320 Years of History
Gold Member
No, it isn't. It's about collecting information so that one can use that information to subsequently take action against people who betray the trust placed in them when they chose to exercise their right to own a firearm.
And no, owners of black market guns are not going to register their guns. But by having stricter rules that allow for the easy tracking and verifying the flow of any given gun from lawful seller/owner to lawful owner/sell to, eventually, an unlawful owner tells us who is responsible for failing to exercise adequate control over their weapon.
The problem is not that lawful users obtain guns; it's that unlawful users do. The only way to find out what ostensibly lawful consumers are/have lapsed in their duty to make sure nobody "untoward" gets hold of their gun, is to require folks to document/attest to how and when they came by their gun and how and when they yielded/lost possession of it.
For example, if you buy a couple guns and register both of them, great. Enjoy your weapons. If one of them gets stolen and you don't report the theft, there comes about the first "building block" in a plausible argument that you (1) were negligent in exercising due care over securing your weapon, (2) conspired to allow your gun to be stolen. Now one theft is not really indicative of either, so the presumption of innocence still accrues to you. In time, you replace you stolen weapon and buy several others and register them. If they don't keep getting stolen, there's little cause to think you are routinely negligent or willfully part of a supply chain for getting legal guns into the hands of illegal users.
You are a silly person......registration is not needed to do anything you just suggested and in fact is not being used to stop criminals now........the gun traffickers that have been captured, that I have posted about....have all been captured by police using snitches and undercover buys..........not one was done by following a registered gun.
and losing a gun or having a gun stolen does not make you a criminal.....And if they catch multiple criminals who all say yeah...that guy gave me the gun....there was no need to register guns to find that out...is there.....and that is how all other crimes are solved...actual police work.....
the absolute only reason to register guns is to eventually ban them....as happened in Britain, Germany, Australia, California, New York......
.there is a history that shows what registration allows......and it always ends in confiscation.......
I'm not silly at all. A registry isn't ever going to stop criminals. All it's going to go is give law enforcement a place to look to identify where the process of maintaining security over one's firearm ownership/possession breaks down.
Pink:
Maybe that's because there's no efficient and effective way to "mine" the data about gun ownership to determine whether/if there are any patterns associated with one or a group of "somehow related" individuals' losing possession of guns they lawfully obtained.
Red:
Yes, that's true if one is limited to taking a reactive approach to identifying the nature of an illegal weapons trade supply chain. If one wants to take a proactive approach to finding out where to look before once legal weapons make their way to illegal users and then get used to commit a crime or kill another person, one must have a means for identifying logical places to look. A registry provides a useful tool for enabling a proactive approach to the problem.
Blue:
Slippery Slope.
What has happened in other places is no indication of what will happen in the U.S. Moreover, those places don't have our 2nd Amendment so it is no surprise that the outcome you identified was a possible outcome in those place.
Nobody wants to take away one's guns. Officials and everyone else has a vested interest in making sure where they are, in whose possession they are.
Unecessary…they arrest a criminal…they just ask them…where did you get the gun….my cousin bought it for me….no need to register any guns…..
If a gun is stolen….or lost…..registering it means nothing………since guns pass through the criminal underworld for years before they are caught by police…..
Well, that's what we've been doing up to this point. Now if you actually know that to be an effective means for identifying the supply chain elements that effect legal guns getting into the hands of illegal users, tell me what accounts for there having been ~190K guns reports lost/stolen, yet over six million crimes are committed with guns.
Surely you don't believe those 190K guns are being reused for all those 6M+ crimes. So tell me, where are the guns coming from that make their way into the hands of illegal users? Seeing as effectively all guns begin life as legal ones, there must be something (or some combination of things) going on in the supply chain that begins with a manufacturer and that ends with lawful sellers and/or buyers.
Take your "cousin" example. If someone's cousin is the one person in their family who has not chosen to pursue a life of crime and can buy a gun, that cousin can effectively supply a community of criminals, both those related to him/her and those not. By making the cousin register the weapons and show ongoing possession of it, the chances of noticing that s/he is a source of supply becomes easier to identify before the guns get used; thus bringing to a halt any further supply from that cousin.
You see the point of proactively "turning off the faucet" is to put illegal seekers of guns into a position where they face ever increasing risk to obtain a gun. The risk that is increasing is the risk that they will be caught in the process of trying to obtain a gun they are not otherwise capable of purchasing legally.
I haven't said it's an overnight solution. It's not. It's a tactic that will work in the long term. The same data mining tactics that marketers can use to predict people's buying habits and interests can be applied to the illegal gun trade. The information is already present. It's just a matter of "connecting the dots," so to speak.
The vast majority of crime guns are reused, and re sold to criminals. And again…….if a gun is lost or stolen ….so what? If it is found in the hands of a criminal…who can't own it in the first place…you just arrest them. No need to register guns to do that. If someone uses a gun to commit a crime…you arrest them….again, no need to register guns to do that.
Take your "cousin" example. If someone's cousin is the one person in their family who has not chosen to pursue a life of crime and can buy a gun, that cousin can effectively supply a community of criminals, both those related to him/her and those not. By making the cousin register the weapons and show ongoing possession of it, the chances of noticing that s/he is a source of supply becomes easier to identify before the guns get used; thus bringing to a halt any further supply from that cousin.
And then….when one of the criminals in the family is caught by the cops…they offer them time off for giving them the guy who gave them the gun…….that is how all police work actually works……and again…no need to register any guns to do that…they are already doing that…..
There are 357 million guns in private hands…….you want to register all of those guns to catch the few criminals……..to essentially turn law abiding citizens into felons if they don't register their legally owned guns, or fail to register the guns….you want to take law abiding people, put them in prison, take their money, take their guns and make it almost impossible for them to get another decent job, because they will be felons……..for simply failing to register a legal, constitutionally protected item…….when they have not used that gun to commit one crime, and have not used that gun to shoot one person…..you want to turn them into felons…….
At the same time…..an actual violent criminal…with an illegal gun, is Constitutionally protected from having to register their illegal gun (Haynes v. United States)…..
And you think that makes any sense?
And could you provide a link for 6 million crimes…you have probably been reading anti gun extremist propaganda…….and need to be corrected….
Red:
I confused the figure I'd seen from the BJS for total violent victimizations with the figure for gun related violent victimizations. The figure for gun-related crime in 2014 was about 466K. I also miscited the quantity of guns reported lost or stolen. The correct figure for 2014 is ~19K.
Blue:
References please.
It is implausible to me that the 19K guns reported lost or stolen experience an average 24-times-per-gun reuse rate.
Green:
Do you assert that there is no value to preemptively acting to deny access to guns to individuals who are not entitled to own them?
Every single thing you've described pertains to a reactive approach to managing the problem of guns being used illegally. A reactive approach necessarily entails a firearm's being used in the commission of a crime and does nothing to prevent a given crime from being committed with a firearm. A proactive/preemptive approach identifies the ways and means would be illegal gun users obtain guns and takes action to reduce and/or eliminate those ways and means.
One cannot identify the ways and means if one lacks visibility to the supply chain process(s) that allow them to exist; thus the point of registration. If one cannot see where the supply chain gaps are that allow guns to get to people who would use them for criminal purposes, one cannot close those gaps.
Pink:
The police lack the authority to decide whether or not to prosecute a crime. They lack the authority to reduce an admitted/convicted criminal's penalty period. How then can any police work actually work that way?
Orange:
I can't say I'd make failing to register a crime a felony, but I do want to see a significant penalty imposed for not registering and regularly demonstrating possession of one's legally purchased firearms. Something must account for the following fact pattern:
- all guns "begin life" as legal firearms;
- some 19K of them are reported as lost or stolen; and
- some 466K violent crimes occur using firearms.
I am not suggesting that registration will identify every single cause for the discrepancy, but it will over time identify patterns and gaps in the supply chain that help to identify what accounts for the discrepancy. Once one knows what accounts for the discrepancy, one can begin to deal with eliminating it.
Brown:
Haynes or no Haynes, individuals who lack the authorization to possess a firearm will not register any firearms they possess. That said, they only way they came to possess the firearms is due to one or more failings in the supply chain processes that are intended to deny them possession of that/those firearms. Those failings, gaps, in the supply chain exist either deliberately or accidentally. The deliberately caused gaps will appear as a pattern; the accidental ones will not. Both gaps can be overcome, albeit via different courses of action taken in response to discovering them.
If one is not going to require registration and recurring demonstration of possession by lawful holders of guns, how do you propose we proactively identify the gaps in the supply chain that allow unlawful holders to gain possession of firearms?