I'm a gun owner and I carry a gun, but obviously we need better gun control.

I own guns, carry guns, like guns, strongly support the 2nd Ammendment etc. but we need stronger background checks, and I'm most certainly in favor of registration that happens at the time of purchase. Let's be realistic, nobody is just going to come take all your guns if they're registered. Do people come take your car? That's registered. Right now we have a serious problem. Felons who have been convicted continue getting a hold of guns. Just the other day there was a shooting in the major metro I live in that involved a felon who had ALREADY BEEN CONVICTED. How'd he get the gun? Obviously not legally, but nobody can possibly know if we don't have a clear paper trail for the guns. If it were registered at the time of manufacture with the serial number, information sent over about who purchased it for retail sale, registered at the time of sale etc. we would know who was responsible for it last. It's obviously illogical to believe gun control will prevent all crime, but it's no surprise that people who shouldn't have guns keep getting them, and until we have a way to track that down it's going to continue to happen. Felons will keep getting guns and keep shooting people.

I agree, things like assault weapons bans will do nothing to curb gun crime, as most criminals are using cheap handguns or shotguns. It's time for common sense gun control. The data doesn't lie. Countries with registration, strong bg checks etc just don't have the gun crime we do, and most certainly don't have anywhere near the violent crime we do. Even with other weapons. Just look at the crimes per 100,000 of a big city like London compared to the crime per 100,000 in somewhere like Atlanta. In 2012 there was an intentional homicide rate in London of 1.67, vs. 19 in Atlanta. That's very significant. In other countries, like Nordic countries where gun ownership is high, but registration exists, such as Zurich, Switzerland, where the gun ownership rate is nearly half as high as ours, it's still significantly lower, with robberies, murders, and other violent crimes involving a weapon ranking Very Low on numbeo.

I'm also in favor of training requirements for carry permits. Back when I lived in Tennessee, we had to go through a class that basically taught us when self defense was lawful and when it wasn't, basic gun safety, what to do after a self-defense shooting, it also covered things like making sure you had a clear shot, and even required you to pass a target training session, you had to know how to hit what you're shooting at, and you wouldn't believe (over half the class actually) how many people initially failed the target shooting requirements. They definitely could hit where they were aiming before the class was over though.

 

I'm surprised that as a gun owner you don't know many of the facts.

We already have laws that prevent criminals from purchasing guns. We have background checks. Straw purchasing is illegal, etc etc. These laws mean nothing if they are not supported and enforced. NICS receives about 5% of the money that was allocated. Lying on background checks is not prosecuted, failures in the NICS system is common, etc. Felony possession of a firearm is one of the first charges dropped in plea bargaining.

There are examples where it DOES work, like Project Exile that was implemented in Richmond. When you go after criminals the crime stops. The problem is that most gun hating *******s are not out to prevent crime, they are out to ban guns. Every one of their arguments centers around GUN violence, and not violence in general.

CCW holders have an incredibly low homicide or unjustified usage of firearms, and the numbers of permit holderes are growing every day. The ******* belief that wild west shootouts and rivers of blood resulting from more CCW holders was a common argument 5-10 years ago. They were proved wrong on that too.

I do believe in training though. A gun is a tool that needs to be respected as much as operating a piece of heavy machinery.

 

I know this and understand it, but if straw purchasing is illegal it's very difficult to prosecute it until we know who is selling and buying those guns. I am a "*******" as you call it, and I'm not out to ban guns, I know many other liberals who aren't either, though I'm sure there are a few extreme libs that are. Background checks are enforced. When have you ever bought a gun (aside from states with the gunshow loophole) and not had to first pass a bg check? I know I haven't, my father hasn't, my friends haven't. All of them had to go through a background check. The problem is once that gun is initially purchased there is absolutely no record of it. I could buy it and give it away, legal or not, and nobody would have even known I was the original owner. How can we prosecute straw purchases if we don't even know who is making the purchase? IIRC, they federal government is not allowed to keep NICS records. I agree, we need prosecution of criminals, the man in my example had just recently been released for a violent criminal history and shouldn't have been out on the streets to begin with, but the point is he was stil somehow able to get a gun, and it had to have been a straw purchase or something similar, if we had a registry, the SN could have been traced back to the straw purchaser, and he could have been shut down.

 

The La. shooter obtained his gun after going through a background check. My point being that all these laws and regulations we already have are not working so how would an incredibly complicated system of tracing gun sales work?

You end illegal sales by ending the demand for illegal weapons. You end the demand by putting those interested in obtaining guns illegally behind bars permanently, hence my reference to Project Exile.

Project Exile was VERY effective in preventing criminals from even wanting a gun. Implement that game plan on a national level, harden our prison systems so that no one wants to go there, and all violence, including gun violence, would dry up to nothing.

EDIT: My ******* reference was not specifically targeted at you, but there are many here on this forum that only care about gun violence in and of itself, while probably also lobbying to make sure that violent prisoners have access to the internet and daily foot massages.

 

The countries with strong gun control bordering on a gun ban reduce (but not always) gun related crime, but their total violent crime increases. See the charts below (click to enlarge) , US data is from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, AUS data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Reports. Notice the homicide rate for AUS - it actually increased for the 5 years after their gun ban went into effect.

View attachment 36826 View attachment 36827

If you are going to put up crime numbers, put up the source. Too many gun banners use "massaged" data from secondary sources and propaganda sources like Brady and VPC.

Registration does not work, that's why Canada got rid of their long gun registry 2 years ago. The registry did not help solve crimes, did not prevent crimes, and guns used in crimes were almost never in the gun registry (criminals don't register their guns, they don't register stolen or smuggled guns, etc).

But Quebec has refused to destroy their gun registry even though ordered to do so and legally required to destroy it. That's because a registry is not about public safety, its about knowing who has a gun so the government can confiscate it.

 

Not to mention that ANY gun tracking system can be rendered useless by liberal (unintended or subconscious pun?) usage of a file for about 5 minutes.

 

Gun rights cross political boundaries, there are many "liberals" and Democrats who are very strong gun rights supporters. Vermont, as far left as it is, and home of Bernie Sanders, is actually a strong pro-gun state. But no "progressive" supports gun rights, banning guns is a firm plank in their agenda.

The history of gun control in the USA is one of lying. Gun banners always lie, they follow an incremental approach in which every gun control measure is quickly followed by another "common sense" gun control measure, one after another, always with the objective of eventually reaching their goal of banning firearms. Safety permits and training requirements and purchase permits are sold to the public as "common sense" measures that will improve public safety and will not be a burden on the law abiding gun owners, but the permit process is made so burdensome that it becomes a de facto gun ban.

Read Emily Gets Her Gun for a description of the difficulty in getting a firearm in DC, and that's AFTER the Heller decision http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/oct/5/miller-emily-gets-her-gun/

New York City is even worse.

And that's why there can be no training requirements. Training is a good idea, I even support firearm classes in high school complete with range time (many high schools used to have shooting teams), but the gun banners will take the training programs over and turn them into propaganda classes and make the process impossible - the cost will be prohibitive, there wont be enough classes, the requirements to be an instructor will be so onerous there will be few instructors, etc.

And there is the post-Sandy Hook push for gun control. Feinstein immediately trotted out her "assault" weapon ban legislation and promised not to touch "hunters", but in the gun banners euphoria (they truly believed their time had come and Feinstein's ban would pass) some of them jumped the gun and very publicly began calling hunting rifles "sniper rifles" which should be banned. Google something like "ban sniper rifles" and you will find a list of banners who have their eyes on "sniper rifles".

You can never trust gun banners. Never give them an inch, no more compromise.

 

True, and criminals are generally not stupid. People in the illegal firearm market know that stolen firearms should be "passed around" a bit to make a registry useless. The entire claim that a registry is a great tool in fighting crime is ridiculous.

 

Australia's crime rate is still significantly lower than the US's.

The USA has 21% more violent crime to be exact, and a murder rate over 4x as high. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Australia/United-States/Crime

Regardless, looking at violent crime comparison, no other industrialized nation has the amount of violent crime the USA does. And canada requires handguns to be registered and purchasers to first obtain a license. Long guns are not usually used during crimes, so it makes little difference.

Go ahead, show me what country with good gun control (third world or non-developed don't count) has the amount of violent crime we do. I've searched and searched and they just don't happen on the scale they do here.

 

if a felon wants a gun he will get a gun..by burglary or from someone on the streets..gun laws will not stop him or her....gun laws on the legal trustworthy people is not the problem..if a felon does a crime he should get a long long time in jail...

 

You are totally wrong.

My post you responded to contained a chart of violent crime in AUS (from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Report) and violent crime in the USA (from the FBI Uniform Crime Report). Australia has much higher rate of violent crime than the USA.

The USA murder rate was 4.5 in 2013 (FBI UCR), its about 1.9 in Australia (AUS Bureau of Statistics Crime Report), that not a 4X difference, your data source is wrong.

Also, NationMaster is a terrible source. I went through NationMaster in detail in another thread. NationMaster compares nations over different years, with different sources, its nothing but a mish-mash of numbers gathered haphazardly.

If you want to talk numbers, use the various nations official crime data bases, not third party and media articles. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

 

England. It's hard to compare and I'll have to go back over my sources, but it appears they have twice the violent crime the US has. Their crime EXPLODED after the gun ban, and only started coming down again after a massive increase in police (something like 15,000 additional police.....). That would be equivalent to Texas hiring an additional 45,000 police based on land mass.

Some have questioned both Australias and Englands crime reporting. I think it was a couple years after the ban that Perth released crime statistics that were incredibly higher than pre-ban, and Howards cabinet started requiring all official reporting of crime statistics to go through Canberra.

If you want to lower violent crime then go after the criminals. Eliminate the gangs in just 3 US cities and I guarantee you our violent crime statistics would plummet.

 

So what? So you've found that another one of the thousands of gangsters and criminals in your area has used a stolen gun that had been registered to commit another of the dozens of his crimes this year.

So what now? You going slam this little hood hard, or are you not even going to prosecute him on the gun charges? I bet the fools you allow to run your local DA offices and courts will give him a few years---and he'll be back out in 5 months.

You want justice, you want results? Punish the felon.

 

I whole-heartedly agree. These people committing violent crimes need to stay in jail or at least under a close eye if they have proven themselves rehabilitated, more often then not they get out and go right back to it. How do we know it was stolen and not bought as a straw purchase? I just think we're fooling ourselves if we truly think absolutely nothing can be done to keep guns out of the hands of felons short of keeping them locked up. Yes, crime is a problem that 100% involves criminals, but guns make commission of things like armed robbery so much easier and they keep getting a hold of them. How? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will until we keep track of them. There are only two gun stores locally where I live, neither have been broken into since I've been here and neither of them have sold guns without a BG check, yet tons and tons of felons who are already barred from buying firearms somehow keep getting a hold of them. That's the only point I'm trying to make.

 

We have how many tens of millions of Mexicans here illegally and take up a huge percentage of our prisons and we can't count them as an example of crime? They are the source of our bad crime numbers.

 

That's a myth that's already been disproven. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/immigration-and-crime

 

So it's OK to skip over our border and undercut our labor market. My dad didn't need to make money in his business anyway? The guys he layed off when he retired and couldn't give the company away didn't need jobs?

Actually I was talking about the 29% percent illegal immigrant population in our prisons nationwide. Border states are taking the brunt of this in our education and healthcare systems. 95% of arrest warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens. That's what I'm talking about. We have invited the 3rd World here to ruin this country. Doubling down on gun laws for me won't change crime statistics one bit. We need to focus on the source of the crime.

 

Nothing can be done to keep guns out of the hands of criminals any more than drugs can be kept out of the hands of addicts.

Stopping violence means stopping the violent. That should be the one and only focus in maintaining a safe and peaceful society.

 

Explain the examples of confiscation in the state of New York after the passage of the SAFE act.

Yes they do. It is called civil asset forfeiture. You do not even need to be charged with a crime to have your motor vehicle, or any other property, confiscated by the police. And it will cost you more than the value of your motor vehicle to get it back in court.

And how do you propose stopping them when the acquisition is through theft?

Was it ever considered that perhaps he owned the firearm prior to his conviction, and it was simply not found?

Such information already exists.

Then stop releasing them to reoffend.

Other countries have carried out confiscation after registration. Tell us otherwise.

 

Ultimately what does it matter where or how the firearm was acquired?

What else do you suggest? These people have proven themselves incapable of self restraint. Putting them back in the general public where they are free to offend again is a foolish idea.

You are well aware that many Wal-Mart and similar stores sell airsoft firearms that look like genuine firearms, correct? A coating of black spray paint, and no one can tell the difference if it is not fired. When the mere sight of a firearm is enough to exert compliance from the intended target, there is no need for acquiring a genuine firearm if it is supposedly too difficult to pull off.

You are aware that there are millions of firearms currently circulating the black market, correct? They are untraceable, and cannot be located by law enforcement. For all intents and purposes, they do not exist until they are dropped at the scene of a crime.

 

Because, if we don't know how they are getting them we can't cut them off. There is obviously some avenue, legal or not, that they're going through.

 

Well, I'm not seeing the need for mandatory registration of all firearms.

So, how much more time would you give a repeat violent felon who is convicted of shooting a store clerk during an robbery with a stolen gun

versus

the same felon using his own registered gun to do the same crime (even though the repeat felon should not legally have any guns)???

What sentence or how many years for each above case would YOU feel just and correct?

My answer for all repeat violent felons doing their 3rd+ violent crime---guns or no guns:

 

I disagree. The Feds may or may not keep the registration info. They're not supposed to keep that info by law but it's been proven they do keep it. Doesn't matter much. The state keeps that info.
A neighbor of mine checked himself into a rehab for prescription drug abuse. While there he was asked if he owned any firearms. He answered truthfully. Although he self admitted he was told he would not be allowed to leave until all the guns were removed from his house.
The next day the staties were at his house with a complete list of every firearm he had purchased in the last 20 years. They knew exactly what he had. Don't be fooled into beleiving that information is not available.
They took his safe to the station and had it torched open.