Great idea. :rolleyes: You know who else liked to keep list of people based on their beliefs? But why stop at a list? Maybe we could get all gun owners and supporters to wear little golden paper guns on their clothing, that way we can identify them for sure.
“Little yellow targets, mein her!”
Also:" Vere are your gun papers?! Gun Papers!"
What, that’s OK, we have “Car papers?”
There’s no Amendment that protects us from infringement against our right to own a car or drive a car. Don’t want to hear about drivers’ licenses or auto registrations.
:rolleyes: Reading for comprehension is important, you should try it sometime.
See the bolded word?
Gun:
[ul]
[li]Take lessons and pass safety test[/li][li]Get tested once. [/li][li]Renew (photographic) license every 5 years[/li][li]Can only use type or caliber of gun you are licensed for.[/li][li]If you want to shoot on private property you need the land-owners permission[/li][li]Guns are registered[/li][/ul]
Car:
[ul]
[li]Take lessons and pass safety test[/li][li]Get tested once. [/li][li]Renew (photographic) license every 5 years[/li][li]Can only use type or class of vehicle you are licensed for.[/li][li]If you want to drive on private property you need the land-owners permission[/li][li]Cars are registered[/li][/ul]
Sure, there are some extra hoops to jump through to own a firearm but they are not that draconian. Like it or not, and there are some things under the current system I consider bloody stupid, they are the laws of the land.
If I want to be a law-abiding gun owner (which, lets face it, the pro-gun side of the debate are always saying we are), I work within them, just like with any system.
Licensing individuals for a particular caliber is stupid. It would be like licensing someone for a particular # of CC’s on their motorcycle. If you can drive a 600 CC bike, you can also drive a 750 CC bike. If you can shoot a .40 S&W then you can also shoot a 9mm. Making someone test on both appears to just be spiteful and petty.
OK. Where I am this is the scheme:
My current license is both:
Class A and Class B.
I can buy and use any firearm of any caliber that falls within those categories.
I can only buy ammunition for the calibers listed on my license. So if I have a .223 I cant then buy ammo for a .303 if I don’t own one.
Same, if I have a car license I can buy and drive anything classed as a car but not a motorbike, large truck or bus unless I go through the training for those.
How do they handle weapons of variable / multiple calibers? Do they just list each caliber it’s capable of supporting and you can buy any of them?
Reposted for emphasis, and becuase some people seriously seem to be missing the point, so I shall speak bluntly.
Every time you swipe your credit/debit card at the grocery store, at Wal-Mart, Target, J.C. Penny’s, Sears, etc. everything you just purchased goes into a database, is analyzed, matched to your past purchase history, etc.
Sophisticated programs analyze this data, codify it, and is then used to target advertising specifically to you. Owners of the data sell it to anyone who can meet their asking price.
The N.R.A. is doing nothing more than using the exact same technique to identify potential new members, to solicit donations from sympathizers and members, and to keep their base informed.
:YAWN:
Nothing to see here, people.
Our resident “Most Anti-Gun, Pro-Gun (allegedly) Person” is trying to spin nothing into something, with specious reasoning and “Oh Noes! Looks at the hypocrisies!” chicken-little antics.
Can you give an example?
I’ve got an old single shot bolt-action .22 that will take .22 short, .22 long and .22 long-rifle. It’s just listed as .22 and I could buy all three types of ammo.
For something like a .22/410 U/O rifle/shotgun combination they list both calibers and you can buy them both.
I have a full-bore target rifle in 5.56mm, if I wanted to get a 7.62mm barrel I would need to get the 7.62 added to my lic. and most likely the barrel serial number as well.
Something like a .357 that can also shoot .38 special?
I’m not sure, I suspect you would need to nominate both caliber’s if you wanted to shoot both. They won’t just do it automatically for you.
Missed the edit window
Probably the worst part of the system here is dealing with the petty bureaucratic bullshit that goes on. My dad is active in the antique arms collecting group here and has a cartridge collecting license as well (which allows you to own ammunition that you don’t have a gun for).
There is a lot of ‘tinkering’ around the edges of the laws that are done by people who have absolutely no idea about firearms.
A few examples:
[ul]
[li]A change to the law that would make any rifle or caliber used by a military force, the same class of weapon, regardless of its date of manufacture or action. This was part of the “OMG assault rifle!!!” panic that went on. This would have classified a Brown Bess or a normal bolt-action 5.56mm hunting rifle or single shot target rifle the same as an M16 :rolleyes:[/li]
[li]A cartridge collector could have no more than two examples of the same head-stamp in their collection. In this case my dad had an unopened packet of .303 ammo from WW1. That would have been illegal to own and would either have to be disposed of or opened and the excess rounds sold or destroyed.[/li][/ul]
Both of these were stopped of course as the local clubs all have liaison officers with the police to try and keep this kind of silliness in check but it would be a lot easier if the shooters groups were consulted a lot earlier in the process.
Trying to clarify what the point of the OP was. Care to respond to this, Czarcasm?
Not hypocrisy, no, but the irony is kinda poignant. Sure, they can amass a secret data base, but I got a nickel says they can’t keep it that way. Got another nickel says that a guy in some gun marketing job waves a check with enough zeroes on it, they won’t even try.
Let’s have a national database of women who’ve had abortions. Just for public health purposes you know.
A bit of all three. Quoting from this site:
I I do see a bit of hypocrisy in raising tens of millions of dollars by campaigning against a national database without telling their members that they were in the process of doing that very thing. I object to all those NRA trained instructors giving their lists of students to the NRA without first informing them that they were going to do so. I have this same objection to their buying lists of gun show attendees. As far as lists of gun magazine subscribers go, I have no problem if the magazine is affiliated with the NRA, but if I like guns but object to the NRA for some reason I wouldn’t want the non-affiliated magazine I subscribe to selling my information to them.
Supporter of the NRA in this thread say they have no problem with these techniques…but their not just gathering the names of NRA supporters.
Most gun training courses are NRA affiliated, so they have most of the names, but in Iowa they have all the names of people that took the course. The article goes on to say that NRA-trained instructors move up in rank(which authorizes them to teach more advanced classes and charge more for the course) by submitting information about their students to the NRA, which uses that info to both recruit people into the NRA and to get people to support NRA positions…not all directly having to do with gun rights.
I would be with you if the NRA claimed it was not collecting this data and then turned around and did so. That would be a crappy business practice. I do not believe they ever represented that they would not collect such data. In fact, I would expect it. So while I could understand your objection to their collection of this data, I think it’s unfounded.
I also appreciate the seeming hypocrisy of campaigning against a registry when in fact they are accumulating data tantamount to a registry. Upon examination however, I think this act fails the hypocrisy test. The reason the NRA campaigns against registries mandated by the government is because of the threat of confiscation and utilization to further anti-gun advocacy and legislation. The reason the NRA collects this data is for advertising, fundraising, pro-gun advocacy (usually), and other pro-gun efforts. There is zero chance their information will be used by the NRA to undertake the actions they campaign against in the case of a government registry. The charge of hypocrisy are without merit.
As to the Iowa law - I believe it was changed to explicitly say that the NRA course was acceptable. This did not take away from the fact that there are other non-NRA courses that are acceptable.
So as long as you put the word “overall” in there you can compare two things even though they are completely different.
The points you made about restrictions of caliber, training and permission from landowners are very oppressive and don’t have any similarity to car licensing and registration laws. That’s just the reality, even if you want to hand wave it away.
Exactly. They have to collect data like this in order to function.
I’d like to hear from Czarcasm and anyone else who disagrees with this practice how the NRA would even operate not having such a list of gun owners. I can’t imagine a plausible business plan that lacks a CRM DB.
Yeah, hear you and I know a few folks who think that there is an entire political party that is out to take their guns (and renewing the AWB is still part of the Democratic party platform IIRC) but I don’t think its possible as long as you need 60 senators to vote for it. I just can’t think of 30 states that would produce senators taht would vote for a national gun confiscation (heck I can’t think of 20). I think the best argument against licensing and registration are the vocal beliefs of the people who are most frequently proposing licensing and registration. It is pretty clear that they would take away all our guns the instant they had the power or opportunity to do so. But I don’t think tha they will ever have that power or opportunity on a national level.
I was in California when they confiscated the SKS’s. The NRA was a bunch of pussies back then and they avoided litigation (and right up until Gura won DC v. Heller, they blocked all atempts at litigation, which is why Gura hated the NRA until recently). The confiscation of SKS rifles were a violation of due process (IMO) but I don’t think anyone thought that gun confiscation could never happen in Califuckingfornia, they just thought didn’t think California would do it in such a blatantly unconstitutional manner. You can’t tell someone they don’t have to register a gun then confiscate that gun for failing to register.
They confiscated guns in Luoisiana in 2003? Or are you talking about the gun confiscation after Katrina? Because thats something entirely different.
Heller was a bit of a surprise to me but it was controversial among legal scholars. I was not surprised that they found an individual right, I was suprised by the basis for that finding. I was not at all surprised that they extended the ruling to the states.
We have had a national registry for machine guns, SBSs, SBRs, destructive devices and all sorts of other shit for 80 years and we haven’t used that registry for a general confiscation yet. I suppose with the passage of time, anything could happen but if the assassination of JFK, RFK and MLK couldn’t get the legislature to pass those sort of laws, I don’t know what would do it.
So it would not deter straw purchases? Or prevent inadvertant private transfers to prohibited persons?
I agree that the confiscation of guns from previously permitted persons who become prohibited persons is also useful but I don’t see how you can say it wouldn’t have even a mild effect on straw purchases and transfers to prhibited persons.
What makes you think that I think that law abiding gun owners remain law abiding forever? Or are you just painting with a broad brush based on some straw man you have constructed?
What public health purpose would such a database serve? It would be about as useful as having a database of people who had appendectomies.