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Originally Posted by
Bogg
It isn't "legitimate access to guns" that's lead to every corner boy in any city having a pistol, it's the myriad loopholes and lack of oversight that makes it comically easy for anyone with a little bit of money to get guns illegally. THAT'S what needs to be addressed; and yes, it's probably going to inconvenience law-abiding citizens who hunt, or collect, or just enjoy shooting (I honestly don't care why someone wants a gun if they use it legally. You don't have to rationalize a hobby to me). I'm not talking about making it extra-illegal for felons to posses guns and to sentence them to super-jail, I'm talking about making harder for them to actually get those guns in the first place.
You're calling for a pipe dream here, though. The only way criminals can get guns illegally is to do it... illegally. The only loopholes that exist are people selling them the guns. Those people selling the guns are criminals as well. There's no legitimate way to go about curtailing the illegal purchase of firearms. One needs only to look at the drug trade to see the truth in that statement.
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As for misdemeanors: obviously making it so all misdemeanors disqualify you makes little sense. However, if you've got a couple of DUIs and/or assaults on your record? Yea, you should have some additional restrictions placed on your ability to buy guns, because you've proven yourself to be violent and irresponsible.
In current sue-happy America, people can get arrested/convicted of assault fairly easily. I think that's a weak exclusion personally. If you want to get into more physically violent (battery and beyond) offenses, then sure. And I don't see any logical reasoning for why a DUI would preclude anyone from being able to own a gun. (From a person who considers the practice of drunk driving to be one of the deplorable things a person could do)
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The point of bringing up mental health wasn't to sit here and list individual diagnoses and then decide whether or not that should disqualify you from gun ownership or not. The point is that there are regulations in place that make it easy for anyone to get a gun if they have money to spend.
Again, not really. The form 4473 and the NICS check do a pretty thorough job in screening out the bad folks. Can you lie on the form? Sure, but the NICS check will catch it and you'll be in hot water.
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There are states where individual to individual sales are legal with no checks on the buyer necessary.
My state (SC) is one of them. NC requires something along the line of a pistol purchase permit. I sold a Remington 597 to somebody the other month, but I still required him to show me a SC license and CWP. I feel like I did fairly well checking his credentials. Could you make it so that you have to have a purchase permit to buy them privately? Yes. But I haven't put enough thought into it to form a serious opinion either way
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I could supplement my income by buying a gun once a month and selling to the first person with a wad of cash who wants it. There are states where you can go to an expo with cash and walk out with gun without having anyone check on the status of the buyer. Those kinds of loopholes make all the additional regulation in the world meaningless.
That simply isn't true. You're referring to the mythical Gun Show Loophole. All commercial gun deals have to submit a background check for every sale. No matter if they sell it at a LGS, pawn shop, or gun show
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It's about catching the dealers that take shortcuts or purposely break the law, not making merchants who are genuinely trying to do things the right way jump through more hoops. If you open a restaurant, you can expect to have the health department inspect you a few times a year to ensure you're complying with the health code. If you're a repeat offender you can be inspected as often as is necessary to ensure you stay in compliance. The ATF isn't even allowed to audit a dealer more than once a year, and in practice it's more like once in a generation. We're treating a porterhouse like it's more dangerous than a Colt, and it's insane.
It's a Federal offense to either not submit a background check or sell under the table. Their intake and selling #s have to match up, if they don't, they go away for a long time. It's not as simple as you're making it out to be.
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Registration of firearms on some sort of recurring basis (annually, bi-annually, every five years - that's not the important part) lets you track where the guns are going, so that it's much harder for criminals to use people with clean records as fronts for purchasing. As it stands, once a gun is sold in certain parts of the country it just sort of disappears into the ether. File the serial number off, sell it to a guy you know can't buy a gun legally for a tidy profit, and there's no way for anyone to find out.
Another pipe dream. There are already an estimated 270 million privately owned guns in America. You know what happens when you attempt to register them in hopes of tracking them? Create an even larger black market for those same guns. Do you think all 270 million will be registered? No. good luck tracking those. Do you think more guns won't be able to come in across the borders? No. good luck tracking those.
And that doesn't even begin the argument of the Government having absolutely no right whatsoever to implement any sort of registration for privately owned property.
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Well, that's why politicians are also going after "high-capacity" magazines, and you've made a very convincing argument in their favor. As far as changing magazines in less than a second, it isn't competent gun owners who are spending their weekends at the range and practicing proper technique committing most of the shootings. It's shithead teenagers emptying a magazine into a crowd because the guys that jumped him last week are at the party. Those guys are firing a magazine and running, and 10 is less than 18.
No. politicians are going after standard capacity magazines because it institutes a level of de facto gun banning. My current concealed carry pistol holds 12 rounds. Saying no magazines over 10 rounds (a ludicrous 7 in NY now) means 90% of all magazines (and the guns that use them) carry legal (I assume federal) punishment.
Not to mention that there are, I'm estimating here, 500+ million magazines in America over 10 rounds. Banning them bolsters that soon to be booming black market I already alluded to. And seriously, do you think a criminal is going to go, "Damn, I can't have anything more than 10 rounders, guess I'll have to just turn in all of my others or don't go buy any!" No. All you're doing is harming the otherwise law abiding citizens by preventing them from defending themselves.
I can only carry 10 rounds in a mag? What if I'm attacked by a group of thugs in the street? What happens if I miss a round here or there trying to defend myself? 18 rounds is much more forgiving than 10.
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.223 round has plenty of stopping power. If I plow through a crosswalk in a VW bug, it doesn't make it any better that I did it in a small car. The ergonomics of "modern sporting rifles", or whatever you'd like to call them, make them easier to use in a close-quarters combat situation. It's literally what they were designed for. If that wasn't true, the military would still be using the M-14 as its standard-issue rifle.
The military uses those M4s, M16s, etc because they're lighter and smaller. Not because the ROUNDS they use are any more effective. In fact, the .223 is much less damaging than the previous standard 30-06. Besides, I think you're really underrating the ballistic differences between individual rounds.
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Like I said though, banning one style of gun, or large-capacity magazines, isn't going to do anywhere near the amount of good that simply making it much harder for the people who are already banned from possessing weapons from purchasing weapons whenever they have some money and a free weekend. It's irresponsibly easy for these people to arm themselves as things currently are.
You said it there yourself.
people who are already banned.
you can't more-ban people. They're already banned. "Hey you guys out there who can't buy guns. Now you REALLLY can't buy guns!" It won't have any effect.
Want proof? Go look at the average murder rates during the Clinton AWB compared to the years since it was sunsetted.
