Reply #66: No One Is Going To Turn in Their Guns

[divineorder]

Since when have we Democrats become the party of prohibition? Guns, Drugs, Offshore Gambling, Video Games we disapprove of? FDR became president on the strength of opposing Prohibition, and signing its repeal. Carter almost decriminalized marijuana. JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt carried guns without any problems, and never proposed any undue restrictions on its use. Indeed, it was the Republicans that usually catered to the prohibitionist impulse, starting with Prohibition itself, which was seen as a way to tame those unruly immigrants who preferred having fun on the Sabbath instead of being good Protestants who sat around all day in church. It was Republicans that usually had crusades about decency and the evils of racy stuff. Remember the Meese Commission?

We used to be the reality-based party on these matters, either honoring the individual right of adults to indulge privately, or noting that bans usually led to the enrichment of organized crime instead of a decrease in people purchasing whatever it is that was being banned. Twenty years of gun conrol hasn't reduced violence a lick.

Drug money is too lucrative not to defend with guns. The dealers won't stop owning, especially since dealers are going to get 20 years just for dealing-so what's a gun ban to them? Not to mention that rivals could kill you tomorrow for control of your territory. And cops can't give theirs up either. And many people have previously bought, inherited, or rented guns. Nobody there is going to give those up. And there are at least 1 gun for every American.

Indeed gun prohibition would simply, like drugs, take distribution out of the hands of responsible gun dealers who pay taxes and are peaceful, into the hands of gangsters that sell drugs-and guns and fight each other over turf and profits. And whatever minor restraints there are with a legal dealer regarding sales, there would be none on the black market at all. And there would be a black market.

You say that mentally ill people won't make that extra effort to buy illegally. With an illegal market, the market would be as close as the nearest kid with a very heavy backpack-or a fellow student supplementing his/her income. With legal gun sales, the mentally ill have to go somewhere and make purchases that are traceable, in a shop that keeps records, in an area that's not usually around the corner. With a seller that is legally empowered and reasonally prosperous enough to refuse a sale if it looks shady. Underground sellers have no receipts, and may be pressured to make money for higher ups who want a cut, so they can't refuse anyone who has the money no matter how problematical the sale.