Reply #15: maybe

[iverglas]

what you all need to do is actually come up with a system that works better.

No system is perfect. This one made it possible for something bad to happen. How many bad things may not have happened because the system worked?

(But of course -- probably not a lot, because pretty much anybody in the US can get pretty much any firearm s/he likes, pretty much anywhere. But a start has to be made somewhere, even if the effects aren't felt until 10 years later. If the start isn't made, there will be no effects ever.)

NO SYSTEM IS PERFECT, for the love of everything.

What I completely fail to see is how NO SYSTEM is better than the existing system, when it comes to exercising some control over situations in which ANYONE is now able to purchase firearms WITHOUT ANY BACKGROUND CHECK AT ALL.

When, in any other situation in life, has the fact that a system occasionally fails been regarded as good grounds for having no system at all?


I personally think that the whole "gun show loophole" thing is a giant red herring. I strongly suspect that the number of private firearm sales at gun shows is astonishingly small.

You'll be needing something to back that suspicion up with if you expect it to be paid more than an instant's attention.


This means that all firearm owners have plausible deniability in the event of any attempt at firearm confiscation. All firearm owners today can claim that they sold or gave away the firearm to some stranger, say, by selling it to someone through a local newspaper classified ad. Should we move to require federal permission over every firearm transaction, including private transactions, we will have given the government a handy shopping list should the day ever arrive when they decide to confiscate certain kinds, or all, firearms.

Ssshhhh. The bogeyman is coming.

What it actually means is that firearm owners have "plausible deniability" when their firearms are used in homicides or other crimes. How nice for them.


Because let's face it - all the gun shows that I have been to have had substantial, visible police presence. Of all the places to go illegally purchase a firearm, a gun show would have to be the least safe place to try to do it.

Really? Exactly what could that big police presence do to question or stop a private transaction between two individuals, where they do not have reasonable grounds to believe that the purchaser is ineligible to possess firearms? Do they carry mug books around -- out of state mugbooks? Do they have any grounds at all for, say, demanding that someone engaged in purchasing a firearm identify him/herself even?

Didn't think so. Point ....?


http://www.thestar.com/article/346388

Mar 15, 2008 04:30 AM
Josh Wingrove
Toronto Star
Pam Douglas
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE

Toronto police say they have taken hundreds of guns off the city's streets already this year – more than six per day – while Peel Region police are seeing an uptick in gunpoint robberies.

Toronto officers seized 357 firearms in the first two months of this year, up 13 per cent from 2007.

One of the latest recoveries came late Thursday, when officers of the Emergency Task Force raided a home on Ranstone Gardens, in the Kennedy Rd. and Lawrence Ave. E. area, and found three sawed-off guns – two rifles and a shotgun.

James Park, 18, of Ajax, and Orin Moses, 27, of Toronto, each face 17 gun-related charges.

Earlier in the day, officers pulled over a vehicle on Tuxedo Court, in the Markham and Ellesmere Rds. area, around 2:20 p.m., and found a loaded gun. Mujiburahman Safi, 26, and Hakim Yousofi, 27, each face six charges in relation to the gun, while Safi was also charged with resisting arrest and failing to comply with his recognizance.

Police announced the recovery of four other guns in similar incidents this week. The Guns and Gangs Unit arrested a man Monday, seizing a semi-automatic gun and some ammunition. And last weekend, a Cadillac pulled over in the Entertainment District was found to contain three loaded guns. The three men inside were charged with a total of 56 gun- and drug-related charges.

And if you suspect that none of those weapons are coming from gun shows in the US, you don't know what you're talking about.

(Long arms come almost exclusively from within Canada, mainly by theft. Much larger proportions of handguns come from the United States, although some come from theft within Canada.)


http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/295704

Canada should spend less money at the border fighting terror and more on curbing the illegal handguns that have been streaming in from the United States since we shifted the border focus, said NDP justice critic Joe Comartin.

... A cross-border summit on gun control should address the loose identity checks at some big gun shows in the U.S., Comartin added, where gun dealers skirt state laws restricting sales to residents of that state. Such gun shows often provide biker gangs with the illegal handguns that end up on Canadian streets, he said.

You know as well as I do that no one needs a licence to be a "gun dealer", so don't be starting.

And if you think that a member of the Canadian Parliament representing a blue-collar riding that is five minutes from Detroit doesn't know what HE is talking about when it comes to smuggled firearms, well, you're wrong.


http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/04/GunningSmugglers /

British Columbia lacks a unit like Ontario's Provincial Weapons Enforcement team, which works actively to keep guns from re-entering Canada, even attending U.S. gun shows and patrolling gun stores.

Those are my tax dollars paying for the gun show trips, and I think they're very well spent.


http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/03/RisingTideGuns /

Myth # 4: Buy lots of guns, attract attention

Easy entry is only half of the problem, though. Washington, the state next door, makes the challenge tougher with its notoriously lax gun laws. To conceptualize the ease with which a Canadian can become the owner of a Washington gun, take Wilkerson's case. Strapped for cash, he met Curtis Coleman, who befriended him and offered him money to buy guns. All Wilkerson had to do when buying the guns was check the box indicating that the guns were for his own personal use - a small lie to turn a small profit.

Wilkerson drove Coleman and his companions to the border and they crossed into Canada without his help. From there, if they hadn't been caught, a middle-man would have handed over payment, picked up the firearms and brought them to their new purchasers.

In Washington, there is no limit on the number of firearms a single person can purchase. Wilkerson said he bought five or six at a time and no red flags were raised. Plus, Washington gun stores only sometimes require a state check to supplement the federal background check. Federal records are often less complete and less frequently updated than state records, so even criminals (who were recently issued restraining orders or diagnosed with mental illness) can purchase guns.

Even more worrisome than gun shops are gun shows, where no background check at all is required in the sale of a firearm. Individual sellers - on the Internet, in newspapers and at gun shows - do not register their sales, so police cannot trace the guns they sell. Washington holds an average of two gun shows a month.

Wilkerson, in case you're missing it, is a Canadian resident and citizen. And those were sales by the famed FFLs.

All the laws against straw purchases, all the laws against ineligible persons making purchases -- and not a single bleeding way to enforce them. Great system.

The NICS system may be crap, but it is apparently better than nothing. Why it couldn't be (a) improved and (b) extended to all firearms sales, and why anyone who purports to be a Democrat -- i.e. to give an iota of a shit about anyone but him/herself -- wouldn't advocate doing both, I have no clue.



I have no doubt that should we ever require end-to-end transaction checks like FFL dealers do them today there will be a paper trail that leads to the owner of any given firearm. I view this as inherently dangerous ...

I don't actually believe you.

and I will never consent nor comply with any such directive.

And I can only cross my fingers we get the chance to see what the upshot of that is.