Reply #48: where have you been all my life?

[iverglas]

... because said law-abiding dealers and owners suddenly develop a conscience, or at least a healthy respect for laws that require them to stop behaving that way on pain of punishment and that include some mechanisms to make it actually possible to convict them of doing it
What mechanisms might those be? This ought to be good.

It's been good for a very long time. And I'm always happy to say it for the brazilianth time for a newbie.


(1) safe/secure storage laws

Thousands and thousands of firearms pass into criminal hands because their legal owners are too stupid or piggish to store them securely and they are stolen in break-ins. Criminal liability should attach if a firearm that was not securely stored is stolen, regardless of whether it is used for criminal purposes -- and if a firearm gets into the hands of a child, regardless of whether the child or anyone else is injured.

(2) licensing requirements for firearms owners

Not just those "background checks". Permanent records of who is licensed to acquire and possess firearms (with licences only available to people who have taken appropriate courses), and requirement that a licence be presented by anyone acquiring a firearm from anyone by any method.

(3) firearms registry

The only way that the licensing requirement can be enforced, i.e. that transfers to unqualified/disqualified individuals by "law-abiding gun owners" can be deterred. Once the initial sale is recorded, all subsequent transfers must be registered, and ownership of the firearm can be traced to its last legal owner.


These laws are directed to legal, law-abiding firearms owners, most of whom have incentives to obey the law: their conscience; what they stand to lose if they are caught breaking the law. Those two factors set them apart from their criminal counterparts, along with the fact that they don't have the incentive to break the law that the criminals have (since they need firearms for purposes for which the non-criminals don't, and they can't acquire them legally).

The effect of legal, law-abiding firearms owners

(1) storing their firearms securely
(2) being identifiable and having to identify themselves in order to engage in legal firearms transactions
(3) having an incentive not to engage in prohibited transfers, whether knowingly or unknowingly

can reasonably be expected to be a reduction in the flow of firearms from legal owners to people who are or should be prohibited from possessing firearms. (A firearms registry also has other purposes and effects, but we'll stick with the "keeping guns out of criminals' hands" issue for now.)

And the effect of reducing that flow can reasonably be expected to be a reduction in firearms violence and firearms-facilitated crime, in the medium and long term. Obviously, there is a large supply of firearms already in criminal circulation in the US, and they are not going to go away the day legislation is enacted.

Of course, I also recommend very severe restrictions on the acquisition and possession of handguns, the weapon of choice for facilitating crimes and causing intentional death and injury, and the weapon vastly most commonly used for those purposes in the US.


The ever fanciful idea that lies at the root of all guncontroller schemes--since the laws we ALREADY have on the books aren't working, maybe a few more of the same kind of laws, only we're really gonna mean it this time(!!!), are gonna fix the problem.

So now you see. Those are not "the same kind of laws", and you are just dancing the same dance with the same straw partner as all the rest I've watched circle that dance floor over the years.

These laws could never be passed in the US? Oh well. Self-fulfilling prophecies, anyone?


No, they'll just pay a little more for guns imported from somewhere else.

Yass. As Canadian criminals currently do for firearms smuggled from the US. Gosh, if the US were to get responsible in this area, I wonder what would happen then? Oh yes, of course, they'd get them from China or Russia or some other damned place. Just drive that truck across the ice from Siberia to Alaska, I guess. After all:

bad people are going to arm themselves no matter what laws you pass

But then, of course, if you did something that actually interfered in their ability to arm themselves ... but no, I suppose we can't have that happening. And we certainly can't allow it to be talked about. Quick now, chant that mantra.

bad people are going to arm themselves no matter what laws you pass
... and criminals don't obey laws

Whew. That feels better, doesn't it?