If you want to disarm the criminals then you need laws that don’t require the cooperation of criminals. Almost every gun control law that is put forward requires that criminals obey that particular law to achieve the goals the law is trying to achieve. Except licensing and registration.
More like, if you find your laws encourage smuggling and bootlegging, maybe your laws are wrong and should be changed. You do believe that laws can be wrong, don’t you? Black markets form in response to bad laws. When you’ve got a black market, the laws are clearly wrong, in my opinion.
Really? Maybe you’d like to rethink your position after reading this cite about all the different things(and people) that are smuggled and sold on the black market. Are you suggesting that relaxing or eliminating laws would help out in all the cases noted in that article? Do you blame restrictive laws for the slave trade, child trafficking, endangered wildlife smuggling etc.?
When it comes to smuggling people, I’m all for it if the people voluntarily made the trip. That’s another case where protectionist laws have made an unjust black market spring up in illegal migration. Slavery is a separate issue, obviously.
My goal is freedom. If you’re not free to buy what you need and sell what the market demands, then you aren’t free. You’re forced into participating in a black market to meet your needs or continue your livelihood. Slavery, despite Big Brother’s sloganeering otherwise, is not freedom.
Wildlife could go either way, but rhino horn is still selling, so the current laws clearly aren’t working that well. Saying something is bad is entirely different from saying it should be illegal, or that a particular law should be enacted. Poaching is bad. Slavery is bad. I can criticize the particular laws against them without becoming some kind of neoconfederate.
I lean towards the idea that deep poverty in Africa has driven people into becoming poachers and slavers in order to make a living. Maybe instead of criminalizing their way of life, we could create better options for them to voluntarily choose? Like road construction, or plumbing. But that might take some nuanced thought and actual effort, unlike the 'write it down and send out armed goons" method of solving problems.
The fact of the matter is, black markets are a supply and demand issue. Saying “no” isn’t going to stop guns from selling, anymore than it stopped drugs, abortion, alcohol or ginseng. You have to both target demand, and give the suppliers better options. In this case, the only way to limit demand for guns in NYC is to make New Yorkers safer. You can’t make someone safer by outlawing their only defense. And the way to give suppliers here better options, is to stop making it such a lucrative career option. And that means stop artificially limiting the quantity of guns that can be sold in New York. Once a $100 handgun stops costing $600 in New York, and starts selling at a price closer to $100, then the smugglers will be forced into another line of work. But not until then. Stricter laws will only encourage more smuggling and make it an even more lucrative job choice.
No. I don’t believe that states should have the ability to make their own gun laws, I think we are better off with a federal gun control regime without embellishment by states and localities.