i asked my my commie ‘friend’ that question and he tried laying this logic on me, even though i told him to stuff it: ballistics can determine roughly what caliber of gun was used by examining the wounds. investigators do some legwork and get the names of everyone known to be somehow involved with the victim, especially those with a motive or some kind of bad dealings. they can then run a check on similar guns transferred within the last month, or whatever timeframe they choose, and compare their results with the list of names from the investigation. at this point i just stuck my fingers in my ears so i wouldn’t get brainwashed by this liberal and his ‘logic’.
when i pulled my fingers out of my ears, this pinko was saying that registration would reduce the proliferation of untraceable guns, making it harder to acquire a gun that can’t get traced back to you. he said that nothing absolutely prevents crime, so it’s unreasonable to make that a caveat for registration. jails, cops, judges, capital punishment - all of that combined doesn’t ‘prevent’ crime. they’re what he called ‘deterrents’. i said to him ‘deter this!’ heh heh. y’all can use that one next time one of them gun haters gives you any flack.
Max
A gun is much less valuable as an object ot be stripped for parts than a car, but that’s really a side issue. Every opponent of registration that I have run across eventually declares that “criminals will always get unregistered guns”. This is, of course, true. It is also a diversion. Guns do not materialize from nothing. The idea behind universal registration (as it relates to these dedicaed criminals) is that if every gun sold in this country is tracked through all legal transactions, then the point at hwich a gun “disappears” from the official system will be obvious. If a pattern emerges, it can help LEA shut down a conduit for such weapons. In individual cases, as zwaldd mentions, it might assist the police in focusing upon a particular suspect.
More importantly, though, you and Daniel seem entrenched in the question “how does registration prevent crime?” The short answer is, it doesn’t. It is not intended to prevent individual crimes. It is intended to make untraceable guns more difficult to obtain and to make it easier for law enforcement to connect a weapon with a suspect. Of course, if those aspects succeed, then it might indeed have an effect on the overall crime rate.
Well, first let’s agree that not all crimes commited with a gun result in a murder conviction. Then, let’s talk about this one subset of criminals.
Registration will affect those 75% of murderers by attacking the supply chain of unregistered guns. I don’t pretend that we can ever make it impossible for a murderer to get a gun, but we can make it more expensive, more difficult, and more perilous for the people who initially shift those guns “out of the system”. The juvenile records are a red herring, since a juvenile record does not impact rights of gun ownership and thus provides no 5[sup]th[/sup] Ammendment protection against registration requirements.
Absolutely. I am not arguing for a licensing program, for the regulation of firearms schools, for the testing of prospective firearms owners. Also, there is no requirement that a gun be re-registered annually, that emmissions or safety tests be conducted, or that license plates be issued. Add that to the fact that there appear to be are far more vehicles than firearms in this country, and I think that the cost of firearms registration will be much less than the cost of vehicle registration.
You have to be accountable for your decision to take immense destructive capability into your hands. This is not punishment. What stretch of semantics causes you to equate the two?
No statute prevents crime by the standards you seem to be applying. Statutes define crime and, in some cases, affect the ability of law enforcement to detect, investigate and prosecute crime.
The unerlying assumption behind a legal system is that crime is prevented by either deterring or incarcerating criminals.
Excellent advice.
Daniel
1> Universal registration, with information rapidly available across jurisdictional boundaries, provides a better means than a local stolen property case with which to determine that a gun has been stolen. This is really focussing on a small subset of registration’s intended consequences, though.
2> Why do you again bring up the idea of criminals leaving their guns at the crime scene? Nobody has raised that possibility as an argument for registration. You are arguing with your own imagination.
3> Registration aid accountability by making the tie between a lawful owner and an individual firearm explicit and recognized. Why, if you are willing to accept accountability for the consequences of your gun wonership, do you object to making that ownership known to the authorities?
That is because you ask people to show an effect that registration is not designed to directly cause. Show me proof that untracealbe firearms will reduce violent crime?