C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
Because there's no Constitutional right to possess a car.What do we know about guns and gun use?
We know this:
That they do means that for a gun to be used in a criminal act, either
- All guns begin as legal firearms.
- The flow of illegal firearms is from the U.S. to other places far more so than it is into the U.S. from other places.
- Using a gun against another person who is no threat to one's own lawful acts and thoughts is a criminal act.
- someone who legally participates in the process that begins with gun manufacture and ends with gun ownership exercised insufficient control over the possession of their firearm(s), or
- someone who legally purchased a gun used it illegally.
Somewhere on this forum, another member said the same thing. Accordingly, the thing we need is not gun control, but rather what accountants call "internal control" over gun ownership. What we need to do is make it (1) very hard or very unlikely for a lawful gun owner's gun to make its way to an unlawful gun user, and/or (2) make it very costly (financially or in terms of the loss of other rights/privileges even if there's no immediate financial cost) for lawful owners not to take "the right steps" to ensure their guns do not end up in the hands of unlawful gun users.
Check with the ATF bureau, and you'll see that the quantity of guns reported as lost or stolen ~200K in 2012) pales in comparison to the quantity of crimes (not deaths) committed using guns (literally millions). (The quantity of annual gun deaths is something around 1/6th or 1/7th the quantity of guns reported as being stolen or lost.) That only happens when lawfully purchased guns end up in the hands of folks having unlawful intents in mind for the gun(s) they acquire. There's either (1) a gap somewhere, or in multiple places, in the "supply chain" from manufacturers to end users, (2) insufficient tracking of legally purchased guns, or (3) a combination of both, or "flavors" of both.
Just a few weeks back, a Secret Service agent had his gun and shield stolen. The theft got reported, the thief may even have been captured and prosecuted. That's all well and good, but the relevant part of the event is that a gun was stolen, and it was stolen because due care was not exercised in securing it from being stolen. In other words, the agent exercised insufficient "internal control" over his possession of his firearm. He left it in a vehicle and walked away.
How does one implement a degree of tighter control over guns? My suggestion is that we install really thick bulletproof glass in post offices (post offices because there are already plenty of them near to where everyone lives; we've already delegated part of passport processing to the post office, why not this?) and then require folks who legally buy guns to show up once a year to show they they still have possession of their gun. (Perhaps it may make more sense to collocate ATF personnel in the post offices.) If lawful owners don't appear with the guns they are registered as owning, they go onto a "no buy" list for guns until they do show up with their gun(s).
As goes funding such an initiative, I don't think the gun owners should be made to pay one red cent unless they fail to appear. There'll already be enough griping about the idea to begin with. Make folks pay to show up and prove they still have possession of their gun and there'll just be more.
You can't title a car without having possession of the thing. Why can't we apply that principle to guns?