majority of people in this country really wanted to be able to drink…and you see how that ban worked out. It would be the same if a small but vocal group of right wingers wanted to get porn banned…they MIGHT be able to do it (as even people who actively use porn may be embarrassed to admit it), but how do you suppose that would work out in the end? The same thing goes for the small but vocal group of left wingers and anti-gun types…they MIGHT be able to get a ban in place (now that the Dems control the House, Senate and the Executive branch), but how will that work out when a majority of American’s still support owning a gun?
It’s as much of a deterrent as punishment for any crime. Hand gun crime isn’t the single biggest threat in the US after all. The thing is, you are never going to stop crime…only deter it. The laws we have on the books aren’t designed to stop crime, only attempts to curb it.
Think about it this way…do you think that bans on drugs deemed illegal have worked? Why or why not? Do you suppose that guns will be harder to get than drugs…or that if you ban them you will be more successful (especially considering the large percentage of the population that WANTS guns in the US) than drugs? Again, why or why not?
You can cut down a rifle to pistol length pretty easily. Illegal, but hey. There’s a lot of ways to get an illegal pistol. Right now, most are from legal users, but hey, it’s not hard to get drugs, I don’t see it being any harder getting guns.