I was in class and must have missed this post.
You can't really do any more in terms of legally limiting criminals from getting legitimate access to guns. According to current federal law, any person committed of a felony or a misdemeanor spousal abuse (... having a brain fart on what the actual legal charge is). Making it so that any person convicted of any other misdemeanor is a simply ludicrous idea.Originally Posted by Bogg
As for the mental health aspect, I have no faith in sincere government regulation of any sort. What kinds of mentally unstable people are we talking about? paranoid schizophrenic? ADD? If it were limited to only truly severe cases, then I'd consider that route, but there is too much leeway for the system to be abused unless there are clearly defined/restricted illnesses. Especially nowadays when just about everybody makes up some excuse to go see a "Doctor" and get their hands on prescription drugs.
This is a silly buzz phrase the left tries to peddle around the news media. Every single gun purchase (except sales between private individuals in some states [like SC, but not NC]) is accompanied by a thorough NICS background check done by the FBI. You fill out a multiple page form, including your SSN, address, and all other identifying info, plus a list of legal questions that serve to check your qualifications.Unfortunately(for some), a big part of that would be a beefed-up screening process with more in-depth background checks
Can you lie and say you haven't committed a felony? Sure, but as soon as they go in the back and call up the FBI and they run your information, you're going to a) get denied the purchase and possibly b) get arrested for trying to purchase a firearm under false pretenses.
As it is, you can't really go more "in-depth" as far as background checks go without checking mental health history, but I've already touched on that topic a little bit.
Sure, if you want, but FFLs are already pretty heavily regulated as it is. I won't pretend to know exactly which business practices they have to adhere to, but I don't think it's very easy for them to sell under the table or any other means as I'm sure they have specific invoice quotas to meet.vastly increased oversight on gun dealers
This would serve absolutely no purpose other than to be more de facto regulation. What good does it do for the fed to know exactly where and how many guns are out there? This isn't the Minority Report where they can stop the crime before it happens.and, yes, that boogeyman that gun-rights advocates hold over their audiences' heads: universal registration of firearms.
Besides, please tell me how many criminals (who purchased their guns illegally or stole them) are going to say, "Okay fine, I'll register my guns..." What you'll get is all of the law abiding citizens like myself, who wouldn't have committed a crime otherwise, to register. No problem is solved.
No, not really. Many pistols are capable of holding the same number of rounds as standard capacity AR mags. Hell, you can buy beta mags for pistols. My M&P Pro holds 17+1 rounds, the gun and magazines are much more easily concealable than their AR counterparts and mags can be changed in less than 1 second by any competent gun owner. What if some scumbag walks in with two of those? That's more rounds downrange in a more efficient manner.That being said, if someone does get it into their head that they're going to commit a mass-shooting event, you can kill more people faster with a military-style rifle than you can with a revolver.
Now if you want to get into the argument of calibers, then sure, but you need to understand that the vast majority of those mean ol' military-style rifles (I have to lol at that term) use the .223 round, which is on the low end of the damage spectrum compared to many other rifle rounds.
What it boils down to is that the media is ignorantly pushing to ban those ARs simply because they look like "evil" "military-style" rifles
Most states are going the 10th amendment route to nullify any sort of federal regulations/restrictions on gun rights.
Thankfully SC has introduced a number of these bills.
Unfortunately, NC, despite having a R dominated political spectrum, has yet to follow suit (unless it has occurred in recent days)
Last edited by SWedd523; 01-24-2013 at 07:35 PM.
I don't want to have a discussion (unless your answer's something like terrorism or war), but if there's a more pressing issue than a shooting at a school (the incident what caused this thread) I'd like to know.
"I'LL KILL YOU MOTHER &*%$^@!!!"
- Tyrus Thomas
i'll take a shot. the federal government, in conjunction with the federal reserve and largest banks and corporations systematically destroying our way of life for greed and power.
isguros (01-25-2013)
i would actually love this because then i could more easily identify which state i would like to move my family to, in order to protect them.
i had a thought the other week. i think it may actually be pretty awesome, if the gov't trade to limit ar's, "high cap" mags, etc through the commerce clause or some other bs like that. each state that is pro gun could simply invite major gun manufactures to establish a plant in their state tax free for a few years and only sell within the state. they could then sell whatever they wanted to. basically, a giant FU to the feds. bad part: probably sets the stage for civil war part 2 or peaceful dissolution of the union.
NC just introduced a bill based around the commerce clause to circumvent the potential fed regulations. (North Carolina Firearms Freedom Act)
A few states have actually taken their state bills even further. Take a look at this: http://washingtonexaminer.com/wyomin...3#.UQHp3W5HU1h
In addition, the bill would charge federal officials attempting to enforce a federal gun law within the state with a felony – “subject to imprisonment for not more less than one (1) year and one (1) day or more than five (5) years, a fine of not more than two thousand dollars ($2,000.00) five thousand dollars ($5,000.00), or both.”
I understand you're from the Netherlands so there's going to be a bit of cultural differences, but I'm glad you don't want to have a discussion because there really isn't one to be had.
That's really all that needs to be said, no?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
While I agree with you that treating drug addiction as a crime instead of a public health issue is a mistake, and lengthy mandatory sentences for low-level dealers can do more harm than good, total legalization isn't the route to go. Marijuana? Sure, I couldn't care less about that. Heroin? Not a chance. The goal is to reduce the criminal incentive while treating the health risk.
Really? Hitler? Comments like that are why people don't get taken seriously. It's the equivalent calling someone racist because they didn't vote for Obama.
I figured. I do that constantly. I'm always replying to posts from two and three weeks ago that I just never read.
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.
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.
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. There are states where individual to individual sales are legal with no checks on the buyer necessary. 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.
Again, the fact that you can drive 30 minutes and buy a gun from an individual with essentially zero regulation renders anything that's currently on the books pointless. Hell, you could just wait until there's a show at the local fairground and purchase a gun there without anyone knowing you did it. Sure, it's technically illegal for that person to buy a gun, but it's all relying on "scouts' honor". It's ludicrous.
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.
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.
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.
.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.
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'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.
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)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.
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.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.
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 wayThere are states where individual to individual sales are legal with no checks on the buyer necessary.
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 showI 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.
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.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.
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.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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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..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.
You said it there yourself.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.
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.
You can make it illegal to sell person-to-person without the same background check being run that a brick-and-mortar merchant would have to go through. You can also make it much harder to illegally sell firearms to people by actually tracking where the guns go after they leave the store the first time, which is where periodic registration (and actual proof of possession) comes in. So long as it's legal to sell to some guy your friend knows without any legal oversight, there may as well be no regulation. It's why there's nowhere easier for criminals to get guns than this country. I mean, Mexico doesn't even control its own country and its criminals have to come here to arm themselves.
Doesn't necessarily have to preclude you from owning a gun, but maybe you shouldn't be able to carry outside the home/firing ranges. If you can't be trusted to not operate a car when drinking, you may not be able to be trusted not to fire a gun when drinking.
It doesn't catch it if you do it right. The Government Accountability Office had a 100% success rate buying firearms through licensed dealers using fictitious(not stolen, made-up) identities put through background checks that met the legal minimum requirements. This is without an unscrupulous dealer fudging the paperwork for an off-the-books cash "bonus".
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031147t.pdf
Were you required to make sure that person wasn't a violent criminal?
There's around the same number of passenger vehicles in the United States, and they have to be registered. The sheer numbers there haven't overwhelmed the system.
Okay, one more time: It's more important to keep guns out of the hands of bad people than it is to get rid of any one type of gun or capacity magazine. That being said, your average corner boy can (and does) do more damage with 18 rounds than 7.
That's......exactly what ergonomics means. The shape/weight/size of the gun makes it easier to use in a combat role. It isn't about the rounds
Call bullshit on this if you want, I don't care, it's true: My girlfriend works in the emergency room of the hospital where they took victims from the Newtown shooting that were still alive when responders showed up and saw the bodies of the kids that didn't make it. The .223 is plenty damaging.
It's not about what criminals are allowed to do, it's about what they're capable of doing. And they're capable of easily purchasing firearms even though they're not allowed to. A significant portion of the restrictions this country currently has on buying and selling of firearms are theoretical laws that rely solely on the honor code for enforcement. So, the question becomes, how do you make it harder for criminals to do what they're already not supposed to?
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