For those of you who fear guns.......

Circular logic is inherently flawed. The world is full of strangers with access to guns, so I need a gun to protect myself... Ridiculous.

 

A lot. Virtually every gun used illegally started with legal ownership. My point is that registration helps because it creates accountability. I personally think that every transfer of ownership should be registered and identify both parties involved.

 

That's like saying that every car started out as a tin can.
And just what percentage of criminals do you estimate will obey these registration schemes of yours?
Gun registration does one thing, makes it easier for the government to confiscate guns from law abiding gun owners.

 

Well it might dry up those "semi-legal" illegal sources

 

Good afternoon Bower. I think you may be more effective making birth control mandatory for such results. Once humans are wiped off the earth then the objective will be obtained.

 

Actually, gun registration makes straw purchases almost impossible; which takes guns out of the hands of criminals. Not sure why you'd be opposed to this, other than an irrational fear of DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED government officials suddenly turning against their own supporters.

 

Good morning. Could you please show me evidence or stats on this claim that registration stops most illegal straw purchases. Plenty of "underground" firearms exist in States and Countries that prohibit them and are bought and sold without regulatory knowledge.

The underbelly of society is not a good place for guns. Out of mind and out of sight is not good policy.

I have seen a pattern in you and this forum and I am trying to understand your extreme passion and guns. Your fever is not healthy IMO and you have become more blind as each day passes. Tomorrow, the fever burns hotter because it is I who knows what is best for society.

Thank you.

 

What if the media gets enough paranoia brewing among the non-gun owning crowd to get them to support a confiscation program. Then the elected officials will likely take away guns. Even if there isn't majority support it could still happen. The California government leaders who confiscated people's SKS rifles were democratically elected.

 

- Around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don't require background checks. http://www.nij.gov/pubs-sum/165476.htm
- 40% of prison inmates who used guns in their crimes got them this way. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=940
- An investigation found 62% of online gun sellers were willing to sell to buyers who said they couldn't pass a background check. http://www.fixgunchecks.org/deleteonlineoutlaws
- 20% of licensed California (a liberal state) gun dealers agreed to sell handguns to researchers posing as illegal "straw" buyers. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2937134/
- The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has not had a permanent director for 6 years (http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/atf-ill-equipped-enforce-new-gun-laws), due to an NRA-backed requirement that the Senate approve nominees (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/u...y-to-fight-gun-crime.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

Registration enables buyers to be held accountable if the guns registered to them repeatedly end up in the hand of criminals. This means those purchasers can actually be identified and prevented from continuing to purchase firearms for criminals. Seems pretty simple.

 

So the state government took away a class of weapon that was illegal in the state prior to the confiscation... and allowed an extensive "exceptions" list. So what?
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/di...le=30710-30735

There's a LOT of distance between this and taking away ALL guns. The "What if" paranoia is just getting ridiculous.

 

But it absolutely proves that DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED officials have been willing to take away some guns in the past. Lack of registration information is insurance against it happening again on a larger scale. What insurance can you provide if all guns are registered? The promise that the same politicians who created and keep renewing the patriot act, who authorize detention of American citizens without trial and who are keeping Gitmo running won't ever do something to take away this right?

Sorry if I don't have quite as much faith in those politicians add you do.

 

Seems like people are generally criticising them for NOT ENFORCING THE EXISTING LAWS, but you want to complain when they do?
I don't have faith in the politicians per se, I have faith in the democratic process - as established by the founding fathers - to ensure the government represents the best interests of the American people.

 

That is sooooooo right on, the government will know who to look for.

People worry about "street crime" and think that is a very good reason to own a gun. Well, it's not a bad one, but there are better ones.

1) The Constitution gives us (Yanks) the right to a Revolution. And just how should we Revolt if we've given what would be our then enemy, our guns? It's the governing body we have to keep our eye on, not street thugs. Balance of power.

2) How many times have totalitarian dictators gone on a wilding and slaughtered the masses like sheep?
Hitler, Mao, and Stalin accounted for over 100 million deaths of their own people. Or a Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge Army killed one third of the civilian population of his Cambodia - men, women, and children. And Westerners are not immune to this behavior because, after all, we are "human" just like those other people. It just may happen some day.

So it is not "street crime" that I fear and prompts me to own a gun, it is US government that is growing more and more totalitarian every day that really scares me. One day the American "Dear Leader", whoever that might be, just might decide to go on a wilding of his own.

Why some leaders wish to slaughter millions of their own people is beyond, but they do.
Lemmings have their set of problems, humans have theirs. It never makes sense but it does happen and we, the people, have to be prepared.

GO GUNS!

 

Thank you for the info but your claim that most straw purchase would be eliminated is unfounded by your stats. But this does confirm if the current laws on the books would be applied more so we would have less illegal activity.

When I sell a POW, I have a bill of sale with 2 signatures, copy of the drivers license and make and model of the firearm. Like this:



The people I know do the same thing. We are not in the shadows acting like criminal thugs. It is commerce between 2 citizens out in the open.

If you want to have effective practice for selling POW please empower the citizen and give him/her access to the state and federal database for a small fee per transaction. No need for more government intrusion or regulation.

The more you involve the citizen in his or her own liberty the better off we all are.

 

(Logician0311) “Actually, gun registration makes straw purchases almost impossible; which takes guns out of the hands of criminals”.
Did you not know that everyone who buys a gun must fill out forms used to check for criminal or mental illness backgrounds? Then the gun retailer must keep the record of sales on all firearms for law enforcement inspection on demand.

(Logician0311) “Around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don't require background checks.”
This is a 1997 publication; “This Research in Brief discusses the results of a nationally representative telephone survey (1994) on private ownership and use of firearms by American adults”.
You’re kidding right?

(Logician0311) “40% of prison inmates who used guns in their crimes got them this (private) way”.
A 2001 publication of a 1997 survey of prison inmates and talks about how 28% carried a gun and the higher sentences they received as a result. From what is known most criminals get their guns off the black market which is unaffected by gun control laws.

(Logician0311) “An investigation found 62% of online gun sellers were willing to sell to buyers who said they couldn't pass a background check”.
Taken from a purely political site, “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”. Nine of their number are convicted felons; Their crimes range from fraud and theft to child molestation and sexual assault.

(Logician0311) “20% of licensed California (a liberal state) gun dealers agreed to sell handguns to researchers posing as illegal "straw" buyers”.
This is a PMC publication that takes their information from the “Fast and Furious” scandal perpetrated by the ATF. The information has been debunked as contrived and criminally instigated.

(Logician0311) “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has not had a permanent director for 6 years”.
A The New York Times article? Really? They haven’t printed the facts since FDR. This whole article is rife with twisted “facts” and protracted numbers, to answer each one would take a reply longer than the article.
That aside the ATF is so understaffed that they have requested 164 fewer employees for 2013 and over a million increase in budget. Past directors have termed the position as, “The kiss of death” for their careers making it difficult for the administration to find anyone who wants the job.

A final note; the Socialist party and the American Communist party have given full support to Obama's gun control laws this being the center piece for their agenda to control the people.

 

The government wasn't made to represent the best interest of its people, it was created to represent the people. There were specifically enumerated powers that the Federal Government was allowed to have and nothing more if you go by the original intent of the Constitution. The Federal Government has many more powers than before, and they have shown to take more and more powers and not give them up unless it was by a SCOTUS opinion or lawsuit.

We as gun owners are afraid that the government will take this one little step, and ten years down the line, take another one. New York is a prime example of this. New York's AWB in '94 mirrored the Federal ban. A few weeks ago, it was further strengthened the AWB to include a host of new weapons, a registration of owners and weapons, and further restricting magazine size. If this is held up in court, which I highly doubt it will be, then it will set a precedent that what was once legal can be outright banned and not allowed at all. Magazines that can accept thirty rounds, legal before this latest piece of legislation, are no longer legal at the end of the month (I think), and no magazine can hold more than seven rounds. It used to be ten. What is to prevent the State of New York from saying five years down the line, when illegal weapons are used with illegal thirty round magazines to murder so-and-so, to say, turn all the ten round magazines in and now you get five rounds. And then three. Now, you get no magazines, but a fixed single shot rifle. You can still have the rifle, but it is a shadow of its former purpose. This is like being allowed to own the fastest car in the world with a one gallon gas tank and it being illegal if you put a ten gallon gas tank on it. There is no limit to what a state can do as long as it is seemed as legitimate and under the law. Even if it is inherently wrong, as long as the legitimacy of being legal is upheld, people will suffer many civil rights violations.

 

Quit trying to change the subject. We were talking about what politicians might do with a registration program. Moving the goalposts won't help you. I've shown proof that fear of politicians using registration to take firearms is not irrational, but instead has actually happened in the US. Now you are changing the subject because your previous claim has been proven wrong.

Your claims that it will never happen here are proven wrong by history. We should never make it easy for them to do so in the future.

 

Right, and that consistently happens with private sales....?

You have something more recent or credible that contradicts this?

What percentage of criminals carried a gun is irrelevent to WHERE those guns come from, you contradict my statement without actually providing any source of information.

Did you have anything to say about the actual information, or is the sole rebuttal an ad hominem argument?

You mean the "scandal" in which firearms were purchased by private citizens and then provided to cartels? Given that no crime was actually committed prior to the exchange, what exactly were law enforcement agencies supposed to do that wouldn't have you screaming about lawful purchasers being targetted?

Largely because all they do is butt heads with the nations largest lobby group... and again your only position is an ad hominem argument...
Do you do anything other than attack the character of those who disagree with you?

Right, because the people of every other first-world democracy are totally under the thumb of their oppressive governments... Fail.

 

People generally act in their own best interests. The government acting in the best interests of the people IS a representation of the people. As for the original intent of the Constitution... No matter how much you respect the founding fathers, there is not denying that their balls were not crystal - they couldn't foresee the future. Today's government (of which SCOTUS is but a part) have to do what they believe to be right, even though there will always be a minority that disagrees.

That's refreshing honesty.

So your concern is that, at some point 100 years from now, that the United States may have similar gun laws to every other successful first-world democracy?

 

The SCOTUS has already affirmed the individuals right to own a firearm in DC V Heller. It further reinforced this with McDonald V Chicago. Like it or not, many of the arms that are being fought over today are in common use and are protected under the 2A from McDonald V Chicago and US V Miller.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-1521
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=307&invol=174

Being afraid is a human emotion. I never said that I was an emotionless robot.

We are not 100 years in the future, it is right now. The New York State House and Senate passed a law that is doing exactly what I stated before. They are curtailing rights and taking away what was once legal and making criminals out of people that are owning a legal firearm part. It is arrogant and foolhardy in what their state legislatures are doing. The way that they passed this bill screams of a ruling class telling what the lesser citizens are allowed to have! From what I understand, the bill was introduced in the house at 6 at night, passed before 9PM, sent to the Senate the following morning and passed there by 1PM. The Governor signed it the following day. There was no public input. There was no time to contact your local representative. There was no chance to petition the Government to see why this bill was introduced, commented on, passed, or any way to get due compensation for property that was going to be lost due to this bill.

As for other first world democracies, their cultures are vastly different from ours. Comparing the two is like trying to compare the cultures of Miami and Seattle and wondering why statues in one city don't make the same impact in the other. We have a 2A which protects out rights to arms, reinforced by the SCOTUS in two very recent opinions, and it isn't going to go anywhere. No other first world country that I can think of, has that same provisions as a base tenant of the way the Government is run. If there is, please educate me. (When I say provision, I mean something like or similar to the 2A)

 

But that completely ignores the many babies eaten by Dingos, not to mention folks being bludgeoned to death by didgeridoos!!!

 

Look at the stats for WHERE criminals purchase guns

 

[MENTION=61346]Logician0311[/MENTION], LOL I'm surprised you bothered to take the time for such a weak, ahem, "rebuttal"?

 

Interesting - because you have not addressed his point

 

Bowerbird, I have addressed his point Ad Nauseum. He wants continually failing gun control laws. He doesn't want to talk about real solutions to protect our communities and safeguard our schools and children, he only wants gun control. It's like arguing with a parrot.