I am actually not sure about this. A friend of mine had her car stolen and it did sound like the insurance company was going to have to handle the damage caused by the thieves.
Note that the Boston Marathon bombs were improvised devices, not stolen. Note that the truck bomb used in Oklahoma City was improvised. Explosives are very, very difficult to steal. With taggants, these days, the original owners probably could be identified and might well face some kind to punishment for allowing the theft, so they keep their stock pretty close.
It is onerous to handle your guns responsibly? Keep them secure? Not advertise their presence to every potential thief in the countryside (“THIS HOUSE PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON!”)?
The feckless, lackadaisical attitude that so many take toward gun ownership is just not ok. That guy in Gresham OR who had his pistol stolen out of his hand on the street ten minutes after he just bought it was a fuckwit: fuckwits should not be allowed to have guns. But that does not show up on the background check.
Great, now we’ll get the Fuckwit-American Anti-Discrimination League inviting the candidates to address them about who would best protect fuckwits’ rights…
This is not entirely correct. Part of the construction of the device, that heavily damaged the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, included the use of 350 pounds of Tovex “sausages”, “shock tube” detonation cord, and electrical blasting caps stolen from a quarry in Kansas. The caps, detonation cord (which is different from other, extruded-PETN type cords), and Tovex were essential for initiating the secondary charges of nitromethane and ammonium nitrate.
It is weird, reading about the theft in 2016, that more of an outcry back then wasn’t made of the theft of several hundred pounds of what is essentially a more stable dynamite. I am not aware of any great difficulty that either McVeigh or Nichols had in the stealing of the explosives, the cord, or the caps. I hope both things would be different in a similar attempt undertaken today.
Wait, the car was stolen (absent gross negligence or willful misconduct)and she is being held responsible for the damage that her caused to something else? or are you saying that her insurance company is covering the damage caused to HER car? because the first thing is not something I have heard before, the second thing is common.
Doesn’t matter whether or not they were improvised. I was giving an example of a hazardous material that you would not be able to hold the legal owner responsible for if it were used illegally by a criminal that stole it.
There are penalties for improperly storing and securing explosives but that penalty has nothing to do with how much damage is caused by the people who stole the explosives (unless there is gross negligence or willful misconduct involved). Just like there are penalties for failing to properly store and secure a weapon around children.
No, it is onerous to apply liability to them when you don’t do it in any other case.
It depends on what you mean by keep them secure. We already have laws in most states that imposes liability for leaving loaded guns laying around when there are kids. If you are proposing some sort of storage requirement that makes them inaccessible or inoperable for immediate defensive use, then you will need to rewrite the constitution.
And why would I have to do that?
Its is neither feckless or lackadaisical. We do not impose these sorts of conditions and liabilities on the exercise of ANY other constitutional right.
You are just trying to get as close to criminalizing gun ownership without actually criminalizing it.
The N.R.A. would applaud this life-lesson. Now the little 2 year old imp will grow up to have the proper respect for firearms. They see this as early-childhood education, N.R.A.-style.
Murdering fuckwits. Best part of the story? The girl’s brains weren’t spattered all over the hallway. Worst part of the story? The mother won’t lose custody over this.
I know that this is the Pit, that you hate guns and gun owners, and that you’re being sarcastic; but your description of the incident isn’t even merely inaccurate, it’s a flat-out lie. How about if you were unable to stop in time for a pedestrian who was jaywalking and we described it as “Maniac speed-demon plows through intersection, flattens pedestrian who was in his way”.
Did you not see Smithsb’s post just two before your own? If gun owners are required to register their guns at the time of purchase and know that if a crime is committed with THAT gun that law enforcement will be on their backs wanting to know just HOW that gun came to be used in a crime, they will be a little more particular with regard to selling/giving that gun to another.
That stops straw men from buying a gun, in their own names, for someone else, that stops gun show loopholes. That would make it VERY hard for criminals or terrorists to get guns.
That is not what happened in the cited case. Dropping a purse that also holds a very-probably-unholstered pistol is very different than just dropping the pistol by itself. If the woman’s purse was anything like my fiancee’s, it’s full of things that would easily get inside the trigger guard of a poorly holstered or unholstered pistol, and put enough pressure on the trigger during impact to cause the gun to discharge. See also reholstering accidents involving clothing. Or the material of the holster itself causing a negligent discharge. Of course, you can try to catch the pistol while it’s falling. That isn’t safe either.
Use a proper holster and, if you must carry in a handbag or such, make sure the firearm is properly secured and that you don’t have anything else rattling around in the same storage area. It’s not that hard to do.
Stupidity should be painful and although I am saddened by the injury to her child and I’m sure she feels terrible about the ordeal, I’m disappointed the woman isn’t facing criminal charges for her negligence.
Sounds like a great idea to me- except that registries make gun confiscation possible. And yes, it has happened before and many people would make it happen again if they could. That well is so thoroughly poisoned that gun owners regard registration, or even universal background checks as the canary in the coal mine.
Ask again when there’s an ironclad consensus that yes owning weapons is a right, and no you can’t ban or confiscate guns for any reason short of a loss of civil rights, such as a felony conviction or adjudgement of incompetency.
Yet the loss of civil rights like what comes after a felony conviction occurs only because states passed legislation making it so. If they can take away constitutionally guaranteed rights with legislation alone, I don’t see why we cannot extend that to further restrict gun sales.
We have never done it at the federal level and we have had a federal registry of some guns for over 80 years. As you point out, its a great idea and the risk is so minimal that it is almost imaginary.
At the federal level, this ironclad consensus exists. I don’t think you can point to even 10% of federally elected officials that think that we should go around confiscating guns.
If you put the same protections around gun registry information as you put around medical and tax information held by the government, its pretty difficult for that information to be abused.