Do you have a cite for that?
Politifact, mostly true: PolitiFact | Is most gun crime committed by those who illegally possess guns?
With caveats that the data is from 2004, and “almost all” is hyperbole, but a significant portion appears to be true.
Not sure about that third claim though.
Interestingly enough, the vast majority of those illegally obtained guns were once legally owned by law-abiding Americans. Shame that gun owners act as a black market source of weapons for criminals.
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OK that’s just talking about crime in general. Not much information there. I would appreciate if rowrrbazzle came back and explained what “almost all the shootings” means. If rowrrbazzle means all the guns fired (in a day, in the USA) I would be astounded.
Who is “our”? The people who happily enrich the gun manufacturers’ stockholders just because they’re conditioned by them and their propaganda organization to live in fear?
A more fundamental duty of We The People is to get rid of laws and amend the Constitution where needed when the result is contrary to the public interest, and even before that to be willing to accept the possibility of their being against the basic precepts of civilization. Are you on board with that?
When do the rights of law-abiding citizens to stay alive begin to take precedence over the right to “bear arms” (whatever the courts seem to think that means at any given time)?
It sounds like we should do something to prevent guns from falling into the hands of criminals.
Unfortunately, the current state of affairs is that if you buy a gun legally, and it turns up being used in a crime, if anyone bothers to ask you about it, you can just say that you lost it, or it was stolen, or even that you sold it to some guy, no idea who.
There is absolutely no expectation of any sort of accountability or responsibility for gun owners.
Do you have any suggestions on how to prevent legally purchased guns from entering the black market?
Well, sorta. Many of them are buy by unlicensed gun dealers in a straw man transaction. In theory that is illegal but the ATF has made enforcing it a vary low priority.
If he means those used in violent crimes, he is correct. Most guns used in crimes are by felons who are unable to legally own guns.
Excellent point. While they were more or less law-abiding, they were acting suspiciously, and if you remember there was intelligence that something was going to happen. So if we had data, and for instance could use data analytics to find people with lots and lots of guns - like the Las Vegas shooter - we might be able to at least let the person know he was being watched.
Hardly surprising given the number of guns out there. If cars were not registered, there would probably be a lack market for cars being sold to unlicensed drivers.
Many if not most of the mass shootings are done with legal guns, but gang violence isn’t, I’d suspect. Imagine if we had everyone register their guns so we knew where they were, like I think they do in Great Britain. Unregistered guns - like the kind the gang people have - would get confiscated. Possession of an unregistered gun or wrongly registered gun would lead to jail time.
That would solve a lot of the problem.
I mean, we already have a situation here where you’re not allowed to own a firearm if you have been convicted of a felony, and I imagine that police find firearms on criminals with felony records on a pretty regular basis. Theoretically this is supposed to lead to jail time, isn’t it? “The gang people” usually have felony records, so regardless of whether there is a registry of firearms or not, they’re still breaking the law by being in possession of one.
Which is why they buy them from legal purchasers who are able to sell them to criminals, as long as they don’t bother to ask if they are a criminal.
Nice way to profit off of other’s misery, a rational actor would certainly get in on that action, it is only other people that pay the cost for your profit.
I’m thinking of heading down to the gun store and picking up some guns. Not for the purpose of selling them, of course, but if someone makes me a good offer, who am I to refuse, right?
Of course, if I don’t mind lying to authorities, I can just tell them that I lost them, or that they got stolen. In fact, I could be an idiot, and not even be a liar, and actually lose them or let them get stolen. (Turns out the couch cushion wasn’t a great place to store my gun after all, who’da thunk it?)
If only there were a way to lessen the transfer of guns from legal owners to criminals.
But, since there is no way to decrease at all the transfer of guns from legal purchasers to criminals, because that would require asking legal owners to take some sort of responsibility for their toys, I suppose the only option that you have left is to ban all guns, and make civilian possession of a gun illegal.
Then you no longer have a concern over legal owners not being responsible and allowing or even profiting off of letting their guns get into the hands of criminals, as there are no longer legal owners. Law abiding gun owners would be an oxymoron, like law abiding drug dealers or serial killers.
Can you think of any way at all that we could lessen the flow of guns going from legal owners to criminals? Anything?
As I said before: Many of them are bought by unlicensed gun dealers in a straw man transaction. In theory that is illegal but the ATF has made enforcing it a very low priority.
These purchases are in fact illegal, and those “gun owners” are not “legal owners”.
So, there is no huge number of guns flowing from legal owners (unless you count gun stores and gun companies as 'owners") to criminals. Most guns used by criminals are stolen or bought from other criminals.
The ATF could crack down on straw buyers in fact they have files on the most prolific of them*. The ATF has chosen not to do so.
*Altho indeed there are gun collectors who have dozens if not hundreds of them, few gun collectors want dozens of the exact same make & model.
New relevant BJ Campbell
That is a remarkably sane and balanced article.
What is it that makes it illegal? Is it the number of guns bought and sold? Nope. Is it the type of guns that are bought and sold? Nope. Is it the people they buy them from? Nope. Is it the people that they sell them to? Nope.
What would it take for the ATF to start successfully prosecuting these middlemen?
Say I buy a dozen AR-15’s from my local gun shop, and some guy comes up to me, someone I’ve never met before, and makes me an offer on my newly acquired arsenal. I sell them, and they are used in crimes within a week. What exactly would the charge be, and how would it be prosecuted?
No, the loophole is bigger than an agency can close without congressional authority.
Who stole or bought them from legal owners.
Care to guess why?
Who are you to judge what people enjoy collecting?
His stuff is very good, the rest are on Medium or his website.
It is the *Intent. *That is one reason why it is hard to prosecute. Intent is critical here.
*If you answer “no,” you are stating under penalty of law that you are not buying the firearm for someone else, other than as a bona fide gift. Answering “yes” when the truthful answer is “no” is a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
While gun control supporters claim that expanding the federal background check system will stop criminals from getting guns, ATF has said that nearly half of illegally trafficked firearms originate with straw purchasers, all of whom pass background checks.
If a person straw purchases a firearm for someone else, both the purchaser and the other person potentially violate numerous federal laws. The straw purchaser has violated the law by lying on the Form 4473. Furthermore, if the purchaser knows or has reason to believe that the person for whom the gun is being bought is a felon or otherwise prohibited from possessing a firearm, or if the purchaser knows or has reason to believe that the gun will be used in a crime, those are federal felonies, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The person who ends up with the gun can be charged with conspiracy to violate federal law, because he or she orchestrated the illegal purchase. And he or she is a prohibited person, possession of the gun is another 10-year/$10,000 felony.*
It’s already illegal, the ATF has arrested and prosecuted many people under this law. It is just that they claim they dont have the resources to do more.
“*Nevertheless, he was convicted of an illegal straw purchase, simply because he bought the gun on behalf of the other person.”
*
No, they bought them from straw buyers, who are NOT legal owners.
I am not judging. I just know a good number of gun collectors.
One collects black powder. One collects “cowboy type” guns, and another collects WW1 and late 19th century military weapons, and one collects rare limited issue special commemorative guns (which he never fires).
I suppose there could be a guy who collects nothing but modern Glock pistols, and had a dozen of each model. That would be like a serious coin collector who collects nothing but currently in circulation dimes. Possible but unlikely.
Finally, you nailed it. It is hard, to prove intent, as I kept saying. You were trying to say that the ATF could prosecute these guys, but just chose not to. I kept trying to point out that there was more than that to it.
And they use a mind reading machine for that? How do they prove that I intended to sell it when I bought it, and that I didn’t decide to sell it later, when someone made me an offer?
Imagine if we made people selling guns have to confirm the identities of the people they were selling them to, rather than just taking their word for it? Then they would no longer be able to pass that background check.
All completely avoided by saying that you didn’t know who it was that bought your gun. Fixed with a simple law that would require you to actually confirm the identity of someone you sell a gun to.
The person with the gun is probably going to use it to break the law anyway, they don’t really care about being charged. It is the person who is selling the gun, who will face no criminal penalty, or even have a blemish on his background check, allowing him to buy more guns to sell, that I am concerned about.
“*Nevertheless, he was convicted of an illegal straw purchase, simply because he bought the gun on behalf of the other person.”
*
No, they bought them from straw buyers, who are NOT legal owners.
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Then we should be able to prosecute them for the laws that they broke, correct? Sounds like a no true scotsman to me. They are legal, until they sell the gun, but only if they know that they are selling the gun illegally, which you have no way of determining.
If someone can buy a gun legally, then they are a legal owner. Your attempts to redefine what a legal owner is does absolutely nothing to stop the flow of guns into the hands of criminals.
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But, do you expect the ATF to judge? Some people just like a certain type of gun, and want a bunch of them. And in order to finance collecting more of them, they sell a few of them occasionally at a markup. Is there anything illegal about that, as long as the seller maintains plausible deniability about the eligibility of the purchaser of his guns?
Seems it would be much easier to require that people confirm the identity of the person that they sell a gun to than to build a mind reading device.
Look. I don’t know about you but I regard killing as very different from “crimes” in general. It seems you want to put them all together as “crimes” so that the statistics skew a certain way. But I don’t give much of a shit about someone pulling paper out of a till and running away so long as nobody gets killed.
As a famous movie quote says, killing someone is taking away everything they have and everything they could possibly ever have. Not just that, but it is also throwing a lifetime of despair at the friends and relatives of the deceased.
I don’t get riled up about armed robbery. I get riled up about unnecessary killings.
It was boring and stupid. No one thinks a magic wand will work, so I don’t know why he is talking about a magic wand. A long term plan could be effective over time.