Democrat buys semiautomatic rifle at Va. gun show in under 10 minutes
298 replies, posted
Rather than retype all of it again I will simply quote an older post of mine in which I identify the primary causes of violence in the US and offer solutions that would actually approach them tactfully while giving us extended data about the issue.
OK, so windows restarted for updates while I was out and lost my post but I'll try to retype what I was doing.
I'm gonna use this post to explain a bit about myself and talk about what I think the issues are and how I as a gun owner think we could attack them.
So here's the deal. I'm Texan, 22 years old. I have a huge interest in antiques and history in general, and as I started buying up antiques with pocket change at flea markets and stuff I became interested in firearms. I shot my first gun when I was 12 and that got me into it bigtime. Guns were never really big in my family but I developed enough of an interest that my dad had one of his friends show me the ropes.
I now own between 13 and 16 firearms, depending on how you define firearm (more on that later). Most of them are antiques, but among them are a modern AR-15 and a newish Colt 1911 copy - and most of a Sten sub machine gun. When I was 13 I was gifted a Marlin Model 60, semi-automatic .22LR, for plinking and when I was 14, I went to my first gun show and used lawn mowing money to buy a gun for the first time (under parental supervision, obviously).
The gun I picked out was an 1880s stagecoach shotgun, a break-action with big old hammers on both sides, 12-gauge. Due to its age, the law does not consider it a firearm even though it is functionally identical to any break action shotgun you can go and buy brand new today. I could have bought that with or without my parents present and nobody could have done anything about it.
For Christmas when I was 15 I got a Mosin Nagant M91/30 (Soviet WW2 infantry rifle) from my mother because of my interest in antiques and that fed my interest in guns further. At the time those rifles were about $99 apiece due to huge oversupply.
Eventually I was saving up and buying new-old guns every few months. Somewhere along the line I got my dad into shooting and he gifted me a Smith & Wesson MP-15 (a police-model AR-15) for my college graduation gift. I had learned long ago to be a safe and responsible shooter and never personally had any issues with bullying - so in my case I was never a risk factor. However, you're probably starting to see the many legal and seemingly innocuous ways troubled kids can come into possession of a firearm...
This is a pretty normal course in the US. Guns are viewed as pretty much inert objects unless they're in the hands of someone who plans to do something bad with them. It's easy to see how parents, thinking their kid would never do that, wind up giving them as gifts to kids who display an interest in them or leaving them stored in an accessible place. They're fun - they really are a lot of fun. I honestly encourage anyone with a negative opinion of firearms to find a rental range in their country and give them a go to see how they can be safe and fun.
But bad shit happens. There's not enough in place to keep troubled kids from getting guns. I don't know what to do about parents gifting their kids firearms, meaning well, but that's the main way they get into kids' hands. I have some ideas but we'll talk about that in a later section.
The main thing I want to highlight is the troubled kid. However they get their hands on the weapon, there's a problem in that the kid is having these thoughts to begin with. Do I think it should be harder for kids to get their hands on guns unsupervised? [U]Absolutely.[/U] Please don't get me wrong on this. But there is an epidemic-proportion problem in US schools with the mental health of the kids. Counsellors tell suicidal kids to get over it, teachers often don't say anything if a kid's acting funny, they push each other around and put each other in bad places. That is what causes the majority of these school shootings conducted by students. Not the fact that they had access to the gun - again, not that they SHOULD have had access to the gun - but that a growing mental health concern went completely unnoticed or ignored because there's this perception that people should just harden up.
So how do we keep guns out of kids' hands? This is a really tricky subject to tackle. It seems obvious: introduce mandatory safe storage laws is the first thing that jumps to mind, but how do you enforce that?
The problem you develop when you start looking at enforcing most of these non-confiscation gun control methods is that Americans are really, really, rightfully, paranoid about confiscation. Anything that puts them on a list in a government office somewhere that has their name and address on it and says they own guns compromises their right to bear arms.
You may not be in favor of a total ban or confiscation, but a growing movement in the government IS. We have already seen it happen in New York: gun owners getting conned into accepting a registry with the condition that it could never be used for confiscation - only for that law to be changed later and the registry used as a shopping list to collect newly banned guns.
So when you start talking about enhanced measures like registries and anything else that creates a centralized list of who owns what guns, Americans start to sweat. It's not that we're intrinsically opposed to those measures, just that they have a history of being used to abuse our trust.
So how do you work around that? As a gun owner, I have some ideas. They may not be 100% effective, but I think they would be a good start.
Looking at statistics (I would encourage you to do some of your own research on this rather than relying on me to cite sources - but I can probably find some if you'd like me to), we can see a clear link between poverty and firearms crime rates. It is clear that firearms are most heavily involved in gang crime - most shootings in poor areas are gang-related. Firearms enter gang members' hands in a few ways, but very rarely does it involve the actual shooter going to a gun store and buying one.
Theft is of course the number one method. They are stolen from cars or houses or anywhere else guns may be kept. The serial numbers are filed off and they're hidden somewhere until the search for the gun itself is over. Then they briefly enter the world of crime - most are used a couple times, then ditched.
The other main way is what's called a straw purchase. Most violent gang members already have rap sheets and aren't allowed to buy firearms directly under the current background check laws. But they can have someone who's clean buy the gun for them and hand it off to them. While illegal, there are ways to mask these transactions which are difficult to pin down.
What do you do about that? I'd start by making it illegal to leave a firearm unattended in a car sunless it's your licensed conceal carry weapon and you had to leave it there because an establishment doesn't let you bring it in. Most stolen guns are stolen from cars, and while not everyone would comply, that alone would put a dent in new gun thefts.
I would crack down on straw purchases and shady private transfers bigtime. Currently, no background check is required for a private transfer. I wouldn't change that particular detail - you could still gift or sell a gun you don't like to a trusted friend or family member - but you had better damn well trust the person you're giving it to, because if they use it in a crime within 7 years, you are charged as an accessory to their crime unless you performed an optional background check.
Intensifying consequences for failing to look into the person you sold a gun to would cut down on those dubious private sales and straw purchases simply because it's not worth the risk at that point.
We can let that simmer for a little while and see what kind of effect it has on gang violence while we tackle the next issue: mental health.
The bulk of Columbine-style shootings where the killer wanders around with a gun in a crowded place shooting anyone who moves are conducted by mentally ill people who showed signs of being dangerous before they acquired their weapons. This country desperately needs mental health reform anyway but if for nothing else, this is it. We need to attack the social stigma against seeking help, we need to establish strong public programs for GIVING help, we need to educate kids on the real impact of this stuff and train teachers and other school staff to look for the signs of a troubled kid and talk to them before they do something stupid.
This is a deeply complicated issue but it is absolutely a huge one and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I don't really have a clear plan for what kind of legislature could pull it off, but that's the issue in my mind and I think that's what needs to be gone after.
What my argument boils down to is that gun violence is a symptom of a much deeper problem in this country and I hate the far right for blocking discussion of those problems and I hate the far left for trying to attack the symptoms without trying to see the root causes.
Post from here: Shooting at Florida School, Shooter IS in custody.
Post is large enough that I won't call out particularly quoted sections (and I'm trying to stay succinct) and I mostly agree with it besides. That said, I've a few differences from my upbringing in Texas I think would be a good contrast to offer here. I don't agree that most people see guns as inert objects when they're not in active use - at least none of the adults I grew up around saw them that way. I grew around folks my age with vested interest in both obtaining and using firearms - though mostly because their had guns and so they wanted one - it was a 'badge of becoming an adult' more or less in some households. Most of the older folk I grew up around saw firearms as tools for hunting and defense; things to be respected at all times, especially young kids like me.
In that respect, we were taught to see firearms as loaded weapons at all times. My parents being from a tiny east Texas town probably changed their perspective because guns weren't 'cool' over there - they were tools in the same category of trucks and tractors. I grew up in Dallas - so there was a pretty big rift between what my parents and my friends' parents felt about guns.
My parents were pretty lackadaisical about everything but guns - they felt that stuff like falling out of trees, bones getting broken, hurling snappers at people, and so forth weren't a huge deal because they did reckless crap all the time when they were young. Sometimes people lost fingers and parts of ears and their response was sort of 'oh well' - because that's just how things were in the town they grew up in - people got hurt all the time and you were just sort of expected to deal with it. By contrast, most of the kids' parents I met were paranoid about everything compared to my parents -- except guns. Pellet guns were handed out like candy when I was in my teens until a kid got one in the eye and those parents then cooled to it; I'm pretty sure because they didn't really 'understand' what guns were or had any real respect for them. I think I even got a few cap guns when I was 6-8 as birthday presents from said parents before that incident.
All around I don't think you'll see resistance (at least from those same parents) if you go after those who are mentally troubled and what not, advocating for more money being given to those causes and so forth. I do think, however, you're going to have to deal with another set of problems regarding people who basically feel that nobody has a right to tell them what to do - law or no law. I've heard many an argument that boiled down to little more than 'that law's stupid and they can haul me off if they think I'm going to follow it'. There's going to be voices calling out from folks like them which are going to muddy the issue with 'we don't need any more gun reform' because the government should trust you to handle all this yourself - and it's none of their business who they deal with, who they give weapons to, and so forth because they 'know better than the government'. Even with your proposed changes to straw purchase and private sales, you're going to hear from folk (and the children of folk) who I'd expect to be saying 'this is more government paranoia from the nanny state; first they try to get in your churches, now they're trying to get into your guns'.
That's at least one hurdle we'd have to leap over in attempting to get either straw purchase or private sale reform on the books - which I think we should. We're going to have to prove to folk who think their circle of trust is more accurate than a required background check that they should be running them; that 'gut instinct' isn't enough to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. These are folk who've lived more or less 'removed' from the Government and so don't have much respect for it. Further, I don't think it's going to just be a hurdle to clear to get stuff passed, I think it is, itself, another thing that needs to be addressed which is near-to-the-heart of the issue itself: people's attitude about guns in general and what right the government has to do anything at all regarding guns in any respect.
Why can’t we make NICS available for private transfers again?
I've heard arguments that it's underfunded, is never up to date, and a lot of states don't report in to it so 'it's worthless'. I'd still think it's better than nothing, even in its underfunded and incomplete state. We could always give it the funding it needs to operate, too, and encourage states to report in (though that's no guarantee they will).
So weird for people to just go into a place and buy a lethal weapon without no paperwork in 10 minutes compared to the procedure it takes for a person to register a car to the new owner.
Like WTF, how is this legal ?
Honestly, if you look at all the shootings in the US, people should be cracking down on handguns, not Semi auto rifles. If you're anti-gun or want stronger laws, go after what's actually scary first, not what looks scary
As it stands, if we were to ban private sales all together, it would be completely unenforceable. If you were to force private sellers to use a NICS app on their phone, or force them to do transfers at an FFL, that also would be unenforceable.
Giving an NICS app to private sellers sounds smart, but its not going to see prevelant use, its not going to be used properly, and its going to be stupidly expensive to make and maintain. Most private sellers as it is just show their concealed carry permits as thats enough affirmation that theyre not felons, so an NICS app would often be forgotten about. For the people that do use it, theyre probably not going to use it properly and are more likely to be fooled into giving a firearm to a felon who uses a fake or altered ID. Being as it would be a federal government contract to develop this app, it would cost 6.4 billlion dollars to develop and 25 million dollars a week to maintain.
It sounds smart but it isnt. A ban or enforcement on private sales is unenforceable and impractical. In my opinion, the best thing that could be done is for federal incentives to be given out if you go to an FFL to do a private transfer. Say, you get a coupon for $50 you can send in when you file your taxes and get an extra $50 on your return. Or you get a form you can send in for a $25 ruby Tuesday's giftcard.
Uhm, yes there is. For me, you have to go to your state transportation bureau to actually register the car, so it can't be just stolen and driven around.
Just like we have to go to the state police just to register a firearm for purchasing or transferring to a new owner.
"Small internet providers." There's no such thing as a small ISP in modern America. The vast majority of the country only have the choice between one or two massive corporate providers, who have created an ironclad oligopoly, backed by legislative bullshit, that crushes competition before it has a chance to grow. Even Google, which is anything but a "small" company, has struggled to edge into their markets, because telecommunications lobbyists have aggressively pushed to, in effect, make it fucking illegal for a company to out-compete them in the marketplace.
The repeal of Net Neutrality will place even more power over internet service, access, and content into the hands of monopolistic entities like Comcast. This GOP narrative of putting the power in the hands of "the people" could not possibly be farther from the truth, unless we're considering the CEOs of Comcast, Charter, etc as "the people."
There is literally no paperwork until you want to drive the car on public roads. I have a car sitting in the backyard that I bought on a handshake. The previous owner lost the title. It won't need one until I want to get it registered so I can drive it on public roads. With zero paperwork I can drive the car on my property, on my friend's property, or any other private property where I have permission from the owner.
Could be wrong here but I don’t think the NICS system actually gives out any personal information to the person doing the sales. I thought it was just a yes or no or delay? Also if something as necessary as NICS is underfunded and neglected then clearly we have bigger problems when the government can’t function or prioritize for shit.
Not trying to sound angry at you or anything for pointing this out. I’m just pissed off at the fact that government incompetence is going to end up killing people again and when it does, most of the blame will just be placed on all gun ownership again instead of the big gaping holes in the system which allows the wrong people to get guns in the first place.
How do these idiots expect to close a “gun show loophole” if they can’t even maintain the most fundamental background check system on firearm purchases?
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How in the hell?
There's no correlation between ownership rates and shootings there. You're also comparing the third-largest nation in the world to lots of very small nations.
Then why aren't China and India ahead of America by at least 3x?
Having shittons of guns and shittons of gun violence and mass shootings is a problem shared between America and nations currently undergoing violent civil wars or ISIS-tier insurrections. The difference is that America isn't supposed to be a wartorn impoverished shithole while the countries torn apart by war or extremists have a bit of an excuse.
I wouldn't trust China to give an accurate report of that sort of statistic to begin with considering they're a government of information suppression. And India simply isn't organized well enough to be able to give an accurate report.
Cool, now let's talk about the countries immediately below America. The ones with loads of guns of every kind in circulation, but a tiny fraction of the US's shootings.
Because that chart kinda makes it look like there's factors involved other than gats and their availability.
Did you miss the part where there is no correlation between gun ownership rates and mass shootings?
Source ?
You can literally look at the diagram and figure that out yourself. There is no correlation between gun ownership rate and mass shooting rate.
Honestly, this thread is 10 pages of Grendiac and ilikecorn trying to not lose their minds offering fairly good arguments the whole way through.
I learned a bunch from reading it. Figrof, please just calm the hell down and drop your ideological perspective on this issue and just take in the information you're lacking.
Alright, let's make it illegal to be within 100 feet of a gun.
You don't think that's reasonable?
STOP DEBATING AND DO EVERYTHING WE CAN ABOUT IT. AT LEAST IT'S SOMETHING.
Thank you. Action taken for action sake without proper consideration of consequences is really irresponsible.
