yes easily, imagine you wanted to kill someone and the gun was hard to get because of the harsh penalties for possessing or selling one, by the time you have found and purchased the gun you may well have calmed down.
Of course not, but this is where the people proposing that there should be no gun control lose me. If it is VERY HARD to get a hold of weapons that make mass killing easy (those that easily repeat fire many, many rounds, for example), then it is far easier for someone who wants to go nuts and kill people to do so.
Likewise, if mentally unstable person wants to go buy a gun at Walmart to kill their family, but much stricter background checks would make that impossible, then it is very likely you’ll stop their ability to easily dispatch their family. The average person who suddenly snaps isn’t going to have a line on the underground gun trade.
People say the same thing about drugs, but the thing is: If I wanted drugs, I have absolutely no idea where to get them. I’m sure there are people dealing within a few miles of me, but how to find them? I have no clue…and this is true for a lot of people, and it makes it harder for people to obtain these illegal items.
What baffles me about the pro-gun lobby and their supporters is the complete rejection of ANY increased control or restriction on sales. They freak if they’d be required to register all weapons, even though we are required to register our cars. If the mainstream push on gun control was a country wide ban and repeal of the 2nd amendment, I’d understand a LOT more what the pro-gun people are angry about. But that’s a very, very minority position, with the current debate intent on limiting people from buying high-death-dealing weapons with ease without so much as a thought. It should not be easier to buy a gun in this country than it is to buy a car.
What we call the “Law” is effectively a list of punishments for societal transgressions.
It has long been acknowledged that virtuous people do not need the law and criminals will not be deterred by it. Our courts require a prescribed punishment for each transgression to maintain consistency. The alternative is that every judge would hand out punishments based on their own concept of right and wrong, and would do so on an arbitrary basis. So we wrote down the list of punishments so that people could understand them in advance and the courts could apply them consistently. The certainty of a specific punishment is intended to create a deterrent (it doesn’t) and prevent our courts from dissolving into anarchy (you know, any more so than they already are).
In a perfect world, the law would represent the ideal and we would improve ourselves to meet the standard. In real life, it hasn’t worked out that way.
If it weren’t illegal it would happen more often. So you make it illegal both to take the person off the street so they can’t do it again, and as a warning for other potential murderers.
If you had said ‘why are murder-suicides illegal’ then you’d have a good point because the person has no intent of sticking around to watch the legal system deal with them. No legal punishment is going to scare someone who intends to commit a murder-suicide. But aspects of that crime are still illegal.
Not having a written law is not the same as not having a law; there have been many societies which had laws including both criminal and civil systems but which had not written them (some were illiterate, others hadn’t bothered). In a lot of the Somali tribes the law happens to be “whoever’s strongest wins”.
It’s NOT easier to buy a gun than to buy a car. The analogy is old and tired. I can buy a car from any dealer in the country with a revoked driver’s license and 10 DUIs in my background. All I need is money.
To buy a gun from a dealer, I need to undergo an FBI background check. To buy granddad’s old shotgun from a private party, I don’t need to undergo the background check, but my choices are limited.
The cars v guns analogy needs to be dispensed with.
It’s a perfectly good analogy. You can buy the car, but you can’t drive it off the lot unless you have a license. And, given that in many states, there are no requirements whatsoever for private party purchase, all you need to do is go to a gun show or buy it from your neighbor. If I buy a car from my neighbor, I still need to go to the DMV to register it, and in most states, get it inspected for safety, etc. In most states, there is no licensure required to own or operate a firearm…only to concealed carry.
Are they exactly parallel analogies? Of course not, but there are a lot of legal ways for people who shouldn’t own guns (and would fail a background check) to legally stockpile them.
I can have the car shipped to my home. Or have a friend with a valid license drive it off the lot. Those are two things that can’t be done when buying a gun from a dealer.
I can also buy a car from a neighbor without registering it. I can drive in on my 100 acre farm with no permission from the state. If I want to take it out in public, I get a “shall-issue” drivers license with a background check.
Is this what you want? Guns treated like cars? I can buy any gun I want and keep in on my own property with no state oversight. If I want to take it in public, I get a “shall-issue” license provided I have a clean background.
Your proposal would destroy gun control laws in New York, Chicago, and California.
No, I want it stricter than vehicle licensure. What do you think think the percentage of operational cars that are unregistered are? What’s the problem with making firearms the same way? You buy it, you license it/register it. I never said I wanted it to have the same regulations, and you phrasing it that way is completely missing the point. My point is that there are registration requirements and licensing requirements to operate a motor vehicle in this country, and yet the thought of having to do licensure and registration of guns is somehow this huge egregious thing. Why SHOULDN’T you be required to take a firearms training class and a written and practical shooting exam to get a licence to own a gun?
FTR, I’m not an anti-gun person…I’m an ex-Army officer, an Iraq War vet, and someone who enjoys shooting guns for fun. If I want to buy a gun, I have no problem getting a license and registering a weapon, and it is baffling to me why anyone would have a problem with that. MOST dangerous things require licensure and paperwork of sorts. You need certification to transport HAZMAT, and it has to be carried in specified containers. Why? It’s dangerous if not treated correctly. Cars are dangerous if not driven correctly, so we have laws that require you to get a license (frankly, I think driving tests should be harder too in this country), and laws that require manufacturers to continue to improve safety, and registration and inspection requirements. Why should guns be exempt from this?
In the Army, if a weapon was lost during training, the entire BASE was locked down until it was found? Why? They’re dangerous, and they need to be accounted for. We did by serial number inventories of all sensitive items every month. We did by serial number inventories on weapons EVERY TIME one left the arms room and came back in. I’m not advocating that level of control, but even the Army understands how critical it is that weapons don’t fall into the hands of anyone who isn’t supposed to have them.
Jman is a sensible man.
I think the problem some would have with your views is that then the gubberment will know where all my guns are.
You should, but in most of the states that have this, it is a sick joke because private companies do the testing and need to have a high exam pass rate for competitive reasons. Looking at the handgun permit classes advertised on the web, most just hint that they are easy graders, but a bunch give the game away, as can be seen by googling these terms:
handgun 100% pass rate
A sample link:
Vehicle registration is just a moneymaking scheme. It doesn’t make anyone drive safer. And there isn’t a huge block of people who are supporting the confiscation of cars while also insisting that their messiah is an ubermensch not bound by mortal Constitutions, and that car owners are the cause of all the evil in the world. If these things were the case, the implications of vehicle registration would be different.
You are talking about a truly planned-out premeditated murder. These are likely a minority of murders.
You can rob a store with a knife or a gun. That’s far more likely than a planned murder. And either way, knife or gun, your plan almost surely is to threaten with the weapon, not use it. Either way, in the heat of the moment, if you feel threatened, you may use the weapon. And if the victim dies, it’s first degree murder, and that murder is more likely from the gun.
Realistic scenario: My gun robbery went completely wrong is replaced with a knife robbery that went less wrong.
The vast majority of people want to be billionaires. Should the government give everyone one billion dollars when they are born
Is this a zombie weekend or what? There are over a dozen zombie threads open just today.
It’s called “The Walking Thread.”
Don’t see anyone ever mentioned that murder is illegal in the US because we haven’t figured out a practical way to tax it.
I would challenge you to find ANY society without a rule against murder.
Some have different rules that allow for legal homicides we’d consider murder, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a rule.
A rich murdered person is less likely to have done any estate planning to minimize inheritance tax. And illegal things are very expensive in the cost of policing, trial and incarceration. So it seems to me that the Budget Office should favor legalizing murder.
What do you mean? Just take a straight percentage of the weregild. Not a bad deal when wasting some random churl costs $50000–$250000.
Though, it should be noted, if murder were legal then you would not have to pay restitution in the first place.