Since 2010, Gun Stores Have Grown 4.7 Times Faster Than the Population
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I'm by no means opposed to private party gun sales, and my own anecdotal private gun buying experience has been that sellers are taking more steps to ensure they're selling to legitimate parties, i.e. only to CCW holders, or requiring an in-state drivers license, etc.
Such rigorous checks, how does anyone acquire a firearm in this country!
But I assume your reply was meant more as a "GOTCHA" snark comment than a real conversation starter.
Although it's illegal to "knowingly" sell against those rules, most buyers don't live by the "don't ask, don't tell" methodology. So in a lot of cases (don't have statistics on it), sellers will want to verify the buyer's home state, and probably even keep a receipt with the name incase the gun is used in a crime, and the ATF comes knocking at the buyer's door.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/11/federal-cour...
...the ATF comes knocking at the buyer's door.
Removing the seller removes supply and leaves demand in place, making illegal sales more profitable (and eliminating part of your competition); removing the buyer removes demand, making the supply less valuable (and possibly putting you out of business).
In the scenario of a transaction not documented in compliance with law, you wouldn't know where the buyer lives.
After all, we require cars to be insured, and with cars, violence is at least a byproduct of proper use. It's a no-brainer to do the same for guns.
Keeping guns around is risky, but right now society bears that risk, not the people who insist on keeping guns around.
As far as the comparison to cars, we require insurance for cars operated on public roads. Also with cars, the morbidity and mortality is overwhelmingly associated with accidents; with firearms, it's deliberate acts (either suicides or intentional shootings), neither of which would be covered by insurance.
I'm not sure I see what mandatory liability insurance is supposed to accomplish, since it would rarely seem to be applicable. The cost of the insurance, since it would likely rarely pay out, would seem to be too low to make gun ownership unaffordable (which would seem to be your goal, based on your earlier comment of "Sure, better get ready to buy a big insurance policy!").
Personally, I am pushing for a reduction in gun control across the board.
This would help eliminate private party sales to prohibited possessors, but it has the unfortunate (to gun control advocates) of making firearm sales more convenient and safe; their desired solution is of course to eliminate private sales.
AMA about FFL03 if you're curious, I guess.
I've only used my FFL03 once, to order a Mosin Nagant rifle, but it still worked out cheaper than a single gun transfer in California ($30 for the FFL03 vs. $60+ for a transfer at a gun store)
Part of having a FFL03 is the requirement that you maintain a "bound book" of all transactions done under that license. You can buy these online or print out sheets, but basically you must record who you bought it from, when, for how much, the serial number, etc.
It has not happened to me in 3 years of licensing, but the BATFE may request to inspect your bound book and your firearms to make sure everything's in order.
As for attaining the FFL, I filled out a form (ATF form 7CR) with a bunch of personal information and mailed it off with a $30 check. They did their background checks and after a month or two mailed back my license. You need to renew it every 3 years, but it's basically a matter of making sure the information is correct and sending in a check.
The benefits of having an FFL03:
- Eligible guns can be shipped direct to your door (no handguns shipped in California)
- You can buy C&R eligible guns out-of-state and bring them back with you.
In any case, you must provide the seller with a copy of your license prior to purchase.
ETA: other dealers do exist, yes, but nowhere close to the numbers of some years ago, and not to the point of making "the title totally misleading".
[1] http://missionlocal.org/2015/10/san-franciscos-last-gun-shop...
...then you inversely arguing that more guns does not make people unsafer.
Which is not true. More firearms makes for an inherently more dangerous society. Less firearms does indeed equal greater safety.
Even killing a person for their organs if it saves more people is a net gain in safety and health.
False analogy; not even close to the same thing.
This is not a Libertarian issue which loves to take major policy issues and apply niche cases to decide them.
Your right to steal property has been removed; it does not automatically threaten your right to vote.
Debate the main issue on the main points otherwise you are simply bikeshedding.
You said organ harvesting would be a net benefit to society; my argument is that it would not since we are killing a member of society purposefully.
confiscating an assault rifle would not instill the same fear as the Government killing your neighbor for his liver.
It just goes to show (in part) that legal gun ownership isn't really the main issue we have.
We forget to include the 2/3 of national gun related deaths that are suicides [2]. These people need help; surely many of those victims would still have committed suicide had they not obtained a firearm.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
Gun related suicides are the real problem (~20,000 out of the total ~30,000 annual USA gun related deaths). Nobody is focusing on that issue.
It is not applicable to nation-states which demonstrate considerable effect in reducing gun-related homicides. Even more so when discounting individual lone-wolf attacks of a terrorist nature (Brevik, Norway).
I could post sources but they are beyond dispute at this stage. (United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and most of the Western world).
Evidence is also lent by the nation-states with lax gun control legislation which dominate the league table of gun-related homicides, of which, the USA is one.
If the US had the same amount of gun violence in a day that the UK experiences in a year, it would be worldwide news.
The gun murder rate is in the top half, but solidly middle of the pack.
It doesn't show that.
You linked to a page that specifically had per capita murder rates (link [1]) and intentionally ignored it to make a point (since your point makes no sense if you look at per capita rates).
Two thirds (2/3) of all gun related deaths in the United States are suicides. That's roughly 20,000 gun related suicides annually. The odds of being killed in a mass public shooting are about 1 in 7,800,000[1]. Compared to your chances of being struck by lighting (about 1 in 1,000,000)[2], this is exceedingly rare.
Legal gun ownership is not our problem. Suicide clearly is, and we cannot be so naive to believe reducing the number of guns in the country will have any real effect on reducing the number of suicides.
Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.
These people need help, yet we're ignoring them because it's far easier to get riled up about people owning guns than it is to care about some faceless person committing suicide.
[1] http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2013/01/school-shootings-what...
[2] http://discovertheodds.com/what-are-the-odds-of-being-struck...
Suicide attempts by any method might be practically constant; alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down.
I don't see how that could be measured as a success. You still have mass amounts of people attempting to end their life every year.
Essentially we're all busy trying to treat the obvious symptoms, but we're ignoring the real cause of our problems.
Reducing legal gun ownership merely shifts the problem to another metric, but does not solve it.
Solve our suicide problem in the United States, and we've solved our gun problem (among others). (this hinges on the fact that there is some level of annual deaths that society considers reasonable and acceptable, as-is with any activity)
Legal firearm ownership isn't the real issue, yes. The problem that we just have so god damn many firearms and we continue to crank them out en masse whilst stoking fears of a tyrannical government instilling martial law and rounding people up into concentration camps(and by extension, our firearms are the only thing stopping this from happening). A sizable portion of the population all but worships firearms.
The fact that we are basically overflowing with firearms plays a huge part. Guns routinely go missing from gun stores. One of the rifles used by the Beltway snipers was amongst around 150 guns that went missing from one store in WA. Where do you think the black market guns(that bad guys will get their hands on anyways) come from in the first place? They were produced under legitimate pretenses that they were going to sell.
as established here: (HSPH site)
Item 2: data well over 20 years old
Item 3: data 18-27 years old
Item 4: data 12-14 years old, and guns in circulation have more than doubled since then
And, ironically, all of this dates from when the Feinstein bans were still in effect.
As to suicide rates, there are a lot of 'unsuccessful' suicide attempts. And many people do back out after taking pills for example. Which is why access to a gun does increases the risks of successful suicide.
IMO, this does not say much about the gun debate. But, https://xkcd.com/386/
It's about whatever level is acceptable to society.
We currently accept about 57,000 annual deaths caused by the common flu[1], a totally preventable and treatable illness. Heart disease claims over 600,000 lives annually in the US. [2]
Compared to other top killers, if we could reduce gun related deaths to ~10,000 annually, that's a huge victory. That equates to about 0.001% of our population annually, and at that rate it would take about 33,000 years to kill us all.
In no reality are we going to be able to make that number be zero. There must be some level that is acceptable (and arguably we've crossed that acceptable threshold currently).
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.h...
[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
I agree, you can see the US ranks fairly low on these statistics which may be good enough or a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... My point is saying something bad is at a tolerable level is different from saying it's not bad.
Spending more money promoting gun safety would likely save lives. As far as I can tell the cost benefit on that is simply money and would not impact freedom so the NRA may even approve. But, it's easy for people to look at things emotionally and say that's a waste of money because there is no problem.
PS: Your flu statistic is off. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979 Just Pneumonia is listed at 53,282 So Influenza is much lower than 57,000 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm
Though many of these deaths are complications not direct causes, you can die from AIDS and Pneumonia.
This is something I could fully get behind, and I believe it would have real positive effects for the general population.
I had the privilege to have grown up in a military family, and was active in Cub Scouts and then later Boy Scouts -- so I grew up around guns and was introduced at a very early age.
Gun safety needs to start early. In scouts, we had it beat into us how to treat a weapon, and how to be safe with one. It was taught the weapon was to be respected and treated as loaded even when you knew it was not.
Unfortunately, many gun owners don't have such training, and are unknowingly careless with their firearms. This includes people leaving loaded firearms in places where children can gain access, or showing off for their buddies, etc. Too often I've been at the local gun range and witnessed a new gun owner looking down the barrel or casually walking around with the gun's action closed and barrel "sweeping" bystanders. It's not their fault, they literally don't know any better... it's the lack of mandatory safety training (and at most ranges, you'll find staff and customers alike harshly coming down on these offenders in attempt beat into them some core safety rules).
Gun ranges are actually good examples of gun safety done right (most of the time). In the rare occasion where I've felt unsafe around a fellow shooter, the range staff have taken quick action. In general, even with all the guns at a gun range, it's one of the safest places to be around firearms.
Citation needed; that's not the evidence I've seen.
Mass shootings are extremely rare, but non-mass crime is not; guns are also a big factor in whether disputes over e.g. property (particularly drugs) become lethal.
Most of the victims of guns are not particularly sympathetic. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent their deaths.
These days we've done most of the easy/cheap things we can do to prevent human deaths; there are few low-hanging fruit left. So anything we can do to save lives will be expensive and/or involve sacrificing useful things. IMO gun laws are one of the cheaper ways to save lives that remain available (I'd also advocate making driving tests stricter, repealing jaywalking laws and adding an assumption of liability when a driver injures a pedestrian).
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suici...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/1...
Your point about CA having the most gun deaths falls flat: CA has far and away the most people in the US. Gun deaths per capita is the interesting, relevant statistic. California is actually pretty high here too; it has more gun deaths per capita than Texas, though gun ownership rates are far lower in CA. Anyone know why? My best guess is that the gun ownership rates rely on legal sales, but gun homicide rates don't. So California, because of strict rules, has proportionately more illegal guns (perhaps purchased in lax states, like Texas).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/12/us/gun-traffic...
Legal gun restrictions may not affect homicides much (I'm skeptical of this view, but it is an obvious fact that criminals don't always obey the law) but I would think that they would affect suicides a lot.
As for banning burgers and the rest, that's a totally separate question. One of the major problems with the American gun control debate is that all sides completely fail to separate questions of fact from questions of principle. The question of what effect a particular gun law will have is completely separate (although it may inform) the question of whether enacting that law is the right thing to do.
To say that it's better not to certain gun laws even though it would save lives, because the freedom is more important, is perfectly reasonable. But we have to actually figure out the "it would save lives" part first to get to that point in the discussion. If the law doesn't even work then you might as well not bother with the rest.
[1] The first one, which effectively outlawed both open carry and concealed carry of loaded guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/76717-gun-control...
The media manipulation that Obummer is coming to get people's guns is quite simply staggering.
It's because he would if he could. He just can't do it.
Including his public statements on the matter advocating private gun ownership. Certainly not his background as a Constitutional Law Professor.
Obama is, was and remains one of the most authoritative serving politicians on the Constitution and he has not indicated anywhere in his career that he intends to remove legal firearm ownership.
UC Law School statement: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track.[1]
[1]http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-...
Note: My guess is that he, like most sane adults, question the need for possession of a or multiple military-grade rifles or sub-machines capable of killing considerable numbers of human beings in a short space of time.
It's not about taking away the 2nd Amendment. It's about Amending it to make it compatible with modern life whilst maintaining the spirit of the law.
A weapon suited to military maneuvers of a fire team, platoon or larger formation attack.[1]
A weapon which falls outside the boundaries of reasonable use for home protection and includes modified components or additional lethality, magazine capacity or militarised amendments.[2]
[1] Military personnel are highly unlikely to conduct offensive action utilising sidearms. Sidearms are considered a defensive weapon system.
In addition, ammunition greater than the calibre 5.56mm is designed to kill human beings whilst 5.56 mm ammunition and below is designed to injure and maim but ultimately limit loss of life. Injury of military opponents on the battlefield is a greater asset than destruction.
[2] Home deterrence is as equally likely to be achieved whilst brandishing a single shot hunting rifle, sidearm or shotgun.
As recently as a couple of months ago on Marc Maron's podcast he advocated for Australian style gun control laws which included mandatory registration and confiscation as well as the banning of semi-automatic rifles.
Maybe that doesn't seem like "he wants to take your guns" to you, but it certainly does to many people.
Obviously, like most things, there's a spectrum and this falls somewhere between "he wants to take all your guns" and "free guns for everyone!" But to claim that there is zero evidence that he'd come and take (at least some of) people's guns if he had the political capital to do so is being just as disingenuous as the right-wingers.
Also, as a sibling post has indicated "military grade rifles" "submachine guns" and all sorts of other scary sounding things are regulated to hell and back and nearly impossible to obtain for your average citizen. They're also used in crime approximately none of the time. People who would like stronger regulation routinely and intentionally conflate real military (automatic or select fire) rifles with the semi-automatic civilian lookalikes.
As for Obama the constitutional law professor, I think actions speak louder than words. When he can't get what he wants from Congress, he's had no problem twisting the meaning of existing law to legislate from the White House.
The weapon itself represents the worst attitudes of the pro-gun lobby and form the crux of the argument about reasonable firearm protection.
I bet President Obama's conlaw course didn't even cover the second amendment. Mine didn't and I went to school after Heller and Mcdonald.
In fact, when SCOTUS finally acknowledged the individual right in 2008, four justices didn't agree with the decision. If Scalia or Thomas dropped dead, you'd see a whole new line of cases tightening gun rights.
>Note: My guess is that he, like most sane adults, question the need for possession of a or multiple military-grade rifles or sub-machines capable of killing considerable numbers of human beings in a short space of time.
Our problem is pretty much the opposite of this. It's the handguns that are the scourge of America.
If you want to solve gun violence in America you would have ban (and successfully confiscate) all hanguns and semi-auto rifles and shutguns. Cheap handguns are the source of essentially all gun crime if you round to the nearest 10%.
Both groups believe their object of interest in an intolerable evil that must be eliminated, and use incremental means to achieve their objective.
Before you go any farther, let me just state that I own several firearms myself. But I also feel that the idea of not regulating devices designed to penetrate materials, rend flash and snap bones from a distance(with great accuracy, over and over) is foolish.
I would also be curious to see where these stores are distributed geographically.
EDIT: Right after writing that I saw this article http://www.citylab.com/crime/2016/01/map-gun-dealers-starbuc... While not exactly what I was looking for it is an interesting comparison.