Since when have laws been for prevention and not punishment?

Great Debates
1

The argument that existing gun laws don’t work and therefore there’s no point in passing new laws has been a very successful argument for gun extremists; they’ve succeeded in making it seem like the baseline of fact with which all discussion on the subject must contend before moving forward. Every time there’s another school shooting, the contradictory choruses of “That gun was obtained legally, your laws don’t work!” and “That gun was obtained illegally, your laws don’t work!” tend to drown out all substantive debate.

But here’s the thing.

What’s the difference between that and pointing out that even though bank robbery is illegal, people still rob banks, so we should do away with laws against robbing banks? Why do gun extremists seem to accept the fact that laws cannot prevent crime, and have never been expected to do so, in every circumstance except gun ownership? Why do gun extremists not use their favorite logic to call for the elimination of every law that’s ever been broken?

Are there disimilarities that I’m missing? Or is this argument as specious as it seems?

2

I don’t see the point of your argument. No one on the pro gun side is advocating eliminating laws against the unlawful USE of guns. Just the laws that make POSSESSING them a crime. By your analogy, you would be in favor of passing laws that make it illegal to go into a bank without being given government permission.

3

I don’t think that’s a particularly popular argument among pro-gun folks. Usually they say something like “we have lots of gun laws already and should enforce those,” while quietly gutting (or ignoring the gutting of) agencies that enforce gun laws.

4

Smitty beat me to it.

That’s the key: Passing laws making bank robbery illegal don’t prevent all bank robbery. But you can’t compare that to passing gun laws.

The completely valid point that gun owners make is that someone who is willing to break laws against murder isn’t going to be stopped by a law against having a large capacity magazine or a gun in the mall. This is a perfectly valid point and one that you don’t seem to be getting.

5

Some specific examples of what these “gun extremists” say would be helpful.

6

Don’t confuse the relatively small but ridiculously strident minority of gun fanatics with the much larger, reasonably-voiced majority of gun advocates who want to work within our existing system of laws to ensure that they get to keep their guns et al. The first group gets a LOT more press and has almost no effect on the outcome of events.

For the sake of parity, there’s also the small but strident group of people who want to confiscate all the guns, not to be confused with the much larger but reasonably-voiced group of people who want to work within the system to … I’m not really sure what. Lower the body count?

and, re: thread title: There’s that time that God told Adam & Eve, “Don’t eat that. It will end poorly.”

7

I’d have to say, it’s probably because crimes committed with guns are already illegal … :wink:

8

But that’s exactly–exactly–the same as the bank robbery analogy. You can’t punish people for breaking a law unless you make the law addressing the unlawful act in the first place. By your logic, you’re indulging the criminal, by saying, “He won’t pay attention to the law anyway, so we should just let him do it.”

It’s exactly the same as saying, There’s always a speeder who exceeds the posted speed limit, so we shouldn’t bother posting new speed limits and just let the exception–the unlawful speeder–dictate the law.

A school shooter who is already bent on murder will ignore a law about magazine capacity so why bother? --is insane logic in a lawful society.

The question remains: why do we only take this kind of insane illogic seriously in gun debates, but not in any other aspect of criminal laws? “There are people who are likely to break this law if it’s passed so let’s just not pass it” is unique to gun laws.

9

What exactly is unlawful about owning a gun?

Can anybody who wants a gun legally obtain a gun?

10

I’m not sure I understand the arguments or questions posed by lissener, but I’ll look at the thread title.

Here are some examples of what I think might be called preventative laws, where it becomes illegal to do something without the “wrong itself,” that is seen to often follow, actually being committed:
-Outlawing the purchase/possession/carrying of lock picks without being a certified locksmith.
-Outlawing the purchase of precursors to controlled substances, i.e. pseudoephedrine, in quantity.
-Breaking and entering a private residence at night is/was considered a more severe crime than during the day, arguably due to the increased likelihood of a resident being injured in addition to property crimes.
-Conspiracy and attempt laws often make such things just as illegal as the completed acts.

I think it might be an appropriate riposte to ask when the debate over any law has ever been confined to any sort of rational standard.

Cheers,
Jon

11

No. It’s not.

Sorry you don’t get it.

Passing a law against bank robbery is comparable to passing a law against murder. You ban the action, not the tool used to do it.

Passing a law against guns in response to murder is like passing a law against cars in response to drunk driving. It’s indirect.

You framing it as “There are people who are likely to break this law if it’s passed so let’s just not pass it” is wrong.

It’s more like “This law won’t have any positive effect, so we shouldn’t pass it.”

That’s something that’s not unique to gun laws. It should be considered with every law.

Here’s some other examples of the same principle in action:

When taking reports of crimes from illegal aliens, people often argue that the police shouldn’t be considering their status, since the result of this would be unfortunate: Illegals would be less likely to call the cops and report crimes.

When considering laws about voter IDs people often make the argument that more voters will be turned away from the polls as a result of those laws than will be stopped from voting illegally. Thus, they argue that the net result of the law will be undesirable.

It’s the same with gun laws:

Problem: Someone just shot up a mall.

Suggested solution: Ban guns in malls!

Gun rights advocates: But if you do that, you’ll just make it easier to shoot up malls, since criminals will ignore that law but law abiding gun owners won’t. Thus you’re just providing a perfect target for the potential killers.

It’s not unique to guns to consider the actual outcome of a law, rather than just it’s nice intentions.

Get it now?

12

Because robbing banks is already illegal - you wouldn’t pass a law that makes them doubly illegal. Maybe increase the sentencing.

Murder, violent crimes, school shootings, etc. are already illegal. Do you want to make them super illegal?

If you’re talking about the restriction of standard capacity magazines you’ll have to identify the purpose of doing so. If the purpose of banning magazines is to reduce crime and you know it will not have that impact, then passing that ban is worthless because not only does it not accomplish your stated goal, it would also harm other law abiding folks in their lawful use of such magazines.

If your purpose was simply to ban things, then a restriction on standard capacity magazines would accomplish this. But if that’s the case, what’s the point of that?

13

Last I was aware, going to a bank is not illegal/prohibited. That would be the parallel that your argument would require. Because last I looked, it was illegal to rob a bank and it was illegal to murder a human.

If you could find that there’s a particular link between banks and robberies, and a particular link between people with X trait and their likelihood of committing a robbery, then I could see prohibiting them from attending a bank. Of course, those people who were denied access to their bank would most likely go to court and say that the law is unduly inhibiting their ability to survive and is an unfair punishment, when they have in fact done nothing wrong. I think it reasonably likely that such a law would be struck down.

14

Ah. I think I’ve got it. “The criminals have their guns, so you can’t reduce my right to obtain them, too.” Is that the argument that you’re criticising?

If so, and speaking from someone who’s mostly been around gun-control advocates, I think that argument is mostly made by gun-rights advocates and doesn’t sway anyone on the gun-control side of things. Sort of like how marijuana-legalization advocates don’t change anyone’s mind by saying, “I’ve got a prescription and I should be able to take my medicine anywhere I want.” People who agree will rally around, but it doesn’t do anything to move the debate forward.

Which is to say, I don’t think it a baseline of fact except for among those people who already agree with them.

15

“If we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”

Solution: outlaw outlaws.

16

Who is making this argument?

I’ve heard people saying that we need to enforce existing laws rather than pass new ones, but I haven’t heard people say the laws “don’t work” and therefore don’t pass new ones.

17

In the case of the speeder, you are making the undersired activity illegal. In the case of the gun you are making possession of guns illegal in order to prevent some other activity that is ALREADY illegal.

18

What lawful purpose would you need a set of lock picks for? I can think of a few lawful purposes for possessing a gun. Same goes for large quantities of pseudoephedrine.

I don’t see how varying levels of penalties for crimes committed at night (wierd as it is) is relevant. Same with conspiracy.

19

I see each brick you place to build your argument. I see how your dots connect.

However.

Ultimately, your entire post, articulate and logical as it was, was more a deconstruction of the arguments as you perceive them from the “other side” of the argument. Let’s agree for the sake of argument that the logic used by gun control advocate doesn’t hold up. Interesting discussion. But I’m not asking about that in this thread: I’m asking about the arguments used by the gun absolutists, an argument which seems unique to that debate. I mean, isn’t it kind of a given that someone, somewhere, will break any given laws, and this is why there are penalties in place for doing so?

I mean, it seems more logical to me to do as you have done, Debaser, and debate the actual content of the proposed laws, rather than point out the obvious–that someone might actually break a proposed law–as a reason not to even bother passing it.

The laws proposed by gun control advocates are a sincere attempt to limit gun violence. They are not a screen for a hidden agenda of simply confiscating guns for the sport of it. But in the debate on the subject, the logic–the content–of those proposals almost always gives way to the meta discussion of the inevitability of scofflaws. Which is, as far as I’ve ever seen, unique to gun laws. The inevitability of scofflaws is never offered as a consideration in the discussion of any other criminal law. Right?

20

You have really never heard this kind of reasoning about drug laws?

Regards,
Shodan