Gun registration isn’t about making sure you get your lost guns back. It’s to aid the authorities when a crime has been committed. I can bet that if your roommate had shot someone, the police would be knocking on your door pretty quickly.
You held yourself up as a responsible gun owner, yet your roommate was able to take your gun. Your original post seemed to imply that he stole it.
How did he get your gun? Why were the police involved? Why did you put “accidentally” in quotes? If he stole it, then you were living with a criminal who had access to your guns. If the law said you had to keep your guns in secure storage, it wouldn’t have ended up in your roommate’s trunk.
Having guns always in secure storage would mean that there would be fewer shootings where someone from the household takes the gun owner’s guns.
Sorry to interrupt this already derailed thread with facts, but this isn’t quite true. Several states have agreements with their neighboring, contiguous states that allow a citizen to purchase long guns; rifles and shotguns, in the next state and transport them home across state lines to their home state without involving a dealer. These agreements were incorporated as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968 to facilitate commerce between neighboring states.
Hand guns, yes you have to have them shipped to a licensed firearms dealer, but not long guns, depending upon the state.
I have purchased several rifles from licensed dealers in Washington, gone through the background check, and then driven home to Oregon with them, perfectly legally. I can also buy long guns in California, Nevada and Idaho and drive home with them.
First, I have to admit that my snotty remarks in post #131 were uncalled for. If that’s what you’re reacting to, I understand. You didn’t do anything to deserve snark from me, so I apologize for that.
As for my other post, I picked up on a tangent on responsible/irresponsible gun owners that began before you posted. I don’t see it as a personal attack when I make an observation on something you posted, and I didn’t do it to single you out as a bad gun owner. You’re apparently representative of gun owners who normally take all the necessary precautions with their weapons, yet you still slipped up once and lost track of a gun, which I presume is more common than we hear about.
The thing that’s surprising to me is that gun owners don’t seem to be coming up with any ideas to address the problems. Any idea seems to be met with versions of these responses:
Touch my guns and I’ll kill you and everyone else
It’s inconvenient
It wouldn’t solve 100% of the problem
It’s like they would only support a solution it was perfect and didn’t affect them at all.
I brought up an example with alcohol before. Even though I drink alcohol, I support stronger restrictions around alcohol to help reduce the problems. Even thought it would cause greater inconvenience, I see that as a worthwhile tradeoff to lower the problems from alcohol. I wish gun owners had a similar attitude and would come up with ideas to reduce gun violence even if it inconvenienced them.
I don’t think we can ever reduce the violence from a registered gun owner. If he snaps, there’s not much we can do to prevent him from using his guns to kill. But we can do things to impede a guy who snaps from quickly getting a gun (waiting period) or a household member from getting a gun (secure storage). I think it would be useful to entertain ideas around limiting gun violence in those cases.
And many gun owners disagree. That’s the point you just don’t seem to grok. It is not at all unreasonable to reject all of the restrictions you want to apply to gun owners. There are sufficient laws already on the books. We do not need more.
I am not a gun owner at the moment, but let me explain it for you - at least from my perspective.
“Assault rifles” are involved in less than 1% of the homicides in this country. To contrast, knives are involved in 14% of homicides. Clubs and other blunt objects - in about 5%.
As soon as you show me that you(plural)'re trying to put at least as much effort in solving a “knife problem” or a “club problem” as you’re putting into “assault rifle problem”, we’ll talk.
So, gun owners don’t feel it’s useful to talk about ideas to reduce gun violence? You have to admit that waiting periods prevent some shootings. Secure storage prevents some shootings. Imagine the guy who gets fired and wants to shoot up his office. Assuming he doesn’t have a gun already, it would be good if he couldn’t just get one in the heat of the moment at Walmart. And it would be good if he didn’t have access to his roommate’s guns.
Laws aren’t enough to prevent a crime. It’s not enough to have a law which says you can’t murder people since criminals and the insane don’t follow laws. So let’s come up with with laws which create conditions to impede those people from getting access to guns.
Personally, I don’t think banning certain guns or clip sizes will make any difference. What will make a difference is changing the environment so that people who snap won’t have quick access to guns.
Uh, what? You said or implied that there was generally applicable legal precedent holding gun owners criminally liable for actions taken by third parties with stolen weapons. There is no such law in my state, and Gray Ghost helpfully provided citations to show that there appears to be a split in authority on civil liability, but there is no known criminal precedent.
“waiting periods prevent some shootings”. Question: how many? By definition, such shootings would be a subset of total shootings that are committed be the firearm’s legal owner, correct? A fairly small subset, too, since it would only involve those crimes committed with legally-owned firearms that were in the murderer’s possession only a short time, presumably. Can you estimate what percentage of murders in the US fall under this rubric? My estimate is a fraction of one percent. And even from those you have to subtract those that would be committed anyway, after the waiting period. Note that a lot of mass shootings are done after a long period of planning.
Murders committed with roommate’s guns - again, how many? And what exactly do you intend to do about this? Sure, you can try to assign criminal liability to someone who didn’t keep his guns in a safe, but how are you going to prove it? “Your honor, my roommate must have seen me enter the combination into the safe once.”.
Edit: I swear I didn’t notice Oak say “Uh, what,” when I wrote this first part of the post.
Um, what?
The post I made was an attempt to show where courts are on the subject of gunowner liability from alleged negligent storage of their firearms. So far as I know, only MA has refused to grant summary judgment for a defendant homeowner, and that only because the shooter had unrestricted access to the house and weapons, and the homeowner knew the shooter had one-time mental issues and a criminal record. (For crimes of violence, IIRC.)
Again, AFAIK, every other jurisdiction that’s looked at the issue has said the homeowner does not owe society at large a duty of care to keep their unloaded firearms away from any non-minor—invitee, licensee, or trespasser—who might go onto their property, take the firearm, and shoot themselves or someone else. Make the shooter a minor, and the firearm loaded and within the minor’s reach, and the calculus changes. Hand a loaded gun to someone you know is crazy, and you might be found liable.
For cases stating the last two statements, go through the list compiled by this (I’m guessing) plaintiff’s law firm survey of some relevant cases involving firearms’ use liability. You might find interesting how different courts parse the question of liability. Oddly, the list doesn’t cover a Michigan case mentioned by the ABA (.pdf, go to page 6 for the cite.) in discussing homeowner liability, where a homeowner running a farm stand allowed children of a customer access to the home. The kids found a loaded gun, and hilarity ensued. The homeowner was found liable in that case, according to the cite.
McClurg’s article was aspirational, not stating that the law currently allowed for finding homeowners negligent for not locking their weapons away. It nonetheless has a great deal of cites on the law circa 2000 on the subject, which is why I linked to it.
I’m not sure. It seems that stats for this could be calculated. In places without a waiting period, how many guns were used to kill someone within 14 days of their initial purchase? I tried looking for stats, but I can’t find anything that reports that. No doubt a 14 day waiting period is inconvenient, but to me it seems reasonable considering that some of those impulse purchases will be used for violence.
I think only a first-time gun owner would need to wait. If you already own guns, I don’t think there’s a significant benefit to having you wait to get your gun.
If the gun owner chooses to perjure himself, then that’s the choice he’ll have to make. It’s not like the law will magically get all guns secured all the time. But it will help to encourage a culture of keeping guns locked up. Much like seat belt laws have encouraged people to buckle up all the time. Kids have grown up buckling up and do it because it’s what you are supposed to do, not because it’s the law. After a while people will be in the habit of keeping guns secure because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Adam Lanza got access to his mother’s guns. If those guns were locked up, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to take them into the school. Yes, you cannot prevent him from cutting open the gun safe, but the harder they are to access the more likely they will not succeed.
Any sane person has to admit that those two changes would eliminate some gun deaths. Yes, it would be inconvenient. Is it too inconvenient? I say no, but you say yes.
I saw statistics in some regions (Rochester, NY I think) that 95% of gun crimes are committed with illegal guns. I also saw statistics on how many murders are committed by CCW licensees - something like one in thousands. So - subtract from that all the crimes that are committed by those who own the gun more than 14 days and you have your statistic. As I said, I estimate it to be a fraction of a percent. And even then you have to subtract those who will wait the 14 days out and still commit the murder.
Sure, there’s the choice: fib a lie that no one can ever prove is a lie or go to jail. Which one do you think the gun owner will choose? Your law will have no teeth.
See, we live in the culture where to ban/prohibit things, you have to have some evidence. More than “it must reduce shootings, but I have no idea how much”. Well so far we live in such a culture. The principle has been eroding for a while.
If the waiting period prevents a shooting, there is no shooting, no crime. If it’s a “subset” of total shootings, it’s an empty set. Also, a waiting period might prevent a purchase altogether. If someone wants a gun NOW and finds he has to wait, he may not purchase the gun at all. One cannot look at crime statistics and infer anything about crimes that were not committed. How many murders of any kind are prevented because there’s a law against murder? It’s simply unquantifiable.
Obviously, it depends upon the law. For example, it the law requires guns to be secured in a gun safe, and your guns are stolen, and you don’t have a gun safe, liability is pretty cut and dried.
As far as examples of unsecured guns leading to mass shootings, it may be that the Newton shooting is one, since the guy got them from his mom. But I don’t know enough details to say for sure. I don’t know if the guns were just sitting in a closet, or if they were in a safe that was sitting open, or if his mom told him the combination. It is also possible he forced her to open her gun safe (if she had one) before he killed her.