I really like, and would support, that idea bae. For exactly the reason you gave. +1Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
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I really like, and would support, that idea bae. For exactly the reason you gave. +1Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
No, criminals wouldn't register each other as they sell guns to each other, but that's the point. Despite bae assertion that it's super easy to make your own gun, 99.9% of guns used in crimes aren't homemade. They originate at the factory and unless they go straight from the factory to the back alley, they can be traced. Sure, some might tool them to remove ID, but most criminals just aren't that bright.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg
The forms could be available at the local gun shop or city hall or the sheriff's. Where do you get your other forms? Even on line to download, and yes, you could submit this paperwork to the sheriff or city hall, etc...it could be done just like the dealers do it. Here's the point. Now we know how many criminals get their guns. some are stolen in burglaries, others, many, are bought from a 'mule' or whatever they are called, a person with a lily white record who goes to gun shows or even walmart, wherever, buys guns then resells them to the criminal as a private sale, not subject to all the paperwork. With a registry, it wouldn't take long to trace the guns used in crimes back to this mule.
And it wouldn't add confusion or liability to private citizens. First of all, if they are incapable of filling out simple forms and submitting them, then perhaps they are too stupid to own and properly use guns in the first place. (remember, your original and on going argument is how wonderfully smart and trained and organized and reliable gun owners are!) Second, it would in fact protect the casual gun seller instead of increasing his liability. If that gun is used in a crime, if the seller has done his paperwork like he should, then the gun wouldn't even trace back to him. It would trace to the guy he sold it to, who maybe sold it to a criminal.
It would not be difficult to implement. It would however add a level of transparency to the transaction that maybe some would rather not have a light on. Too bad for them. They are the problem, not the solution.
For heavens sakes gregg, you have to legally transfer title when you sell a car! Why not do the same for a gun.
You know gregg, I'm beginning to believe you don't want solutions. You don't want to do anything about the gun problems. You are just fine with the level of gun violence and crime, and think we should all just arm ourselves to protect ourselves from all those others who are armed who armed themselves against those others who are armed. Oh I know you've made a lot of sympathetic sounds and virtual hand wringing in this thread, but you don't really want anything to change. You want to throw up your hands, dust them off and say, 'well, nothing we can do. Move along!'
For every reasonable suggestion in this thread, you've hemmed and hawed and found some reason (and not really very good ones) to shoot it down (Pun intended). You don't want a single thing to change, except to get more people armed, so we can all be George Zimmerman.
I guess sometimes I'm a bit slow in the uptake, but I do eventually get it. I'm done with this phony 'search' for solutions.
This could turn into a catch 22 as we might have to let some drug dealers out of overcrowded prison to make room for firearms crimes.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
I'm not getting the hub-bub about registering and reporting private sales or lost and stolen firearm as being some sort of logistics debacle. I'm saying smoke and mirrors. How many routine permits do people have that are maintained on some sort of computer database with little difficulty. Hunting licenses, vehicle registrations, driver's licenses, dog tags, etc. Heck, I imagine the warranty on my tires is in a computer database somewhere.
Peggy, are guns stolen from homes and businesses then used in a crime a problem? Yes. Does our current data base help in the tracking and recovery of those guns? Yes. Are US manufacturers already required to record every indentifying detail about every gun they make? Yes. Can any new gun be sold without the already required Federal paperwork? No. The only thing your proposal would do that is not already done, and if it worked at all, is track the movement of old guns between private citizens. I'm not against trying it, I just don't have very high expectations that it would work any better here than it did for other countries (like Canada) that tried it.
The problem is that you are completely ignoring the elephant in the room. Our real gun problems come from criminals who use illegal guns. The top ten guns favored by drug cartels who supply their distribution network - read: gangs - are here. To save you some time, here is the list by manufacturer and country of origin:
#1 - Century Arms - Romania
#2 - Bushmaster - USA
#3 - Beretta - Italy
#4 - Romarm - Romania
#5 - FN Herstal - Belgium
#6 - Colt - USA
#7 - American Tactical - Turkey
#8 - Century Arms - Romania
#9 - Century Arms - Romania
#10 - FM Herstal - Belgium
Only TWO of the top ten are manufactured in the USA. The rest are mostly made in Eastern Europe. Yes, your "mules" can go into Wal-Mart down in El Paso and buy 6 or 8 guns over a couple months without raising too much suspicion. These cartels can go to Romania with millions of dollars in cash and buy thousands and thousands of guns at one time. They will never be legally imported into the US and so will never show up in your proposed data base. They will come into the country illegally, right along with the illegal drugs they were purchased to protect. For all I know they can probably be ordered without any serial numbers to begin with so there would be no way to track the individual guns anyway. We all know how the government's little "gun walking" experiment turned out (they lost track of just about everything) so I'm just not conviced that expanding the program by a factor of a million is going to work.
The lone wolf kind of guy, like a James Holmes or Timothy McVeigh, can be capable of inflicting horrendous levels of harm, but they represent a threat so small overall that they will fly under any government radar. The only radar that will as often as not catch someone like that is a network of vigilant citizens. The cartels are so big and so powerful that it will take a government level response to start shutting them down. They have unlimited cash, are organized, subsidize several corrupt Central American countries and are ruthless purveyors of violence aimed at anyone who stands in their way.
Look, guys like me will never use a gun in a crime so no problem there. The guy who would steal my shotgun out of my house is a lot more likely to pawn it than risk taking a burglary rap up to armed robbery so there isn't realistically a great threat of violence there. The gang leader who gets 50 WASR-10s and 100,000 rounds of ammo isn't going to shoot you because you might be a customer, BUT he probably is willing to shoot anyone from a rival gang, cops, narcs, FBI agents and anyone who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is a pretty big problem.
Seems to me the simplest way to sneak a fully-automatic weapon into the USA, along with a case of grenades and a few RPG launchers, would be to hide them inside large bales of marijuana that are crossing the border. Nobody ever looks inside those.
FWIW, I think gun laws do/would cut down on problems due to the following issues:
-accidental shootings: requiring a permit to purchase a gun with attendant education requirements, similar to requiring a driver's license, increases the chances that someone who would like to own and operate a firearm to be at least somewhat well-versed in its uses and dangers. This happens in the state of Colorado, when one chooses to get a hunting license and must take a hunter safety course and also when one chooses to get a conceal/carry permit. It's neither expensive nor particularly onerous (about a 12-14 hr course with both hands-on and written test that a 12-yo is capable of completing). Not every state has such a requirement.
-crime of passion shootings: requiring a waiting period so that a person who becomes aware of his/her partner "engaged" with someone else cannot immediately purchase a firearm. I am not sure what the state/federal laws on this are, and whether it varies depending on purchase at gun shows or retail.
-selling to potential criminals: there could be various ways of implementing this, from educating potential "straw men" about the legal ramifications of buying firearms for a criminal to some of the registration ideas that have been debated about. I personally don't think this would be any more onerous than selling ones' car, and possibly be the most effective at decreasing gun violence.
What none of these things would do is help when you have a very intelligent guy, well-versed in what is considered "abnormal" behavior, with no criminal record who is hell-bent on committing a mass shooting. To do that, you would need extreme gun control or some sort of mind-reading ability, either of which are beyond most Americans' idea of the type of power the government should have. In some of the other shooting cases there were mental health cracks that the shooters fell through, but this (latest) CO shooting was obviously difficult to predict even for mental health professionals. Until he left his studies, he must have had to interact daily with people well-versed in psychology and he himself must have studied various aspects of psychological function. As well, he was availing himself of the mental health services offered. I really have no idea how this particular case could have been prevented via law enforcement or mental health avenues.
I would have to agree with having a less-fragmented patchwork of laws between states. For one thing, it makes things difficult for law-abiding citizens to legally transport guns. I suspect we violated one or more state laws when moving between AZ and CO but did not get pulled over, thankfully. For another, someone with criminal intent who has laws in his/her state that would prevent gun purchase can simply drive to another state. Even though CO is a largish state, from somewhere like Aurora it would take about 3 hrs to Wyoming, roughly 5 hours to New Mexico, Nebraska, or Kansas and around 7-8 to Utah or Arizona.
Oh but that pesky Coast Guard ALWAYS looks inside the bales (as well as inside the dead fish & other cargo) - you never know what kind of goodies you may find :-)! Here's a little cartoon for Lizii showing the terrorists infiltrating Canada. I guess the coast guard would look inside that too :-)!Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
http://www.simplelivingforum.net/att...2&d=1343755212
As Rosie and others have pointed out, even with strict gun laws in one state (even in one country like Canada) people can get guns and ammo from just about anywhere else - both legally and illegally.
Well since the Swiss women were not legally allowed to vote in federal elections until 1971 (can you imagine!!), I guess the male populace would be smart to be heavily armed against the disgruntled females :-)!Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
I don't think that I would say we have a "passion for firearms" but many people have an interest in them for many varied reasons. People are individuals, and their interests in owning firearms is probably just as individual as they are. I do have mine for purely self-defense reasons as I don't hunt (and am VERY anti-hunting) and no longer have them for hobby (competetive shooting) reasons (too expensive). I don't have a stockpile of weapons or ammo, and I wasn't raised in a gun culture or consider myself having a passion for guns - although I enjoy target shooting, training, and the craftmanship of weapons. But a passion? No.
You also have to look at Swiss population compared to a country like the USA. The population of switzerland is around 7 - 8 million where as the USA is over 300 million. So when comparing statistics - whether death by firearm or suicide, you need to consider overall population statistics as well as things like lifestyle, social welfasre, etc.. Los Angeles County alone has a higher population (approx. 10 million) as all of Switerland, yet it is a vastly different place - socially, culturally, economicly, etc...Quote:
Originally Posted by Iris lily
This should also be a factor when comparing Canada to the USA. Canada population is less than 35 million compared to the USA's 313 million for approx. the same size land area. Heck Calif population (SoCals especially) is about (aboot) the same as all of Canada's.
ETA: accoeding to this the USA is # one in all types of gun-related deaths per 100,000 pop. Canada was pretty far down the list with approx. 4.5 gun related deaths per 100,000 people (varied by province see below). Although, according to Wikipedia, most gun related deaths in the USA are from suicides and during the commssion of a criminal activity:
"The United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths -- murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published April 17, 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.69.
Japan had the lowest rate, at 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000 (1 per 2 million people). The police in Japan actively raid homes of those suspected of having weapons.
The 36 countries in the study were the richest in the World Bank's 1994 World Development Report, having the highest GNP per capita income.
The United States accounted for 45 percent of the 88,649 gun deaths reported in the study, the first comprehensive international scrutiny of gun-related deaths."
From the RCMP website:
"Between 1989 and 1996, the average annual rate of firearm deaths in all of Canada is 4.5 per 100,000. The Northwest Territories (18.5 per 100,000) reported the highest rate while the Yukon (11.8 per 100,000) and New Brunswick (7.2 per 100,000) reported the second and third highest rate of firearm deaths overall, respectively. "
Hmmm... makes me wonder whats going on up therer in the NWT to make gun deaths so high. Long winer nights?
Here's a comparision for Calif only:
"There were 26,442 firearm deaths among California residents during the years 1977 through 1983. During this period firearms were the eighth leading cause of death for California as a whole, sixth for male Californians and first for black males aged 15 to 34 years and black females aged 15 to 24 years. A plurality of firearm deaths were suicides; unintentional deaths contributed only 3% of the total. Black men aged 25 to 34 years had the single highest firearm mortality rate; 80% of firearm deaths in that group were homicides. Men 75 years old and older had the highest firearm mortality rate when all races were considered together, however, and 93% of firearm deaths in that group were suicides. The discussion focuses on our current understanding of firearms as a medical and public health problem and suggests directions for future research and intervention"