When in doubt, ban something, even if it's a totally unrelated gun.

The BBQ Pit
201

First, up, Duke of Rat, it took me too long to realize where you were finding offense, and I apologize. The genesis of the “great taste of raccoon” remark was my own experience living around (and, a few times, hunting with) hunters: it always seemed that raccoons seemed to take a hugely disproportionate number of casualties given that nobody wanted to eat one. I mean, if we had been picking off the ones nesting in the dumpster, that would be understandable, but it struck me kinda funny that they were let alone (probably protected by town ordinance) while we tramped miles out into the woods after their distant cousins. No offense to anyone who’s ever shot a raccoon, or likes venison or grouse or elk or any other game.

That said, I’m afraid that I regard your proposal as sincere and well-intentioned, but not a serious step. By reclassifying the .50 caliber, you will accomplish the following: costing Osama bin Laden an extra five bucks. And that’s if he buys it from an honest and scrupulous and efficient dealer in a store, rather than from a private individual at a gun show or over the internet. Of course if he (or any other terrorist) buys from a dealer like oh, about half of Americans do, they’ll be forced to use people who can pass a background check, which is something terrorist organizations probably plan for.

As for the NFA and machine guns and organized crime, I’m going to have to look a little further back for the roots of that success – to the previous year, when Prohibition ended, and a couple years before that, when the Federal government basically took over law enforcement in Chicago.

Zerial’s suggestion that we leave the guns alone and clamp down on the most dangerous projectiles also falls short, I think, if only because they are
currently available, will continue to be available during the long debates and votes and ensuing court challenges, and after sale will be much easier to transport, conceal, camoflage, etc., than the gun itself. Enforcing a ban against a 30-inch, 30-pound object that has its own carrying case has a greater chance of success.

Still, both ideas are better than the completely asinine “leave the gun alone and increase regulations some on the most dangerous ammunition.” I can just see how tough these guys are willing to get:

Terrorist: Hi, I’d like a box of .50-caliber silver-tipped, please.

xtisme: Sure, here ya–oops! Sorry buddy, no beer and no armor-piercing incendiary rounds on Sunday 'til 1 p.m.

Terrorist: Damn!

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The biggest issue for me is that, as nearly as I can tell, terrorists aren’t limited to buying weapons at legal gun stores in the United States, either. A Browning .50 sniper rifle is lighter and less bulky than many things routinely illegaly smuggled into this country on a daily basis, like multi-kilo packages of drugs or illegal immigrants. In addition, we already know that extant multinational terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda are accustomed to planning long-term operations (see the long run-up to 9/11) and working with legal but still dangerous substances (see the 1993 attempted bombing), and I do not believe that the prospect of smuggling in a .50BMG instead of buying it at a gun dealer is going to seriously impair any plans they may have to attack refineries with said weapon, if that’s determined to be the best weapon for the job. Similarly, if Al-Qaeda were going to attack aircraft on the ground, a common RPG-7 (net cost, US$7) will do immensely more damage to a parked aircraft OR an airborne one, for a practically negligible effort in smuggling one from Mexico or South America.

In other words, from a practical standpoint I believe that any gun ban will have zero net effect on any foreign-based terrorist operations.

This leaves us with domestic terrorism and crime. To the best of my knowledge, there have been precisely two incidents where an automatic rifle or machine gun was registered and purchased legally and then subsequently used in criminal activity.

To my way of thinking, the biggest problem has been and will continue to be cheap, readily available illegal handguns, followed by legal handguns. Hence my other post, proposing stricter licensing and registration, similar to car ownership with a skills test and proof of knowledge.

edited to fix coding

203

Actually, the $5 is for AOW “All Other Weapons” like a cane gun. The fee for a fully automatic weapon is $200. But the fee really isn’t what keeps fully automatic weapons from being widely owned. Another cite of a place that used to deal in Class III firearms, with a little perspective on what else besides $5 is needed. You’ll notice your internet and gunshow cites are talking about common Title 1 weapons, not Class III weapons.

Now that’s a bit more involved than paying $5, don’t you think? While you might find a dealer gullible enough to just send you a fully automatic weapon with no transfer off the internet or at a gunshow, they would be exposing themselves to some serious penalties.

Chicago wasn’t the only place fully automatic weapons were preferred by criminals. Clyde Barker favored the Browning BAR (fully automatic 30-06), and the BAR was also used to kill him. When was the last time a Browning BAR was used in a crime? Likely by Clyde Barker, but you can still buy them if you jump through the Class III NFA hoops. Now you’d think that criminals would still be aching to avail themselves of this type of firepower, since they can pick it up at any gunshow or off the internet, but they just aren’t using them. Wonder why?

204

IOW, not only do you have no idea what YOU are talking about (which was apearent in your first post), but you have no idea what I’M talking about either. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

205

I ain’t got nothin’ for the debate at the moment. But I did want to chime in and say that The King of Soup and the Duke of Rat going 'round and 'round with each other sounds like something that Lewis Carroll would write, probably in doggerel rhyme.

206

Well, let’s see. Banning the .50-caliber would be ineffective because it would be so easily circumvented as to be unenforceable, and it’s also unnecessary because the current gun law (NFA) is so well-enforced that its lesser restrictions couldn’t possibly be circumvented. I’ve got to admit, that’s a dizzying rhetorical position to have to argue against.* But I’ll give it a shot.

First off, I generally dislike the “it’s hard, so don’t try” school of thought when it comes to perfectly sensible laws. How many times does someone have to commit murder or any other crime before you give enforcement up as a bad job and start striking laws off the books? That aside, it’s a fairly simple thing to restrict a particular weapon to military use (I trust the army not to have a garage sale), and tracking down the limited number of current units in private hands seems perfectly feasible given the resources we’re willing to spend on terror countermeasures. The idea that you shouldn’t make something illegal because it might then be smuggled in would come as a surprise to most gun advocates, who tend to support drug and immigration interdiction. But even allowing for that, it strikes me as kind of silly. At the very least, adding another illegal act, costly in time and money and personnel, and detectible and defeatable by still more agencies, to the risk of committing a terrorist act, is a worthwhile deterrent. Most important, it would eliminate the single biggest source of unregistered and illegal weapons: domestic private sales. If .50-caliber weapons are banned, local weekly shopper employees might report attempts to advertise them, garage-sale regulars might report seeing them, gun shows might have a few undercover agents showing an interest. Of course, without a ban, none of this will happen because there’s no good reason to assume that the transfer of one of these weapons violates the law. And I have to question whether someone who asserts that the potential for smuggling 30-pound, 30-inch guns is enough reason not to ban them, and also asserts that banning 3-ounce bullets that can be kept ten in a pocket is a reasonable proposal, is really arguing in good faith.

And as far as the good Duke is concerned, transfers of these weapons won’t violate the law. The assertion that my cites apply only to handguns isn’t true, so far as I can see, and given the testimony, (that gun shows and internet sales go pretty much unregulated) what goes for handguns goes for all firearms. Anyhow, regardless of how wonderful the NFA is, it has never been applied to private gun sales and (if the NRA has its way) never will be. Nor will it bestir itself if a terrorist organization uses a hitherto-blameless-and-spotless citizen (not hardly an unknown tactic) as a tool to buy weapons. Here’s the thing: while I still believe that Prohibition played a much larger role than the NFA did in the decline in machine-gun shootings, I still think gun-control laws are enforceable, just like Duke does. It’s just that enforcing the NFA to the hilt lets terrorists have as many of these things as they want, whereas enforcing a plain ban on the damned things won’t.

*No, there’s no good reason you two should bother to coordinate your arguments into a coherent position. If it really, someday, comes down to a debate, you’ll probably need to resolve this, but there’s no civil or criminal law saying you have to. There’s probably some physical law that explains why xtisme can’t create a coherent position even on his own, but that doesn’t matter. He’s managed to be his own fan club, which is a fine thing. It saves postage, and in his case, a lot of time and eventual disappointment.

207

You didn’t really read what I posted. I said “You’ll notice your internet and gunshow cites are talking about common Title 1 weapons, not Class III weapons”.

I never said it applied only to handguns.

Just a couple more lines on down, "Securing NFA weaponry is different than Title I weaponry (long guns and handguns). "

I think you are confusing the “assault rifle” with Class III “fully automatic weapon”. Common mistake, the “assault rifle” looks a lot like a machine gun, so many people confuse the two. I can sell you an assault rifle out of my garage. You can buy them at Wal Mart. These are not covered by the Class III rules of the NFA.

This is simply not true with regards to Class III weapons.

"If you decide to sell the item you must bring the item to a Class III dealer and the buyer to legally effect the transfer. The buyer then has to go through all the steps described above and pay the required transfer tax. "

You can’t just sell it. After going through the forms, letters, background checks, pictures, fingerprints, fees, and waiting periods outlined above, you can’t sell it to somebody unless they have done the same. Even then, you cannot sell it directly to them, you have to go through a Class III dealer who has the forms. If the feds think you own a Class III weapon and it turns out you don’t still have it, you go to prison.

Do you really think a terrorist will go through the steps above to get these things legally?

Did you read

"7. You also have to send in a form (dealer supplied) to the Department of the Treasury. This form is called the Certification of Compliance, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5)(B), ATF Form 5330.20, which simply states that you are a United States citizen. "

OK, so the terrorists are US citizens,

"8. The BATF will first remove the money order and examine the paperwork for completeness. It will be assigned to an agent, who will have a nationwide FBI background check performed on you. "

Will said terrorists pass the FBI background check?

These rules have kept fully automatic weapons out of the hands of criminals for decades.

Again, following NFA Class III guidelines, you can buy fully automatic weapons today. Have the terrorists just not figured this out, or do you think maybe the laws are working as planned?

208

Maybe there are easier ways for terrorists to acquire fully automatic weapons, such as dropping $50,000 worth of pesos to a Federale in Mexico for a whole truckload of them, and then simply driving them across the border.

Something not yet mentioned: the U.S. has frozen their Class III firerms registry in the late '80s, meaning no new weapons can be added to it. This means there’s fixed supply of legal (registered) fully automatic firearms in the U.S., which means by the Law of Supply and Demand that the price of legal (registered) fully automatic weapons has skyrocketed.

Why would a potential terrorist bother going through the legal hoopla, taking up to six months, leaving a paper trail of photographs and fingerprints, just to shell out $5,000 for a used Vietnam-era AK-47, when he can get cases of them clean from Mexico (or Brazil, or Nicaragua, or Cuba, or South Africa, or Zimbabwe, or Somalia) for the same investment of time and money?

209

I’ve found this page on NFA weapons ownership pretty informative.

New weapons have been added to the NFA registry since 1986 as the BATF redefined existing weapons (e.g., certain shotguns) as NFA weapons (e.g., continued, large bore destructive devices) and required their registration.

The part I find cutest about the redefined-as-NFA-weapons-end-run around the 2nd Amendment is that it was justified in the mentioned example “owing to their non-sporting character”. Last I checked the Right to keep and bear arms was to ensure the security of a free state… not sport.

210

Duke, I honestly did read your post and your cite, but I also read the NFA and I’ll be damned if I can find all those restrictions in it. It’s a tax law, it applies to manufacturers, dealers and importers, and private persons are governed (so far as I can see) solely insofar as they wish to deal with or become one of those three. Is it possible that your cite is taking account of a South Carolina law that requires private Class 3 sales to go through a dealer, and that brings the NFA into effect, but there isn’t an analogous federal requirement? I could easily be wrong in my reading, it is one MEGO-esque chunk of text. Tell you what, from now on, let’s assume you’re right (after all, you could just as easily have made that part of your original proposal anyway) and go from there.

Yes, I think terrorists would go to the trouble. People who enrol in and attend flight school are probably willing to fill out paperwork. The key difference between a criminal and a terrorist is that the former wants to conduct ongoing criminal enterprises. Chances are a criminal who commits repeated offenses has been caught at some point. Odds are also good that s/he’s committed unarmed crimes before s/he gets interested in guns. This is why background checks are good for keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. A terrorist, on the other hand, could just as easily be recruited for ability to pass such a screening as for any other skill or talent. And unlike a criminal, the terrorist’s imperative not to get caught is subordinate to committing the act – often, we’ve seen, surviving the act isn’t even a priority. A criminal wants a gun to further a career. A terrorist wants one for just one important moment. And of course, as long as the weapons are available, theft or just finding an owner who doesn’t know about or care about the fine points of 26 U.S.C. Chapter 53 are also options. These things can blow up oil refineries and bring down large aircraft: I’d rather have a program that made them gone rather than a law that depends on fanatics getting bored or impatient and giving up.

211

OK, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. No harm in that, and I appreciate your level headed responses to an obviously passionate topic.

Just for the record, from your cite, mention of “Form 4” in 179.84. This is the form where all the restrictions about transfer comes into play. It is not a South Carolina law, that was simply a website that had a synopsis of the federal regulations without the MEGA-esque chunk of text. Section 179.85 is the nuts and bolts. I wouldn’t try to make all that up and pass it off. Keep in mind the definitions were many paragraphs up in the text, when it says (firearms), it means in the context of firearms covered by the NFA, not ordinary firearms. You want the long version, here you go:

(And it goes on in “Subpart G-Registration and Identification of Firearms , 179.101 Registration of firearms” to describe the database and all the information required.)

212

Good Lord, Duke, I certainly hope you don’t think I was accusing you of anything like that. Your honesty is apparent in your posts, as is the sincrere constructive spirit with which you approach the discussion.

When I read it the first time, it seemed as if the requirements of form four and the label transferor were both terms applicable within the rubric of the general tax rule 5801, and were thus limited to the manufacturers, dealers and importers bound to register with the Secretary of the Treasury under the law. Rereading it, I see more than enough doubt about that to accept the synopsis you cited earlier. That doesn’t advance the discussion much, since I was willing to grant it anyhow, but it was nice of you to clean up the clutter I’d left behind us.

And that may be where we have to leave it. I sense that we’re just about agreed on what the world would look like if you had your way or if I had mine, but the parts of our brains that measure risk and measure the meaning and importance of the Second Amendment are ever-so-slightly different shapes. Face it: we’re both heretics to the fringes of the debate closest to us. When there are enough of us, I bet, things will take a turn for the better.

213

I guess from my point of view, it’s already far easier and cheaper to get a .50BMG or automatic battle rifle or machine gun ILLEGALLY, why throw up more legal barricades? If it were somehow more difficult to smuggle in a heavy weapon (It doesn’t appear to be at all difficult, given the volume and weights of drugs and people smuggled in) and if the cheaply available illegal weapons weren’t far more dangerous than the legal ones (compare the frightfulness of $10,000 worth of Barrett rifle and ammo with $10,000 worth of RPG-7s or RPG-9s–one is a single sniper, one is hundreds of anti-tank rockets accurate enough to do things like shoot down Blackhawks in Mogadishu.) then I’d concede the point. Personally, if you’re worried about terrorists, you need to start with border security and move on to defenses–the weaponry is always going to be available, in my opinion, and restricting freedoms to stop it is wrongheaded.

If there were even a hundred to one ratio of “deaths involving an illegal .50BMG rifle or automatic weapon” to “deaths involving a legal, registered .50BMG rifle or automatic weapon”, I’d concede the point that it might be helpful to ban them. To the best of my knowledge, the latter number is “2” since the 1930s.

214

This is one of the assertions I have trouble with. I spent some time thinking up the fundamental differences between ordinary criminals and terrorists earlier, and while they’re a mere milkshake of the available facts and my powers of reason, that’s pretty much all I have. I have to ask, why do you think this is true? And, without waiting for the evidence that it is true (it might be, I suppose, but then absolute bans vs. strict regulation might end up making even more sense), I still find myself anchored by the unproven-but-pretty-sound idea that unlike a criminal, a terrorist or group of terrorists would much prefer to commit only one crime: the one that makes headlines and kills hundreds or thousands and frightens millions. They don’t want to risk committing minor victimless crimes and getting nabbed on their way to glory. That’s the kind of thing that can expose a lot of resources. There’s also the thought lurking that we might still be able to resurrect some vestige of international cooperation for strictly defensive measures. And of course, my general rule is still that you don’t shrink away from enforcing a good law because of a vague threat that someone might try to break or circumvent it. That’s the argument made popular by that famous legalist, Attila.

Besides which, it’s impossible to ignore – Zeriel, you seem honest and sincere, but aren’t you now arguing simultaneously for a ban on certain 4-inch bullets, which presumably you think enforceable, and against a ban on 30", 30# guns, on the grounds that they would be too easy to smuggle? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but consistency isn’t always foolish, you know?

Please clarify this: if illegal weapons cause 100X the deaths that legal weapons do, then you’d agree to a ban? This doesn’t seem like much of an offer to me: why shouldn’t weapons be banned if legally-owned ones caused 100X the deaths illicit ones do? Besides, the fact that a recently developed, devastatingly powerful weapon hasn’t yet been used in the U.S. by civilian terrorists for its intended military use doesn’t sway me much. I’ll tell you what, though: are you willing to (before looking up the stats) make the same offer with respect to handguns? If not, why not?

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The way I really think about it, when I think like a terrorist I do think that there’s a single operation that most terrorists would like to accomplish, as opposed to the petty criminal. However, my brain says “If I were a terrorist, I’d want to do it correctly. Since I am not a petty criminal, I have a limited pool of funding (even Bin Laden’s millions will run out eventually) and so I must at least nod towards frugality if I wish my grandchildren to have the means to continue this if necessary. Additionally, given the legal climate in my current target-du-jour, I am forced to consider which is more worthwhile: Shall I spend $10,000 on a legal sniper rifle, with the object of destroying one petroleum tank farm or a few aircraft on a tarmac, with the associated risks of training to use the rifle (not easy by any means) and the suspicion that will fall on me as an arab-american with a heavy anti-material rifle. Or should I take note of the fact the US has notoriously porous borders, especially from Canada, and ship in potentially hundreds of easy-to-use RPG rocket launchers, each of which can destroy an aircraft or vehicle or small building with little to no training, albeit at a shorter range.”

If I’m the terrorist, knowing my biggest resource is lots of warm bodies and spreading the feeling of vulnerability and fear as much as possible, I’m going with the RPGs and hitting a hundred targets instead of one. You clearly disagree, but since neither of us is to my knowledge psychic, I suppose the question will remain open.

Different rationale–I’m arguing from a basis of “what is the best way to implement restrictions that take away as much of the terroristic/criminal potential of a weapon as possible while retaining as much of the sporting/recreational potential as possible.” I’d frankly be perfectly happy if all such ammunition disappeared except for military storehouses. Similarly, I’m not actually at all worried about any potential consequences of widespread civilian availability of said rounds, but it’s got such a small effect on overall freedom that I’m willing to concede it.

To clarify–in the specific class of “Fully automatic arms and military anti-material sniper rifles”, if there were so many illegal uses of registered, legal arms that said arms killed as many as 1 person for every 100 killed with illegal, unregistered arms then I’d happily ban them as even 1% of fatalities being traceable to legal guns would indicate we had a problem with legal guns being used for illegal purposes. However, the probability at present of a legal gun in this class being used for a crime is so vanishingly small (the ratio is closer to thousands to one) that it seems a silly argument to ban them from the retail channels because normal criminals are provably NOT getting them from the retail channels.

I’m actually interested in the stats on handguns, and I’ll try to look them up. I’m not necessarily willing to make the same offer for them, because the handgun form factor has (to my way of thinking) legitimate self-defense uses at the present time that are not shared by larger arms, and a correspondingly lower chance of being used in terrorist (as opposed to criminal) incidents due to lack of ability to be destructive on a multiple-person basis. I’m still very much in favor of vastly improved background checking and training–arguably, I’d want all firearms to be regulated more strictly than Title III ones are now. (and I call myself a gun rights advocate!)

As you and Duke of Rat seem to have worked out, it’s really a question of where risk assessment lies–both the Duke and I are sitting further over to the “legitimate people willing to put in the background checks and training should have access to a wide variety of arms” side of it, you’re closer to the “can we ban the bigger weapons, they’re more dangerous in potential even if never really used for that in practice YET.” side, and we’re both kinda irritated by the extreme wings of our respective positions. Risk assessment is never easy even when all the variables are known, and the unknowns in this particular conversation are mountainous.