A Modest Proposal to Reduce Gun Violence

[_Analytics]

Here's where I think your ideas would have problems with implementation:

Gun Owners Responsibility Enforcement (GORE) Act

1. Every gun in the United States must have a serial number and be registered with the state or federal government.
   

If I want to avoid this, wouldn't I just need to steal a gun and file off the serial number? Once this happens, the gun becomes "lost" to the system.

Perhaps technology could be used to make this harder to do--put a chip inside the gun, for example.

It would be a crime to possess an unregistered weapon. The punishment if caught would be confiscation of the weapon and a fine.

How would this be policed? How would we avoid setting up a black-market for unserialized guns similar to the current black market for drugs? [/quote]
To police it, we should have jack-booted enforcement officers perform random searches of everyone’s house on a frequent-yet-random basis. The black-market for guns already exists—my proposal is intended to significantly raise the price of guns on that market, so that fewer criminals would be able to attain them.

You may not sell or give a gun to somebody without them first passing a background check, and then transferring the registration to them.

Unless I do. This would regulate honest dealers (much like we have honest pharmacies where we can buy drugs with prescriptions), but that doesn't prevent an illegal trade from developing.[/quote]
Of course. But criminals don’t make their own guns the way that rednecks make meth in their bathtubs—if gun manufacturers attached a robust serial number to every gun they make, we could trace the path they take from the flag-waving gun manufacturing industry into the hands of bad guys.

If a gun registered to you is used to commit a felony, you are an accomplice to the crime. For example, if somebody used a gun registered to you to rob a convenience store, you’d be equally guilty of robbing the store as the guy who held it.

This would motivate gun dealers to more tightly control their dealings, but I suspect there would be a correlated increase in the trafficking of unregistered guns (or stolen guns). [/quote]
Sure, but the unregistered guns would become increasingly rare, and gun owners would take effective measures to ensure their guns aren’t stolen.

I'm also not sure how that responsibility would compare to situations such as someone committing a crime with someone's car. If my car is stolen, sold or even lent to someone who then uses it to rob a bank, would I be held liable under this new "responsibility law"? If not, why not?

Automobiles are “tools” designed to transport people and things from point A to point B. They are more-or-less necessary to survive in many places of the modern world. In contrast, guns are tools designed to quickly kill people—some models are designed to quickly kill lots of people. You can survive quite well in the modern world without owning these instruments of death. If somebody chooses to own these killing devices anyway, an extraordinary level of responsibility should accompany it.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Here's where I think your ideas would have problems with implementation:

Gun Owners Responsibility Enforcement (GORE) Act
[list=1]
[*]Every gun in the United States must have a serial number and be registered with the state or federal government.

If I want to avoid this, wouldn't I just need to steal a gun and file off the serial number? Once this happens, the gun becomes "lost" to the system.

As a (probably inconsequential) side note, a serial number that’s been filed off could still be recovered if the number was pressed onto the metal instead of engraved. When it is stamped into the metal, it changes the density of the metal where the serial number is. So, if someone files the area down to remove the serial number, you can then use a caustic chemical in that area -- it will eat away at the surrounding metal faster than it will eat away at the metal where the serial numbers were. This is how coin collectors are able to “recover” the date on coins that have been worn smooth (the most common being buffalo nickels).

[_Analytics]

you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
currently people are accountable for illegal gun trafficking.

Currently, it's totally legal to post a classified ad for a gun on KSL.com, and subsequently trade it for cash with a stranger in a parking lot. People who can't pass background checks obtain guns this way--quite easily, in fact. If somebody sells a gun to a criminal in this fashion, how are they held responsible for arming a criminal?

how about a response to how "accountable" you consider Obama on the Gunwalker program?
I notice you conveniently avoided that in your last post.

Off topic.

[_cinepro]

Automobiles are “tools” designed to transport people and things from point A to point B. They are more-or-less necessary to survive in many places of the modern world. In contrast, guns are tools designed to quickly kill people—some models are designed to quickly kill lots of people. You can survive quite well in the modern world without owning these instruments of death. If somebody chooses to own these killing devices anyway, an extraordinary level of responsibility should accompany it.

While it may sound good in theory, I suspect that such a law would be troublesome from an accountability standpoint. Our resident lawyers would have to weigh in.

Come to think of it, perhaps a precedent would be how dog owners can be held accountable for the actions of their dog. So who knows?

As I said in the other thread I started, I suspect that within a few years, guns will be able to be cheaply and anonymously manufactured using 3D printers, so we'll have to radically alter the conversation on "gun control". These discussions about gun control will seem as quaint and naïve as efforts in the 1970s to stem the growth of pornography in the pre-internet era.

[_ldsfaqs]

you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
currently people are accountable for illegal gun trafficking.

Currently, it's totally legal to post a classified ad for a gun on KSL.com, and subsequently trade it for cash with a stranger in a parking lot. People who can't pass background checks obtain guns this way--quite easily, in fact. If somebody sells a gun to a criminal in this fashion, how are they held responsible for arming a criminal?

I really don't know why you keep passing off this utter falsehood as fact and truth.
It's true that people "could" and "do" do this, but the problem is it's utterly negligible.

Again I repeat, Law Enforcement KNOW where guns come from when committed by criminals, and extremely FEW are committed by people who bought a gun from law abiding individual in a private sale. Nearly all private sales to criminals that are in fact private sales to criminals are guess what? done by OTHER CRIMINALS who got their guns illegally or improperly.

In other words, despite your "fear" of a criminal "possibly" getting a gun in a private sale from a law abiding citizen, the REALITY is is it simply doesn't happen. And the extremely little it does, making a "law" against it would do NOTHING toward reducing gun crime by criminals.

I spent years associated with Law Enforcement..... They know where the guns come from, and it almost never comes from a normal citizen improperly giving a gun in any way to a criminal. Despite the mockery, criminals don't try to buy guns from the "good guys", and when they do try, the good guys just don't sale the gun to them. Criminals nor gun owners aren't as stupid as you people think.

More examples of liberals living in the fantasies of their own minds, rather than reality.

[_Analytics]

Come to think of it, perhaps a precedent would be how dog owners can be held accountable for the actions of their dog. So who knows?

As I said in the other thread I started, I suspect that within a few years, guns will be able to be cheaply and anonymously manufactured using 3D printers, so we'll have to radically alter the conversation on "gun control". These discussions about gun control will seem as quaint and naïve as efforts in the 1970s to stem the growth of pornography in the pre-internet era.

Just to explain where I'm coming from, through a series of tragic events I found myself in the unfortunate situation of sitting through almost the whole TV show dramatizing the life of Mary Winkler, the preacher's wife who shot her husband. Apparently, her husband was a God-fearing Republican Christian Preacher and pillar of their community. He kept a loaded shotgun in the bedroom closet, which he used for a prop to emphasize his point when he had arguments with his wife by pointing it at her and threatening to kill her. One morning, the wife decided to use the same prop for the same reason, which accidently fired and killed her husband. It's suiting that this happened in Tennessee, the state where ldsfaqs assures us is safe from gun violence because he found a video with a whole bunch of rednecks shooting guns, and in the video at least, none of them die.

Responding your 3D printer observation, touché.

But in the meantime, guns enter the system through being manufactured by God-fearing, flag-waving gun manufactures. They leave the system when they are confiscated by police or are thrown into the bottom of deep lakes. Sure, criminals typically get them from other criminals, but how did those criminals get them? At some point, essentially every single gun in the hands of American criminals was manufactured by the American gun manufacturing industry under the Republican Party icon. Somehow, it makes it from there into the hands of criminals. The only reason that’s been offered for opposing laws intended to trace how the guns get from point A to point B is that gun owners don’t want the government to know who has guns because it’s a bad strategy for their plans of insurrection.

[_subgenius]

how about a response to how "accountable" you consider Obama on the Gunwalker program?
I notice you conveniently avoided that in your last post.

Off topic.

so, an individual or entity that knowingly provides guns to known criminals is off-topic?...because the topic is about individuals, or entities, that knowingly (or unknowingly) provide guns to criminals should be held accountable....wha?

or is the topic that our government should not have to abide by the same laws as its citizens in as much as providing guns to known criminals is concerned?

the integrity of your post just went into debt.

[_Res Ipsa]

subgenius -- master of the red herring. He doesn't give a crap about the thousands and thousands of guns that end up in the hands of criminals in the U.S., but if he thinks he can derail a grown up discussion of gun control by mischaracterizing an operation intended to take down gun racketeers, then suddenly the guns are a big deal.

[_subgenius]

subgenius -- master of the red herring. He doesn't give a s*** about the thousands and thousands of guns that end up in the hands of criminals in the U.S., but if he thinks he can derail a grown up discussion of gun control by mischaracterizing an operation intended to take down gun racketeers, then suddenly the guns are a big deal.

so in defense of the nazi-style proposal offered by Analytics a viable defense would be for me to claim that i sold my gun to a criminal in an effort to "take him down" by tracking the crimes subsequently occurring with that gun....got it!

Point being, the act is the same...either Obama's actions are equally culpable by Analytics' proposed measure or they suffer from the same hypocrisy offered by the Obama mopologists time and time again.
Only difference being, Obama's policy intended for the guns to be used in crimes....but the operation was poorly conceived and managed...Analytics would propose that this same debacle be applied at a larger scale and administered by the same morons involved with gunwalker....surely that has success written all over it......yummmmy, that is some good irony.

[_Res Ipsa]

so in defense of the nazi-style proposal offered by Analytics a viable defense would be for me to claim that i sold my gun to a criminal in an effort to "take him down" by tracking the crimes subsequently occurring with that gun....got it!

Point being, the act is the same...either Obama's actions are equally culpable by Analytics' proposed measure or they suffer from the same hypocrisy offered by the Obama mopologists time and time again.
Only difference being, Obama's policy intended for the guns to be used in crimes....but the operation was poorly conceived and managed...Analytics would propose that this same debacle be applied at a larger scale and administered by the same morons involved with gunwalker....surely that has success written all over it......yummmmy, that is some good irony.

You don't give a crap about the thousands and thousands of guns that end up in criminals hands. You do worse than using the "take it down" defense -- you just turn the other way an say "not my problem." More clowning.