The argument we must be like other countries in any policy is flawed and misleading. The laws don't control people, they punish people for not controlling themselves. People of criminal intent are not deterred by laws; just by consequence. Take the process of litigation, of one party suing another over some perceived wrong doing. Japan has 7 lawyers per 100,000 population- and we lead the world by far, with 287 per 100,000 population. If we passed a law limiting the number of lawyers, do you thing that would limit the animosity of the litigants, or just make the lawyers richer? The people in Japan generally conduct themselves with a higher standard of honor, and less adversarial attitude. Thus, less conflicts, less litigation, less lawyers. It's a people problem.
All gun control and banning guns will achieve is turning a lot of law-abiding people into criminals... and mass civil disobedience will render such laws null and void. I won't surrender my weapons... and neither will my wife.
Well, there's a statement of pure, unadulterated ignorance. It is a felony crime for a criminal to so much as touch, much less acquire, a firearm in the United States.
Once the black guns go, the patriots have lost all means to resist tyranny. The dems will have won and they will call in each class of guns down the line. When the black guns go....all is lost.
i respect your position. it just seems those of us with something to lose gain little to nothing by breaking the law.
They tried banning "assault weapons" in Connecticut. The results weren't promising. Only about 15% of the owners complied.
And 6gunner, you are right about that. Freedom and the ability to defend it are inherently joined. There is a phrase engraved on my custom guns- "Freedom is always armed".
admittedly i’m not familiar with thay specific scenario. didn’t they limit magazine size? and so now in ct there are a bunch of felons with ar’s in their closet they bought legally? please explain thanks.
....And most of the Jewish citizens of Germany in the 1930's said the same thing. That's what's insidious about this: we have a nation based in the concept of individual freedom and liberty, but those freedoms and liberties are under daily assault by those who want to enable the government to have more and more power over the lives of the people. The level of freedom we had a century ago is now mostly regulated and infringed away at this point, and in my opinion we are approaching the line in the sand that might well be the last gasp of our Republic.
I am inevitably reminded of Ben Franklin's famous quote: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Consider this. IF you are doing something that is legal and a law gets passed that makes it illegal, the established norm is that the new law takes effect the day it is signed into law- it's not retroactive; it does not make something done legally yesterday into a crime today, nor possessing what you owned legally yesterday into a crime today. IF that is the nature of the law- then the law itself is a criminal act, violating the basic concept of justice.
When both Connecticut and NY passed laws banning assault-style weapons and requiring people to register the weapons they owned prior to enactment of the law, the subsequent estimates figured a non-compliance rate of as high as 85 or even 90%. This led to great consternation amongst the political elites, who wailed in shock about what they were supposed to do if they passed laws the people refused to comply with; clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of mass civil disobedience.
The bold section isn't truly in a legal sense. You can't be arrested for having purchased in the past what is illegal to purchase today, but possession of an item that is illegal today is still a crime, regardless of purchase.
I that would be really hard to make stick. Otherwise, it would allow confiscation of anything congress wanted to take from the people; it would make the bill retroactive. The government would be able to control everyone and everything it chose to. There would need to be special cause; such as the discovery that the existence of an object presented an immediate danger to others. ie; if you are keeping plutonium on a shelf in your garage... If I recall correctly- a person owning a full auto weapon prior to the 1986 FOPA law does not have to register the weapon, it is grandfathered. However, he cannot sell or transfer that weapon to anyone else without activating the registration and tax rule.
IANAL, but owning a currently prohibited item isn't subject to ex post facto protections. No, the fully automatic weapon would have had to have been registered via ATF under NFA 1934 regardless. Any sale or transfer will require the new possessor to apply for and receive a tax stamp. What the Hughes Amendment did was prohibit the sale of any fully automatic firearm manufactured after 1986 to civilians. For a work-around look up "post sample".
Incorrect. NFA began in 1934. Those who had the guns in 1934 had to pay the tax stamp to keep them. At the time it was IIRC, $250 which was a fortune.
I don't know why, but my mind has always thought it was $250, oops. Regardless, it was a large amount at the time.
Now, it's nothing - if the 5/86 registration ban were not in place, FA weapons would not be particularly expensive to own.
