# Since when have laws been for prevention and not punishment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 16, 2014, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286 "2014-07-16T17:28:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/101 "2014-07-23T17:22:13Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > The question is whether guns are a greater advantage to law-abiding defenders or law-breaking aggressors. That is not how I would frame the question. The question is whether guns are a greater advantage to law-abiding people or greater disadvantage to law abiding people. The actions of criminals should not affect my ability to engage in lawful conduct. One of the main objections that gun rights advocates have is that gun control tends to disproportionatley impact law abiding folks. > [@](#): > > A law-abiding, responsible gun-owner, especially one with a family to protect, is not going to have their gun lying around and loaded. I don’t think this is relevant to any particular argument being made, but holsters are pretty common. Quick access safes, hideaways furniture, passive and active security, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/102 "2014-07-23T18:12:57Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > That is not how I would frame the question. The question is whether guns are a greater advantage to law-abiding people or greater disadvantage to law abiding people. The actions of criminals should not affect my ability to engage in lawful conduct. One of the main objections that gun rights advocates have is that gun control tends to disproportionatley impact law abiding folks. Agreed that criminals shouldn’t affect your ability to engage in lawful conduct, but the debate is about what _should_ be lawful conduct. And of course gun control disproportionately affects law-abiding people. If you don’t follow a law, it’s not affecting you until you get caught, is it? > [@Bone](#): > > I fully accept that outlawing guns would make committing a crime with that type of gun more difficult. It would also make defense more difficult. This quotation is why I framed the question as I did. I assumed it would be a matter of determining if the presence of guns is advantageous or not when it comes to reducing crime, homicides and misery. If you’re ideological enough to think gun rights are worth having regardless of how they’re abused, and would prefer the option to own a gun even if that option decreases the safety of you and the people around you, that’s another place our thoughts diverge and I don’t see how it’s possible to find much common ground. It’s just weird to me that guns should be so important that they’re worth all the deaths. I doubt even the First Amendment would be defended so aggressively if people were dying every day as a result of what it permits. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/103 "2014-07-23T18:56:46Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > (my bold) > This is a poor argument. > > If guns were illegal, it’s not true that gun possession would not be reduced among criminals. One source of illegal guns are straw purchases exectued through presumably legal channels. At a minimum, some non-zero decrease of gun possession among criminals would occur. It’s debateable what the magnitude of that would be, but simply saying that making guns illegal would have no impact on criminal possession is not realistic. It would have a massive impact on the legal possession of guns and a non-zero impact on gun ownership by criminals (at least in the short term). I suppse that there would be some effect but youa re really only chipping away at the very edges of the argument. That doesn not make it a poor argument. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/104 "2014-07-23T19:10:33Z")
The key is that you stated it would have no impact on criminals. That’s a false statement and therefore the argument is poor. I think directionally is correct but a sound argument cannot have false premises. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/105 "2014-07-23T19:10:17Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Personally, it seems obvious to me that a gun offers a greater advantage to an aggressor. A law-abiding, responsible gun-owner, especially one with a family to protect, is not going to have their gun lying around and loaded. Pro-gun arguments often hinge on this idea of sensible gun-owners who wouldn’t dream of using their gun unsafely or illegally. On top of this, someone planning to attack you with a gun knows their intentions - you do not. It seems to me that both these factors would generally give a gun-toting aggressor the advantage over responsible gun-owners. 100,000 defensive gun uses per year. > [@](#): > > Where do you think all the illegal guns come from, originally? A severely reduced legal market for guns will make guns rarer and more expensive. Many criminals with limited capital to invest in their business will find it harder to access a gun, harder to afford one and less important to own one, if they don’t expect their victims and rivals to be packing. If guns are higher value, it’s also less convenient to just shoot someone and dispose of the weapon. I’ve stated frequently that a gun ban and confiscation of guns would reduce the flow of guns into crimnal hands, but this reduced flow would take years if not decades or generations to significantly reduce gun ownership among criminals. I’m saying it won’t do a thing about the guns already in criminal hands. > [@](#): > > Severe penalties for gun ownership would make it more trouble than it’s worth for many criminals to bother, as carrying a gun is carrying evidence of your criminal status. Thats already the case in places like New York or Chicago or DC. And yet it doesn’t seem to act as much of a deterrent in these places (sure there are some limited number of legal gun owners but the number is de minimus). > [@](#): > > It’s also important to remember that no one starts out as a criminal - the current situation makes it considerably easier for a previously law-abiding person to start robbing people at gunpoint or shoot someone in anger. And how often do you think a law abiding gun owner becomes a criminal? What percentage of the 12,000 gun murders we see every year do you think are committed by previously law abiding gun owners who legally owned their gun? > [@](#): > > As a bonus, police will be able to stop assuming everyone they encounter has a gun, and there might be fewer unnecessary police shootings. Police would have to keep assuming that for decades. It would be at least that long before we leeched enough guns out of the system for cops to assume away the threat of armed criminals. This is my point. We would have a period of decades where the average citizen would be unarmed while criminals would have guns. Once again: 100,000+ defensive gun uses per year. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/106 "2014-07-23T19:14:21Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > The key is that you stated it would have no impact on criminals. That’s a false statement and therefore the argument is poor. I think directionally is correct but a sound argument cannot have false premises. Oh, OK. I overstated things (for the sake of brevity and simplicity) by saying it would have no effect on criminal gun ownership. I should have said it would have almost no immediate effect on criminal gun ownership and it would be years if not decades or generations before we had significant reduction of criminal gun ownership (low enough for cops to go around with peper spray and billy clubs). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/107 "2014-07-23T19:48:36Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > As has been mentioned, gun control is tough because, in a vacuum, ownership of a firearm is legal and doesn’t necessarily say anything good or bad about the owner. He might be a fine, upstanding citizen who hunts, or he might be a gang banger. > > Crafting good criminal laws is tough in general because so much of it is incremental and reactive. > > To give a concrete example, Illinois requires residents to apply for a firearm ownership ID (FOID) card to purchase or possess firearms and ammo. This allows the state police to run a background check to try and weed out criminals and the mentally ill. It’s $10, and can take longer than the 30 days it’s supposed to take to process. And the law is rife with loopholes and enforcement issues. It has no force for gun purchases in surrounding states. And what happens if someone has a FOID card, but then is denied a renewal? Is he going to throw his guns away? > > Because gun possession is an aggravating factor is numerous other criminal laws in the state (and not necessarily using the gun in the commission of a crime, merely possessing it when busted), I think the practical effect of the FOID law tends to be its use as an additional cudgel to beat criminal defendants over the head with and increase their prison sentences, and a source of funding for Illinois state police and wildlife management. It may be that the FOID requirement has had a positive effect on crime, but that’s difficult to evaluate in isolation. So for law-abiding gun owners, it strikes them as an unnecessary imposition. I can sympathize with that position. I’d like to make my case for licensing and registration one more time. As has been noted many times, most gun violence is committed by people who are not legally allowed to own guns. Almost all these criminals owned guns were once purchased legally from a gun dealer and somehow find their way into criminal hands. As noted above, the total ban and confiscation of all guns would severely reduce the flow of legally owned guns into criminal hands. But, it would take many years if not generations to severely reduce the stock of guns in criminal hands even by this draconian (not to mention unconstitutional) method. Licensing and registration of all guns (but especially handguns) would make it very easy to track who sold a gun to a criminal. Current penalties of up to ten years in prison would soon have a deterrent effect on the transfer of guns to criminals (of course this would not be as effective as not permitting any guns into the system at all but licensing and registration has the benefit of being constitutional) and would also reduce the flow of guns into criminal hands and while this method would also take many years if not generations, we would not be infringing on constitutional rights or leaving people unarmed in the face of a well armed criminal population (see 100,000 dgu/year). I had proposed a “grand bargain” exchanging licensing and registration for federal pre-emption of all gun state and clocal gun laws and the repeal of many of our current federal gun laws that were either obsolete or ineffective (which would include the vast majority of current federal gun law). Add to that some guarantee of the confidentiality and protection against the improper use of the registry and I would call it a day. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/108 "2014-07-23T19:51:01Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > That is not how I would frame the question. The question is whether guns are a greater advantage to law-abiding people or greater disadvantage to law abiding people. The actions of criminals should not affect my ability to engage in lawful conduct. One of the main objections that gun rights advocates have is that gun control tends to disproportionatley impact law abiding folks. > > I don’t think this is relevant to any particular argument being made, but holsters are pretty common. Quick access safes, hideaways furniture, passive and active security, etc. With that said, the incidence of gun ownership tends to drop during child-rearing years. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286/109 "2014-07-23T19:55:07Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Agreed that criminals shouldn’t affect your ability to engage in lawful conduct, but the debate is about what _should_ be lawful conduct. And of course gun control disproportionately affects law-abiding people. If you don’t follow a law, it’s not affecting you until you get caught, is it? > > This quotation is why I framed the question as I did. I assumed it would be a matter of determining if the presence of guns is advantageous or not when it comes to reducing crime, homicides and misery. If you’re ideological enough to think gun rights are worth having regardless of how they’re abused, and would prefer the option to own a gun even if that option decreases the safety of you and the people around you, that’s another place our thoughts diverge and I don’t see how it’s possible to find much common ground. It’s just weird to me that guns should be so important that they’re worth all the deaths. I doubt even the First Amendment would be defended so aggressively if people were dying every day as a result of what it permits. Due process rights and rights against self incrimiantion and all sort of other criminals defendant rights result in the release of criminals that go on to commit crimes (including crimes like rape and murder) on an almost daily basis. Perhaps we shouldn’t be defending these rights so aggressively either. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-have-laws-been-for-prevention-and-not-punishment/693286.md?page=5)