For those that don't understand the implication of this: Criminals get guns through burgling and robbery. By included such detailed information on who's a registered gun owner, where they live, etc. It makes the gun owner a lucrative target.
I'm staunchly pro regulation but this even I can't understand. Like someone just did SELECT * FROM GunOwnersDB and pushed is straight to the web.
Most criminals get guns through straw purchases. This is still a big screw up, but overall, the best way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to better regulate sales.
> An expert on crime gun patterns, ATF agent Jay Wachtel says that most guns used in crimes are not stolen out of private gun owners' homes and cars. "Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes," Wachtel said. Because when they want guns they want them immediately the wait is usually too long for a weapon to be stolen and find its way to a criminal.
> In fact, there are a number of sources that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands, with gun thefts at the bottom of the list. Wachtel says one of the most common ways criminals get guns is through straw purchase sales.
It really puzzles me why existing gun laws that everyone agrees on aren't enforced.
How are there so many repeat offenders that are violent with guns?
It seems to be some kind of trend to make guns a white-collar crime or something. Like, if you don't file the right paperwork before loaning someone a pistol at the range, then it's a crime; but if you mug someone its the gun's fault.
Because they will be found unconstitutional if challenged; the finesse is in getting the laws to stay on the books to have what effect they can, and to appease the voters who support those laws, while avoiding enforcement situations that would result in a direct challenge. It's the cat and mouse game that goes on between the branches of government.
Also see why some gun laws are written in an extremely obfuscated and convoluted manner, for example the law that became a point of contention in State v. Rittenhouse.
Because they will be found unconstitutional if challenged
Abramski v. United States suggests that SCOTUS recognizes that straw purchases are illegal. Although, I guess the current SCOTUS isn't above ignoring precedent that is popular with the people.
> Although, I guess the current SCOTUS isn't above ignoring precedent that is popular with the people.
I assume you are referring to roe v wade, which is a case of where the precedent was wrong ín the first place (Abortion was pretty much banned everywhere in common law, so there was no precedent of it being an unenumerated right, for example) and was kept as a precedent because it was a precedent (ignoring the lack of underlying constitutionality)
There was also a ruling last week explicitly overturning certain gun regulation laws. See: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen [0], which overturns a law that has stood since 1911 in New York State. Based on Gallup data [1], 52% of Americans want stricter gun laws, and only 11% want less strict gun laws. The decision makes it much harder to impose additional restrictions, and will require some states to lessen restrictions.
0: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf 1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
You’re worried about a law used by responsible gun owners. Criminals won’t apply for a CCW and will just carry anyway. How does the supreme court ruling out more guns into criminals hands to justify your concern?
Well, kinda. Usually it is the case that the underlying legal framework changed. For example, a new amendment or new federal law. In this case, no such thing has happened.
> It really puzzles me why existing gun laws that everyone agrees on aren't enforced.
Ask people if they want gun laws enforced, and they say yes. Ask people if they like it when prosecutors charge a guy with 30 crimes for committing one act of armed robbery, and many start singing a different tune.
This conversation started from straw purchases though. I think what people get annoyed with is that, when someone is charged with a crime, the most serious crime involved often _requires_ other crimes to be committed in process so, by charging for necessary precursors to crime, you're effectively just increasing the penalty for the main crime.
In this case though, straw purchases _are_ the main crime and there is a real lack of enforcement for that particular crime.
> I think what people get annoyed with is that, when someone is charged with a crime, the most serious crime involved often _requires_ other crimes to be committed in process so, by charging for necessary precursors to crime, you're effectively just increasing the penalty for the main crime.
Such a subcrime would be a "lesser included offense"; you can charge for both offenses, but you can't get a conviction on both of them at once.
That's not quite correct. A lesser included offense (LIO) must have a strict subset of elements of the greater offense and/or a less culpable mens rea. For example, possession of cocaine is an LIO of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute; homicide by reckless and wanton disregard of human life (felony murder/third degree murder) is an LIO of homicide by malice aforethought (premeditated murder/capital murder/first degree murder). In other words, LIOs are those offenses which are logically necessary to commit the larger offense. Charging both an offense and its LIOs is what, in our jurisdiction, we call multiplicity.
What this discussion touches on is not multiplicity but unreasonable multiplication of charges (at least in my jurisdiction we call it that). The test here is not the logical question of whether one necessitates the other by definition; it's the factual question of whether the offenses are part of substantially the same transaction. For example, a prosecutor might charge perjury, fraud, and larceny, wrt someone swearing to some materially false fact and fraudulently obtaining someone else's property with intent to permanently deprive them of it. These three offenses are not subsets of one another, but are closely related; it isn't logically necessary to commit perjury to commit fraud, in the abstract, but in a particular case that might be the mechanism by which one commits fraud. In my jurisdiction, UMC charges can stay on the charge sheet (perhaps the jury finds guilt on one but not all?) but, if convicted of more than one, they are merged for sentencing.
if a straw purchased gun is not used in a crime, how would it come to anybody's attention?
Well, let's say the original purchaser happens to be suspected of a crime (completely unrelated to a straw purchase, let's say bank robbery) and during a search of that purchaser's house, federal agents find a receipt for a check with "Glock 19" written on the memo line, it'll get their attention [0]. Very likely scenario :)
Other than that, good old fashioned surveillance plus a getting a confession [1]. I've also heard ads on the radio for a tipline to tell cops about straw purchases. No idea how well that works, though.
People get annoyed when gun laws are less likely to be enforced against somebody who committed numerous other crimes, than against somebody who didn't commit any other crimes.
> Ask people if they like it when prosecutors charge a guy with 30 crimes for committing one act of armed robbery
This is usually resolved by not adding the jail times for the crimes, but by doing MAX(a, b, ...) on them. Prosecutors will suddenly only care about the most important ones.
Yeah but I see no problem with prospecting the guy who bought it for him. If you illegally buy a felon a gun and it’s used in a crime maybe that should be prosecuted.
Because Republicans refuse to fund or empower any law enforcement agency to enforce the law or study how well they're enforcing it and the impacts of it, at least at the federal level.
The gun problem is synonymous with the Republican problem.
I don't see it this way. You just have to see what criminals get away with in Chicago. There is almost no prosecution of gun crimes. People get laughable sentences or none at all.
I'm an independent, I've only ever voted for Democratic candidates, etc.
Because blaming Republicans is just a canned argument at this point, can you unpack the mechanism a bit more? Are Democrats trying really hard to fund ATF, FBI, etc and Republicans are blocking it? Can you substantiate this claim with examples? I don't necessarily doubt it, but without substance this just reads like vapid flamebait.
All they'd have to do is fund the prosecutors since they currently only prosecute like 3% of the known gun crimes federally. Semi-sarcastically, defunding the ATF might actually help (see Ruby Ridge, Waco, walking guns at the border, full autos stolen from ATF agents, etc). If you know anyone who has worked with federal LE, ATF and DEA will typically show up at the top of their "cowboy" list.
This is one of the areas where I've hyperfocused for years.
A straw purchase is when a gun is purchased on behalf of someone else. The person buying the gun isn't using their own money, or the person they're giving it to has traded them something of value.
A gift doesn't involve an exchange of reciprocal value. In other words, I can legally take you into a gun store, let you shop, buy the gun for you, then hand it to you. In practice, a gift purchase is almost always when the recipient isn't there, because it looks like a straw purchase.
Ironically, if you take someone shopping to buy them a gun as a gift, by law you're the one that's supposed to have the background check run - not the recipient. Almost all FFLs will deny the sale if you tell them that you're buying it as a gift for someone who is present at the time, and there is no easy and legal way to run a background check on the intended recipient.
If memory serves, a cop was convicted a few years ago of a straw purchase after buying a "blue label" (police discount price) Glock for someone else. That person gave the cop the money, the cop bought it, then gave it to the person. The actual buyer in that case was not a prohibited person, and the straw purchase itself was the only crime committed.
(Edit: See reply. Counterintuitively, a purchaser intending to gift a firearm is the transferee as far as Form 4473 is concerned.)
> Ironically, if you take someone shopping to buy them a gun as a gift, by law you're the one that's supposed to have the background check run - not the recipient.
That is contrary to what is on ATF Form 4473 [0]. Form 4473, question 21.a., asks if the purchaser is the actual transferee of the firearm. The form makes it very clear that it is a crime to answer "yes" if the buyer is purchasing the firearm to transfer to another person.
Actually on the bottom on the form it says: For question 21a if you’re buying it as a bonafide gift YOU are the actual transferee. It’s legal. Too lazy to look it up but I’ve done this many times you can google it
A gift would still follow the state's laws on firearms transfers and eligibility, which can involve various forms and middlemen. With a straw purchase you're just handing the gun to someone else.
It's more of a gray area when it's an intrafamilial transfer.
It isn't. Unless someone was operating a crazy and expensive free guns charity, you are not "handing the gun to someone else". You are _reselling_ the gun to someone else who could not legally purchase or is avoiding a paper trail in order to commit a crime.
Sometimes that's even a crime without the inability to legally purchase or avoid a paper trail - just lying about the recipient and engaging in a private sale can be criminal even if both parties are eligible for the firearm purchase
It's a thoughtcrime and a terrible law because of it. There's a ton of these w.r.t. gun laws in the US. Say the wrong thing and you get ten, say something slightly different and you get zero.
Generally by volume. One or two? Sure, you might be a really generous friend. Fifty? Probably a bit too generous - something fishy is going on. Of course, without a federal firearms registry, its difficult to quickly just flag people who are buying guns at an unusual rate.
As far as actually catching perpetrators? Again, without a database its usually down to undercover work and tips.
You mostly gotta rely on confessions. Particularly dumb criminals might leave a money trail though (like in Abramski v. US). Also, I think if you gift a gun to someone who isn't legally able to own it, that technically counts as a straw purchase. Different states have different rules/laws for gifting guns (including different rules for different types of guns), which makes your question hard to answer directly.
Right, but if someone "gifts" their buddy a $1000 handgun, and the cops find out a few weeks later, how are the cops supposed prove if cash went in the opposite direction?
I hope this isn't offensive, but that is a relatively "programmer" like way to respond. You rarely have 100%, airtight evidence of crimes. That is why the standard of proof is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as determined by a jury.
I have my doubts that in the situation that you described that there would be interest and motivation to prosecute, but if that buddy had gone on to commit a felony, or this was a repeated offense, then they would use warrants, subpoenas, and other standard prosecutorial tools to try to find the cache, get electronic records, and compel witnesses to testify. As someone else noted, all that's required is falsifying the the purchase details (Abramski vs US).
Easy in theory, a bona-fide gift means money/goods doesn't change hands. Straw purchases require a transaction. In practice it can be more complicated to prove if people lie.
>Straw purchases... when someone else purchases a gun for you. Illegal in every state, and federally.
Nuance is required. In Florida, for example, it's legal for person to person private sale of firearms. There are restrictions that you're legally obligated to follow. Pulled this quick list from a search; https://www.pumphreylawfirm.com/blog/can-i-sell-a-gun-privat.... "Straw purchases" then means there has to be intent to provide it to someone free of charge (hard to prove) in addition to providing the firearm to someone for which it is illegal for them to own one. Otherwise it's merely a private sale.
> "Straw purchases" then means there has to be intent to provide it to someone free of charge
This isn't a very good definition of a straw purchase. Buying a gun as a gift for someone is legal (federally, at least) and usually not considered a straw purchase. It's a straw purchase if you aren't the actual buyer, but are acting as an agent for somebody else, whether or not they could have bought the gun themselves legally, and whether or not money changes hands. It is, of course, up to the prosecution to prove you were acting as an agent rather than gifting, or buying for yourself and then later deciding to resell.
Why did you snip "in addition to..." from the quote and argue to the least important and hardest to prove part? The meat is in the rest of the sentence.
That's incorrect. The statement was only true under both conditions. The user chose to chop one half off to argue the whole. If you have citable evidence to the contrary, please provide. The link I provided cited actual Florida and Federal law.
To buy a gun legally you have to pass the NICS background check through the ATF. People who legally cannot own guns attempt to buy them and fail the NICS all the time. Felons, violent criminals, etc. Attorneys general don't find it valuable to go after these people.
A straw purchase is when a gun is bought for someone who is not allowed to own one (a "prohibited person"). Commonly, one person supplies the money for the gun, while the person with a clean criminal history is the one who fills out the background-check form.
Straw purchases can happen if you are selling privately too. You should take a few steps to make sure the buyer is legit. Ask to see a concealed carry permit or FOID card. Or ask for a driver's license, and put the info down on a bill of sale that you then both sign. Keep the bill of sale forever, in case the gun should ever be stolen or used in a crime - it can help get the gun back to the new owner if the ATF does a trace.
> A straw purchase is when a gun is bought for someone who is not allowed to own one
Nope - it doesn't matter whether or not the actual buyer can legally purchase or possess it. A straw purchase is a crime regardless.
> You should take a few steps to make sure the buyer is legit.
Morally, yes. Practically, no.
You're only committing a crime if you know or should reasonably know the person you're selling to is prohibited. You have no legal duty to ask, and asking only proves that you considered the possibility, and could be construed as evidence that you were suspicious.
Yes, this comes down to very specific state rules.
In college I would find deals on guns on Backpage, buy them cheap, and then resell them at a much higher listed price.
No background checks were required for private sales, so all I had to check was that the person had a driver's license for the correct state when I sold it, and even then no bill of sale or info was required.
Make your selling process known, and you'll get some very sketchy buyers that are willing to pay high prices, and it's all technically legal as the seller as you don't even need to ask if the buyer is legally able to purchase a firearm, and it helps fund college tuition.
That, however, is acting as an unlicensed dealer and is federally illegal. The exception would be if you legitimately wanted to own them and happened to want to sell them later. The profit being a happy accident in that case.
I never had any evidence of the buyers not being legally able to own them. I simply checked to make sure they were a resident of the state via their driver's license.
Having a higher willingness to pay could be a whole bunch of things; I just found there was a curious number of buyers that would pay over the going rate, which in a free market may have meant there was a reason for it.
I also take ideological issue with the felons cannot own firearms rules. Imo, if you've served your time, your debt to society was served, and your rights should be restored.
I was never under the impression that these weapons would be used for violent crime.
> for someone who is not allowed to own one (a "prohibited person").
The way it works with firearms, purchasing a gun on behalf of somebody else (not as a gift) is illegal regardless of that other person's legal status as a gun owner. If you and I are both allowed to buy and own guns but for whatever reason agree that you will give me money and I'll buy a gun for you, that's illegal.
> You should take a few steps to make sure the buyer is legit. Ask to see a concealed carry permit or FOID card.
I've known people who buy and sell quite a few guns, and even though there was no legal requirement for them to do so, this was their policy. Show them a matching permit to acquire or carry permit and driver's license, or they wouldn't sell a gun. Nothing was written down, but if you weren't willing to show matching paperwork and an ID, they wouldn't sell it to you. And I think in a few cases, if the buyer was being unusually squirrely and evasive, they didn't even get that far.
Very, very few gun owners have any desire to sell guns to prohibited persons.
It's a bad idea to check ID. If you check and get it wrong it may conceivably be used against you. The law does not require you to check and you should never check. Simply refuse to sell if they plainly state they are a felon or not a state resident and sell with no questions in every other case.
I find it hard to believe that one would be in more legal hot water for having checked as a matter of policy and having missed a high quality fake ID or something, than for not having checked at all.
I know an awful lot of gun owners, and I can't think of one who would sell a gun to someone they suspected wasn't permitted to own one.
The law doesn't say you have to check so you don't. They'd basically have to tell you they're a prohibited person for a DA to have an airtight case.
I bring this up because people like yourself slowly erode rights by doing "the right thing" when that thing is giving up something you will never get back.
To clarify why I think you might be punished if you check and mess up: that's kinda how it works for rendering aid in a crisis. People have refused to render aid because they feared they would be sued. Even if you expect an airtight acquittal, it costs money, and you may not actually have enough money to prove your innocence if the other person has more.
Buying with the intent of selling to somebody else is extremely illegal and taken very seriously. Go to your LGS you will almost certainly see a sign or notice warning it.
It is, lying on a federal form, its this question on the 4473:
21.a. Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form and any continuation sheet(s) (ATF Form 5300.9A)?
Warning: You are not the actual transferee/buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are
not the actual transferee/buyer, the licensee cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.
If you answer No to this question, the transfer cannot continue.
There is an actual difference and legal difference between "Buying on behalf of someone else" and "Buying for the intent of resale". The latter may not (or may!) know the identity of the eventual owner in advance. Buying guns as a speculative investment is worthwhile. It is totally legal to know that "This collector/prop house is looking for $RAREGUN and will pay me $12k for it", find it and buy it for $10k, and purchase it. You know your buyer, you may even have gotten an explicit solicitation for the item in question, but the unsurety of when the second sale will be made (even if you're very confident of it) makes it not a straw purchase.
If you’re buying guns for resale, you may need an FFL. In the example you provided of buying a 10k rifle because you know some collector will pay 12k for it, I would think an FFL 01 is appropriate.
It may not be a straw purchase, but it’s also not primarily for your collection. The threshold of “business” or “dealing” seem intentionally vague by the ATF, but what you described can be interpreted as illegal without an FFL. My two cents anyway.
Absolutely; there's a serious gray area that's fairly easily resolved by paying a FFL licensed dealer to facilitate both transfers. But it's absolutely not the case that a private citizen can't buy with the intent to resell. It is absolutely illegal to use someone else's money to buy a gun and immediately give it to them. Between that, there's a nice wide gradient.
True, but the ability to privately sell firearms creates plausible deniability for a lot of straw purchases. A seller could have claimed to lawfully sold it to some other resident in a state with no background checks. If the gun ended up in a criminal's hands it must have been that person who sold it, or maybe a whole bunch of intermediate buyers.
The jury isn't just there to protect you. It's also there to send you away when you are obviously trying to hack the system.
"Oh, gee, I just bought the gun on Tuesday and sold it on Thursday for no particular reason. It just happens that the gun appreciated by 20% during that time and my friend really didn't want to spend so much gas getting all the way to the gun store anyway. Who would have guessed such a fine person would be a felon? Same for the other 14 counts."
The average time between when a gun is bought from an FFL and subsequently used in crime is something like 20 years IIRC. The person who bought it new could more often than not easily claim to have sold it years ago, and passed through countless intermediate owners.
All transfer across state lines must go through an FFL and a NICS check by law. The only sale/transfer allowed without a NICS check is between two residents of the same state when the seller has no reason to believe or suspect that the purchaser is prohibited. Realistically that leaves a very narrow window of purchases that are unlawful but the seller has plausible deniability.
> The only sale/transfer allowed without a NICS check is between two residents of the same state when the seller has no reason to believe or suspect that the purchaser is prohibited.
Say the seller transfers a gun they've owned for several years to an out-of-state prohibited person. The gun turns up in crime. The original purchases lies and says they sold it just one year after ownership to an in-state person, and haven't possessed this gun for several years. There's no requirement for sellers to keep record of who they sold firearms to, so it's hard to prove this defense wrong.
It is legal to buy a firearm under your name as a gift. Straw purchase has a very specific meaning. Buying on a Monday then selling to someone on Tuesday is not a straw purchase.
A straw purchase is someone asking you to purchase on their behalf and doing things like providing funds, telling you how to fill out the form and/or coming to the store with you. Those are the people that end up convicted.
You can think of it similar to tax evasion. Failing to declare $10,000 in income because you didn't understand the tax code is not a crime. Intentionally hiding $10,000 of income is.
If that is your earnest intent when you bought it, then ostensibly it would be legal. However...
Laws aren't computer code; gray areas get hashed out in court. How often you've done this and the amount of time that passed between the purchase and sale would be considered, as well as any paper trail you might have left. Simply put, there is no firm answer to your question. Talk to a real lawyer if you think you're wading into a gray area like that.
> Laws aren't computer code; gray areas get hashed out in court. How often you've done this and the amount of time that passed between the purchase and sale would be considered, as well as any paper trail you might have left. Simply put, there is no firm answer to your question. Talk to a real lawyer if you think you're wading into a gray area like that.
Exactly.
My point was that GP skipped straight over the fact that this is significantly difficult to prosecute, and stated with no evidence that the federal authorities must "not be serious" about it.
Buying a gun for somebody else is legal if it's a gift. But if it's a "gift" in exchange for some favor or service, that doesn't count. No quid pro quo.
I disagree. It's a useful clarification. The OP didn't say "most" but neither did they say "some" or use any language to that effect. A naive reading could even take it as an implicit "all."
>There is no regulation that can actually stop it.
As a gun owner, sure there is. If your gun shows up in a crime, you get indicted as well. That would put a big dent in people being willing to buy guns for others.
Also making sure there are no secondary sales without background checks, which is supported by (I think?) the majority of Americans would help.
Repeat offenders at losing guns lose the right to any guns.
All of these would stop repeat offenders, and if I recall, the majority of straw sales are repeat offenders knowing they don't get in much or any trouble buying guns this way.
>Also making sure there are no secondary sales without background checks, which is supported by (I think?) the majority of Americans would help.
It's only supported by the majority of Americans until you ask them about specific situations and policy implications. Instead of a generic "Do you support universal background checks?" question they should try asking "Should you have to perform a background check to loan a gun to your roommate to take to the range?" or "Should you have to perform a background check to loan a gun to your next door neighbor who is worried her violent stalker ex-boyfriend has figured out where she lives?" and you'll find much lower levels of support.
> "Should you have to perform a background check to loan a gun to your roommate to take to the range?" or "Should you have to perform a background check to loan a gun to your next door neighbor who is worried her violent stalker ex-boyfriend has figured out where she lives?"
Yes to both. It takes 30 seconds to run the check. They're not required to interview kindergarden classmates or something crazy.
It takes a trip to your nearest FFL willing to run a background check, and who will usually charge for it. And oops! Your next-door neighbor's name matched a different person who has a criminal record, and she now has to wait three days to transfer the gun. And oops again! She already got raped and beaten to death by her ex in the time it took for NICS to clear her.
The idea that a seller/gifter of a gun should be responsible for doing a full background check on a recipient seems preposterous.
As far as I know, in Massachusetts anybody who has a license to carry has already passed a background check. If the recipient has an LTC, then you know they're okay. And as the transferer, you most likely want to be entering the transaction into the state's database of ownership ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h transfers so that if something nefarious is done with the gun, they don't come looking at you.
Of course the waiting time (and possible hoops, depending on city/town/class/race/etc) to originally get your license to carry dovetails right into your (hyperbolic) point. And I don't particularly enjoy having to register personal property with the state, nor needing a license to possess personal property. And overall Massachusetts is known as one of the most restrictive firearm regimes in the nation. Still I just feel its worth looking at how existing regimes tackle the problem, to see where their pain points and loopholes are. I feel electronic databases would be a lot less onerous in general if they were built with foundational cryptographic privacy, with a public audit log for every access.
Overall I feel like we'd be better off focusing on fixing our society's pervasive mental health problem rather than turning the whole country into a padded room by myopically focusing on inanimate objects. Mentally healthy people don't want to shoot up schools/trains/churches.
(I'm aware my comment is full of non-partisan nuance. Downvote away)
Alternatively, we can continue to have mass killings, single killings, and lots of crime by guns bought by people that should have been blocked.
For every person you cherry picked getting raped that would have stopped the assailant with a gun, many more are killed under the current system.
Instead of picking outlying events and trying to put them forth as common, why not look at common events to start with? You'll get much better policy and understanding from that.
> For every person you cherry picked getting raped that would have stopped the assailant with a gun, many more are killed under the current system.
The CDC disagrees with you. In the study that is fairly well known at this point, the CDC estimates 500k defensive gun uses every year in the US. Note that I am giving you the lowest number in their range. However there are about 40k deaths due to gun usage every year. 75% of all deaths due to gun usage are suicides. In actuality, there are 10k deaths due to gun usage we need to look at during discussion of gun regulation in the United States.
The CDC does not agree with you, because you are grossly misrepresenting what they said [1].
When they cited a number they gave a range: 60,000 to 2.5 million. Quite the uncertainty there. They've since replaced the wording on that page entirely, because the CDC doesn't actually know: the CDC is effectively prohibited from investigating gun violence [2]
We completely need to look at suicides as well. At least 2/3 of suicides are based on a fleeting desire, which means interrupting the act without any other intervention will save a life. Making it harder to commit suicide with a gun could save 20k+ people a year. Which actually makes it (from a public health perspective) even more important than preventing all other forms of gun death.
Also, since I've never heard of this CDC study, you should provide a link if you plan to cite it. I think it's more common in your social circle/internet bubble than with the general population.
No, we will not regulate gun ownership based off suicides. Suicidal people will do what they do regardless of if guns are legal. Do not remove rights of others because of an overwhelmingly small minority.
Fund mental health if you want to help the suicidal people.
I've heard this argument before and it seems off to me somehow, but I haven't quite put my finger on it.
> At least 2/3 of suicides are based on a fleeting desire
How do you know?
I'm not being snarky. I'm genuinely curious.
We obviously can't ask someone who was successful at committing suicide about their mental/emotional state, eh?
For the sake of discussion let's assume the point.
These suicides by gun due to "a fleeting desire" would be presumably among people who already had guns? How fleeting is the desire?
Is the idea that if someone who has been struck by the "fleeting desire" to kill themself has to go get a gun first then there's time for the "fleeting desire" to wear off before they can act on it?
Non-snarky answer: You look at the rates of people attempting suicide a second time if their first attempt was interrupted, and you do your best to identify only the serious first attempts.
The point isn't that people buy a gun to commit suicide, it's that if you already have a gun you will use it when overwhelmed as opposed to attempting to kill yourself in a less successful way.
FWIW the argument still seems weak to me. The methodology here is still unclear:
> You look at the rates of people attempting suicide a second time if their first attempt was interrupted, and you do your best to identify only the serious first attempts
You find people that definitely attempted suicide and were interrupted, then track them (for how long?) to see if they try again? An attempt is counted as "serious" only if they try again (within some time frame)?
Are you saying that 2/3 of them don't try again?
- - - -
> if you already have a gun you will use it when overwhelmed as opposed to attempting to kill yourself in a less successful way.
Okay, but then what's the intervention here?
Are you saying that we remove guns from everyone just in case someone has a really bad day and offs themself? (I do not mean to sound flippant, I hope I'm not coming across that way. I'm thinking of Hunter Thompson here, RIP, who arguably should not have had access to firearms in his condition.)
> Are you saying that 2/3 of them don't try again?
Yes.
> ou find people that definitely attempted suicide and were interrupted, then track them
Pretty much. Obviously, people's natural lifespans exceed how long these studies have been going on, so there's a natural timelimit. I think most studies look 5 years out.
> An attempt is counted as "serious" only if they try again
No, the exact opposite. You try to find out if the interrupted attempt was serious. I'm saying that the 2/3 number isn't counting people who idly speculate about suicide or write a note. It's counting people who take steps that realistically can be interpreted as an attempt.
Of those people who made a "serious" attempt, 2/3 will not try again.
> Okay, but then what's the intervention here?
I mean, if you're jumping from "suicides are irrelevant" to "what policies can prevent them", I'm not sure. If we didn't care about self-defense, there would be lots of policies (requiring guns to be locked up at ranges or something), but people do care about self-defense. And any barrier that will prevent suicide likely will prevent that. Consider some magic program that assesses mental state. You're probably under similar emotional stress in both suicide and self-defense.
But as is, that does seem to be one thing "red flag" laws are for.
The most 'common' event for someone buying a gun is that the shoot it at the range a few times a year, maybe hunt with it occasionally or put it in their waistband as a means of self-defense. If you want common to the exclusion of the less common, there it is.
If you're not involved in gang banging / drugs then in the extremely uncommon chance you die by firearm, it's most likely it was a choice of suicide. In Europe and many other developed nations with harsh firearm laws, suicide via physician is an option so a more comforting and society-approved solution rather than firearm becomes more favored for suicide.
> Alternatively, we can continue to have mass killings, single killings, and lots of crime by guns bought by people that should have been blocked.
Sounds possible in theory, but not so much in practice. Let's say I live my whole life as a model citizen, then one day buy a gun with the intent to kill a bunch of people. No background check in the world would deny my purchase. What now?
In any case, your hypothetical model citizen wouldn’t be bothered by background checks and waiting periods, so there’s no harm in restrictions that prevent crimes that would be stopped by a mandatory cooling off period.
The Vegas shooter had no priors and no discernable motive, so people definitely do "just snap." The Texas clocktower shooter also appears to have gone crazy over a relatively short period of time due to a brain tumor.
It is far, far more likely that the domestic/partner violence perpetrator will have a gun than the use of a gun to defend against such violence by female victims.
It is quite common that the perpetrators of mass shootings have previously had the police called to them by their partner. Rarely is anything done about this, but that's the motivation for "red flag" laws.
There were reasons things were rarely done. Most importantly, under 18 or non-married calls didn't count as red flags. Congress just passed a bill fixing those two issues going forward that Biden is extremely likely to sign into law.
> Yes to both. It takes 30 seconds to run the check. They're not required to interview kindergarden classmates or something crazy.
In CA it takes two visits to an FFL for each transfer (to them and back to you) with a 10 day waiting period in between the two visits and a $35 fee. Your "it takes 30 seconds" tells me you have no idea the reality of how gun laws affect the law abiding.
That sounds like you're describing a current transfer regime. We're talking about requiring background checks. An NICS background check completes in 30 seconds.
California's more draconian rules than what's been proposed has no bearing on anything.
California's (and other states') rules have a huge bearing on the issue, because they're clear examples of what gun control advocates are trying to implement since they're what they've actually implemented.
To have access to NICS you need to be an FFL. So you at least have to go to an FFL. They will charge you to do the check and federally required paperwork (which takes longer than 30 seconds). The only thing that the other poster said that isn't something universal at the federal level is the waiting period.
Nevada built their own background check system on top of the federal system and already legally requires private sellers to run one. Therefore the costs won't increase by a federal law requiring background checks and the length of time can decrease is the Nevada public safety department is better funded.
That's a bit of a straw man. Even closing loopholes around private sales would improve the situation somewhat, and a majority of Americans definitely support that.
Not at all, the current state-level bans on private sales only make exceptions for immediate family members and a few other specific groups/situations, they would make the behavior in my questions a felony.
Here's Washington State's exceptions (note that c would not apply to my violent ex scenario because the violent ex would need to be actually present at the time of the transfer and threatening harm):
(4) This section does not apply to:
(a) A transfer between immediate family members, which for this subsection shall be limited to spouses, domestic partners, parents, parents-in-law, children, siblings, siblings-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, first cousins, aunts, and uncles, that is a bona fide gift or loan;
(b) The sale or transfer of an antique firearm;
(c) A temporary transfer of possession of a firearm if such transfer is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to the person to whom the firearm is transferred if:
(i) The temporary transfer only lasts as long as immediately necessary to prevent such imminent death or great bodily harm; and
(ii) The person to whom the firearm is transferred is not prohibited from possessing firearms under state or federal law;
(d) A temporary transfer of possession of a firearm if: (i) The transfer is intended to prevent suicide or self-inflicted great bodily harm; (ii) the transfer lasts only as long as reasonably necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm; and (iii) the firearm is not utilized by the transferee for any purpose for the duration of the temporary transfer;
(e) Any law enforcement or corrections agency and, to the extent the person is acting within the course and scope of his or her employment or official duties, any law enforcement or corrections officer, United States marshal, member of the armed forces of the United States or the national guard, or federal official;
(f) A federally licensed gunsmith who receives a firearm solely for the purposes of service or repair, or the return of the firearm to its owner by the federally licensed gunsmith;
(g) The temporary transfer of a firearm (i) between spouses or domestic partners; (ii) if the temporary transfer occurs, and the firearm is kept at all times, at an established shooting range authorized by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which such range is located; (iii) if the temporary transfer occurs and the transferee's possession of the firearm is exclusively at a lawful organized competition involving the use of a firearm, or while participating in or practicing for a performance by an organized group that uses firearms as a part of the performance; (iv) to a person who is under eighteen years of age for lawful hunting, sporting, or educational purposes while under the direct supervision and control of a responsible adult who is not prohibited from possessing firearms; (v) under circumstances in which the transferee and the firearm remain in the presence of the transferor; or (vi) while hunting if the hunting is legal in all places where the person to whom the firearm is transferred possesses the firearm and the person to whom the firearm is transferred has completed all training and holds all licenses or permits required for such hunting, provided that any temporary transfer allowed by this subsection is permitted only if the person to whom the firearm is transferred is not prohibited from possessing firearms under state or federal law;
(h) A person who (i) acquired a firearm other than a pistol by operation of law upon the death of the former owner of the firearm or (ii) acquired a pistol by operation of law upon the death of the former owner of the pistol within the preceding sixty days. At the end of the sixty-day period, the person must either have lawfully transferred the pistol or must have contacted the department of licensing to notify the department that he or she has possession of the pistol and intends to retain possession of the pistol, in compliance with all federal and state laws; or
(i) A sale or transfer when the purchaser or transferee is a licensed collector and the firearm being sold or transferred is a curio or relic.
>they would make the behavior in my questions a felony.
They would also stop of lot of existing homicides, which are also felonies already being committed. Your cases are honestly quite contrived and rare, especially against the number of homicides and other crimes using straw purchases.
I think most people would trade common case homicides for rarer cases you pick. The stats are pretty clear on which cases are most common. That is why the support for such laws is so widespread and bipartisan.
The cases are so contrived they do not happen. Just think of the situation he's proposing: your neighbour who you apparently trust enough to give a loaded gun too, to potentially kill a person with, does not have a gun themselves but apparently is completely capable of using it?
And you know, this problem has to be solved right now: too much of an imposition to look out for them while they go and buy a gun from one of the numerous gun stores - but giving away a loaded gun, that's what you want to do (no one would do this in this scenario).
>It's only supported by the majority of Americans until you ask them about specific situations and policy implications.
It also seems you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. If you're going to ask questions designed to pull support away with cherry picked circumstances, then you should also ask cherry picked questions leading the other way, like pointing out how many mass shootings are done with guns that bypassed background checks.
So cite your poll please. I'd like to see the questions.
Or you can ask a fairly neutral question, like [1], a poll with the question "How much do you support or oppose each of the following? Requiring background checks on all gun sales"
> [...] like pointing out how many mass shootings are done with guns that bypassed background checks.
Can you name some? Better yet, can you point to data on how often this has happened?
Off the top of my head, I can think of several instances where the guns were legally purchased and the shooter passed the background checks. I can think of a couple where they were stolen, and one where they were taken from a family member after that family member's murder. I can't think of any where the firearm(s) were acquired exclusively through private sale.
I hate to be the one, but he's right: more background checks is hilariously unpopular outside of blue cities and states. A lot of people in red states, even in cities, think that the gun regulations we have are too strong.
Anecdote: I know many gun owners who are fine with universal background checks if they can be performed at home for free in a reasonable amount of time. I don't understand why people who want gun regulation aren't pushing for this. Free, easy, and fast background checks.
And indeed, it's when you mention the fact that UBCs require a gun registry to be enforceable that people really start opposing them. (The current background check system was passed with the compromise that it wouldn't be used to make a gun registry though the ATF, and in fact the ATF was not allowed to digitize records for exactly this reason. The ATF appears to have begun ignoring this deal in recent years, though)
This is a solved problem with modern cryptography. Governments just don't want to implement a cryptographic scheme like this, given the side-benefits of a registry for future confiscation, red-flagging, etc.
> Also making sure there are no secondary sales without background checks, which is supported by (I think?) the majority of Americans would help.
How would it help at all? They've already proven willing to break the law with the straw purchase.
> All of these would stop repeat offenders, and if I recall, the majority of straw sales are repeat offenders knowing they don't get in much or any trouble buying guns this way.
You don't know what you're talking about. It's a felony, and precludes you from purchasing or even possessing a firearm ever again. It's not possible to be a repeat offender.
I did a quick Google search and found https://nyti.ms/3edFGs8. Lo and behold, the Biden administration is fixing what can be fixed in ATF.
"At the N.R.A.’s instigation, Congress has limited the bureau’s budget. It has imposed crippling restrictions on the collection and use of gun-ownership data, including a ban on requiring basic inventories of weapons from gun dealers. It has limited unannounced inspections of gun dealers. Fifteen years ago, the N.R.A. successfully lobbied to make the director’s appointment subject to Senate confirmation — and has subsequently helped block all but one nominee from taking office."
It doesn't ban sales, it bans unregistered, non background checked sales. I don't see what is nonsense about it, the same law already applies to cars.
If you loan your car to someone and they commit a crime with it, you can face charges for it. If you sell your car without a termination of interest notice filed with the state and the new owner doesn't file the signed title, it is still legally your car and what the new owner does with it can get you in legal trouble.
I'm not aware of any federal law that makes it illegal to sell a car without registering it or titling it. I'm definitely not aware of any law that requires background check to buy or transfer a car (Dealership license may require it, but not private party transaction).
In general if you have no reason to believe someone will commit a crime with your car, you typically can't be found criminally liable for merely loaning it out. With firearms, it's actually a federal crime to lend a firearm to an out of state resident except for lawful sporting purposes (not general purposes, like lawful self defense).
> out of state resident except for lawful sporting purposes
Temporary use for lawful sporting purposes. I've taken that to mean I can let my out-of-state buddy try my rifle while we're at the range, or use it while on a hunting trip together. I would be pretty careful about lending out a gun to an out-of-state resident without being present the whole time they are using it, otherwise I'd be afraid of getting into a legal battle about whether it was temporary use.
I'm not a lawyer but it's my understanding you never lose constructive possession if you are present with the firearm. For instance, you can take a firearm to an engraver to have it engraved while you wait, so long as you are present for the engraving operation it isn't considered a transfer. I'm unsure if 922 (a) (5) even applies in that case, but IANAL.
I would be quite shocked if anyone was prosecuted under 18 U.S. Code § 922 (a) (5) for a firearm loaned exclusively for sporting purposes, but this is not legal advice. Personally I can think of at least one long-running skeet/trap range that will lend out shotguns for sporting purposes without any representative being anywhere near present while you use it, and they've been on the radar in plain sight doing this for decades across thousands of people (and they'll lend to any tom/dick/harry without any scrutiny).
> I'm not aware of any federal law that makes it illegal to sell a car without registering it or titling it
if your car is involved in a crime, the cops will come looking for you. maybe you can beat a conviction but you might face an uphill battle even with an attorney. but sure, it's not illegal to sell a car without transferring the title, but neither is it considered a legal sale. that is still your car as long as the title is in your name.
>if your car is involved in a crime, the cops will come looking for you.
Sure, they'll come looking for you. Registration and titling of cars just makes that even worse, not better, for innocent people who lend out cars. If that's your argument, that's one against having registration / serial numbers / record of transferring firearms.
The police can also rake you over the coals for anything. I had a search warrant once served to me because a few corrupt DHS agents (CBP and HSI) fabricated a warrant that suggested I had drugs up my ass (not even embellishing here). Police can come looking for you for any reason they want.
Hopefully innocent people are eventually vindicated (as I was), but it's definitely better to never be identified in the first place if you're an innocent.
Arguing for 'accountability' against the innocent is not a good look. Particularly when those innocent are people who merely applied for a CCW and did nothing wrong.
It's not 'accountability' it's accountability, and it's not against innocent people, it's on behalf of innocent people. Including other CCW applicants/holders. Seems like you are all the way down the rabbit hole on this one. Have a nice day.
Nothing says 'accountability' like picking one of the most law abiding groups (CCW holders, who are required to have on paper a relatively clean criminal background), and then releasing their private information regardless if they've committed or crime or even been suspected of one. I don't know if the reasoning here is the interest of public safety, but if it were that would be odd since on paper this group is less violent than the general population; people who have been pre-vetted not to have an unexpunged/unpardoned felony or record of domestic violence. Many of these people were victims of domestic violence and other harassers and abusers who very much don't want their location known publicly to these abusers, and got their CCW for protection from these abusers. Many were judges who have sent lots of angry people to jail.
Taking a group, the vast majority of which have done nothing wrong, and wholesale holding them 'accountable' by releasing their private information is senseless and indefensible.
> The police can also rake you over the coals for anything. I had a search warrant once served to me because a few corrupt DHS agents (CBP and HSI) fabricated a warrant that suggested I had drugs up my ass (not even embellishing here).
There is so much more to this story than you're telling us. My first thought is that there is probably a reason for that. But I'm genuinely interested in hearing more.
The short of it is that I fought alongside YPG against ISIS nearly a decade ago, and some boneheads at CBP/DHS flagged my passport. Ever since they've had a craw up their ass to try to catch me doing something, and problematic detentions whenever I re-enter the US (as US citizen with valid passport). The last time was the worst, where I got some particularly corrupt individuals who were willing to lie to get a warrant. Of course nothing was found, because in reality I'm not doing bad/illegal things overseas nor at the border.
> As a gun owner, sure there is. If your gun shows up in a crime, you get indicted as well. That would put a big dent in people being willing to buy guns for others.
So again, as many others have said, if your gun is stolen then what? You’re implying that if your gun showed up at a crime scene you’ve done something wrong, which is clearly not true in many cases.
All this will do is decrease gun ownership due to liability.
> As a gun owner, sure there is. If your gun shows up in a crime, you get indicted as well. That would put a big dent in people being willing to buy guns for others.
Buying a gun "for" someone else is a very gray area. For example, if I bought a gun and ten years later sold it to some guy who committed a crime, should I be indicted? Was this a straw purchase with a looooong time window? Or if I truly did buy a gun for someone else (as in, purchased and delivered the same day) and he waits ten years to commit a crime, was this also a true straw purchase? How can you tell?
> No, because for you to sell it to him, you'd have done the background check, and transferred it to him. That is the point.
In most (all?) states there's no need for a background check or any kind of record keeping when two individuals are selling/transferring to one another [0]. Between states it's another story.
> Same as car titles, or mortgage deeds, or others items in society that transfer ownership.
There's no constitutional right to any of those things, which is what makes the situation different.
>In most (all?) states there's no need for a background check
Have you followed this thread at all? I am fully aware of this, having done many gun transfers.
This thread is about adding universal background checks.
>There's no constitutional right to any of those things, which is what makes the situation different.
It is not different at all - it is perfectly constitutional to require background checks and transfers - that is how the current system is legal.
And all constitutional rights have bounds. 1st Amendment free speech has limits on what you can say, where you can do it, even requiring permits for many cases. 3rd, 4th, 5th Amendments about housing and property - you have a constitutional right to property, but it can be deprived, and many forms are registered and require paperwork to transfer. So it's not at all different from other property registration and transfers.
> if I truly did buy a gun for someone else (as in, purchased and delivered the same day) and he waits ten years to commit a crime, was this also a true straw purchase?
Most definitely yes. It makes no difference even if he never commits a crime, it's still a straw purchase. Per 18 USC 922(a)(6), you cannot lie to a federal dealer when purchasing a firearm. Question 21(a) on the mandatory Form 4473 (Firearm Transaction Record) asks if you are the actual buyer and not buying on behalf of someone else. If you answer no, the sale is denied. If you answer yes and it isn't true, you have violated 922(a)(6).
> If your gun shows up in a crime, you get indicted as well
so, someone breaks into my house while I am on vacation for three weeks, ignores the alarm, rips open the gun safe, takes a gun, kills someone...I go to jail?
but even in the case of actual straw purchases, the buyer is often victimized by the ultimate intended user...gangs browbeating vulnerable people etc. doesn't excuse the crime, but imprisoning a mule won't stop much
>so, someone breaks into my house while I am on vacation for three weeks, ignores the alarm, rips open the gun safe, takes a gun, kills someone...I go to jail?
Not if you report it or demonstrate it was stolen. And I didn't write "go to jail" - indicted means they're going to investigate you, just like they do now when a gun registered to someone shows up in crimes. And those people don't "go to jail" if they didn't have the gun.
What it does curtail is people buying guns to give away, because at some point enough guns will show up having been registered to them then used in crimes, and that should be prosecuted. That behavior is what is going to bring even stricter regulations if it is not curtailed by some set of laws.
I'd prefer a decent background check on firearm transfers - I already pass them with zero problem, but it would hinder people that should be banned from working around such measures.
Removing serial is a lot harder these days bc the compression of stamping alters the metal and makes it hard, "filing off" does not work. Old guns maybe depending on how it was done, but new ones there is specific regulations (I think pressed to 0.003 inch?) so chemical etching will show different densities.
These days they can even catch over stamping, I heard about some cases using xray to do it. So it's more trouble than it's worth to remove serials on new guns usually. For some reason I hear about almost no instances of peening to hide it, which is probably because you need to know the right size and pressure so it mostly makes sense at scale.
It's funny the number of criminals that run around with literally filed off serials and get themselves literally 10x the time on the gun charge as whatever else they caught for.
You can instead get a shitty gun bc some have badly done serials (speshul wepunz has done this before, but ofc then you have to shoot one lol), you can get an old gun, you can finish an 80% lower. But most criminals just steal or straw buy, or buy smuggled guns (the philippines is notorious for this).
Your forensics buddies, in stereotypical fashion for their industry, are blowing smoke.
The classic trick for removing serial numbers and foil attempts at recovery is to weld over. For guns this gets complicated because you're potentially altering heat treated parts that would need to be re-treated but that's doable. The kind of people who tend to own heat treat ovens tend to be the kind to ask questions but that would cost $$. There are many common and popular guns where the serialized parts are not mechanically significant enough to warrant special heat treating in which case weld away.
Glocks have matching serial numbers on the plate, on the slide, and on the barrel. Getting the ones off the hardened steel is very hard to do, and most idiots trying to remove the one from the barrel are going to screw up the action.
Also just scratching the surface smooth is not enough, and most people screw that up. The stamping leaves strain marks in the metal under the surface, and these can be recovered from a completely smoothed surface.
Not arguing with the general point, just to clarify: neither slides nor barrels are regulated and both are not considered as guns (unlike frames). And on top of this barrels are consumables. I think stronger point would be that there is a hidden plates in plastic frames somewhere (i knew that there is one for scanning purposes, but the commenter bellow mentioned that they are serialized as well).
True, glocks are an exception bc the frames are plastic so they can't serialize them easily other ways. I seen other plastic guns (like hipoints and polymer80s) do the same. There's safeguards against this though, I know there's a place you can cut on a hipoint to find a hidden serial even if they remove the plate. Smith & Wesson actually got sued to add an extra hidden serial to their guns. A bunch of plastiguns have this kind of stuff for exactly this reason.
I think they're asking how regulating sales will prevent straw purchases when straw purchases are already illegal, so presumably additional regulation won't do anything more. If you're convicted of a straw purchase you won't be able to legally purchase anymore.
And also the vast majority of straw purchases and lying on background check forms are not prosecuted in the first place, despite there being clear evidence for a slam dunk case. Hell, if you're the president's son you can lie on a 4473, have your girlfriend steal the gun and throw it in a dumpster, and then write a book about it and you won't get prosecuted.
This is highly misleading. Yes they purchased the guns, but where do you think those came from? Those black market guns include guns that were stolen by others.
> "Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes,"
Sounds like a BS statistic: what about all the crimes people got away with committing? How do they know the status of the guns used in those?
The real answer is probably that stolen guns are probably used by more sophisticated criminals (i.e., the ones that elude the police). And straw purchases are used by the people who keep getting caught, hence the need for the straw purchase to begin with.
Why? The sophisticated criminals will definitely use resales of straw purchases, that way they are in no risk in the actual purchase, and they can get any gun they like without having to rely on the luck of the draw.
That's how criminals get guns they actually intend to use. You're forgetting though that guns, like espresso machines and other machinery involving high pressures and tight tolerances, tend to be quite expensive, and their handheld nature makes them an extremely lucrative items to fence.
You guys seem to also have missed the trick of people reporting their gun was "stolen", when in fact they may have illegally bought a weapon for someone else. So, was it "stolen" or a straw purchase? Then there is also the trick of buying from private sellers (private seller exemption), where a background check is needed or not gets even more murky (depends on state). This makes such situations even more fuzzy. Just one big (purposeful?) continual mess, that's not going to be fixed anytime soon, if ever.
This seems like a reason to dislike all databases that hold this kind of information. These days, your personal info is at the mercy of your bank, your ISP, and a number of other entities who could leak data at any time just by being slightly complacent with security.
It's not like the old days where an attacker would have to haul tons of paper around and go through it manually.
A couple decades ago I lived and worked in Germany. Lots of paperwork, though I don't recall being asked any religion questions. Which form requires this?
I "learned" that from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31891886 (which, might not be factual; I didn't bother to check because it's not high on my fact check priority list...).
Sure, but not all databases have equal impact. Also, the relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different than that of a business relationship. I expect much more of my government, especially when considering if such a database is even needed.
To the parents post, litigation and firearms training are two things the NRA does well, which includes suing California over privacy issues such as this.
It's true. Not all databases have equal impact, but you have to admit that we all have some incredibly sensitive information exposed to various different kinds of leaks and breaches.
And on one hand, your relationship with your government is not the same as your relationship with private entities. However, at some level it doesn't matter who leaked a particular piece of information. If your favorite gun store gets hacked, and your collection is exposed along with your address, the effect is essentially the same as if it were the government of California getting hacked.
Are you saying gun stores keep electronic records of all their sales? They keep the forms (until they can be shredded), but I doubt they keep detailed electronic records beyond what's needed for accounting.
Yeah but the impact of somebody knowing I have a gun is higher.
1. People can come target me for stealing
2. If the steppers pass a law targeting something then they know I have to turn it in or they come kick down my door and shoot my dog. I really don't want a database of e.g. AR pistols or braces so if the govt decides they are illegal they can't try to force me to turn them in.
>This seems like a reason to dislike all databases that hold this kind of information
Yeah, we wouldn't want the ability to pay people what they're owed, or what they've given to Social Security when it's time for payouts, or what people have criminal convictions for various crimes, or who owns what license plate, or who is registered to vote, because we want all those things to be as wild, wild west as possible. right? No need to track how much money you have in the bank, you can just trust them. No need to track how much you've paid off a loan, you can trust them to tell you when they feel like it. No accountability, no tracking, complete ignorance on everyone and everything...
Or we can have databases because they are extremely useful for a modern, well functioning society, and try to mitigate negatives as much as possible.
>It's not like the old days where an attacker would have to haul tons of paper around and go through it manually.
You mean longer ago than most people have been alive? When things were vastly slower, making them unusable with the numbers of people we serve now? When you paid more for most things since the slowness and overhead of every was also people having to go through all the records manually to get things done?
Good idea. We can set mankind back nearly 100 years, or if we really try, let's push us back before any automation.
Did I say we should stop using databases altogether? No. I said this is a reason to dislike them.
Did I say we should go back to using paper recordkeeping for everything? No. Again, that was never argued.
Have you considered that maybe there's a middle-ground between collecting, trading, and analyzing every possible scrap of data we can squeeze out of people... and the Butlerian Jihad?
Also a strawman. Every database I listed is not the "Butlerian Jihad," they're all simple databases to keep track of identities for very reasonable reasons.
>Did I say we should stop using databases altogether?
Claiming this is a reason to dislike all databases coupled with your wistful statement "it's not like the old days..." sure looks like your advocating for the old days.
>Have you considered that maybe there's a middle-ground between collecting, trading, and analyzing every possible scrap of data we can squeeze out of people... and the Butlerian Jihad?
Yes, which is why I mocked your dislike of all such databases (including as you wrote, banks and ISPs) and a weird reference to ancient systems as if they were a better option.
If you thought middle ground was a good solution, you could have simply written that instead of writing two extremes. But you chose the extremes.
> Every database I listed is not the "Butlerian Jihad,"
I didn't say what you listed amounted to the "Butlerian Jihad," but you were clearly and deliberately implying that I said we should get rid of every database.
That's a strawman argument. You need to stop. Ok?
> Claiming this is a reason to dislike all databases coupled with your wistful statement "it's not like the old days..." sure looks like your advocating for the old days.
Nope. It's possible to dislike things and still compromise with them.
> Yes, which is why I mocked your dislike of all such databases
Right. You approached the conversation in bad faith. Quite a lot of that going on in this thread.
> a weird reference to ancient systems as if they were a better option.
A pointed reference to the fact that paper records couldn't be completely compromised remotely. A strength that's very, very pertinent to the discussion of a leak that includes ALL of California gun owners.
> But you chose the extremes.
This is precisely the strawman to which I was referring. YOU chose the extremes, not me. You've been told by the source (me) that this is not what was being said. Now you need to stop pretending it was.
I generally expect a higher level of conversation here than on certain other social media websites. I see that when it comes to political discussion, my expectations are unfounded.
Know a good Doxing lawyer? I know people who would happy be at the start of things rather than part of a class action that results in $0.33 and free credit monitoring for a year.
A study of crime scenes in Pittsburgh, PA, found that more than 30 percent of the guns that ended up at crime scenes had been stolen.x
Fabio A, Duell J, Creppage K, O’Donnell K, Laporte R. Gaps continue in firearm surveillance: Evidence from a large U.S. City Bureau of Police. Social Medicine. 2016; 10(1).
> An expert on crime gun patterns, ATF agent Jay Wachtel says that most guns used in crimes are not stolen out of private gun owners' homes and cars. "Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes," Wachtel said. Because when they want guns they want them immediately the wait is usually too long for a weapon to be stolen and find its way to a criminal.
Where do you think the black market guns come from? Pay attention to the footnotes. Also note that the data (which is used by the article too) is not about primary source. Meaning stolen guns could be included in the category of having been obtained from a friend too.
Wow, broad question. I know for pharma it's skimmed off the supply chain. But I have a hard time believing all black market guns, or even the majority, are stolen from residences. I imagine this is a case for low-level criminals, sometimes, but again some proof would clear it up.
Well the comment was in response to a claim that criminals get guns through burglary. Being a diligent person, I asked for a citation because it seemed like someone was making a claim out of their ass. I was right: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/g...
Your link doesn't say what you seem to think it says. Gun theft is not the main way criminals get guns but it doesn't matter because it is still a way. Specifically it is the way that this data leak can contribute to the number of stolen guns.
Open carrying similarly can directly lead to gun thefts.
Its not the governments responsibility to secure your guns either way. If anything more public detailed information about who owns guns is better so that people can properly avoid dangerous gun owners
>If anything more public detailed information about who owns guns is better so that people can properly avoid dangerous gun owners
Included in the 'leak' were people who merely _applied_ for a CCW. Not necessarily that you have a weapon or even a CCW license.
And where does this 'so we can avoid dangerous <x>' end? For instance, controlled substance prescriptions become government owned data when they are relayed to the DEA. Shall we publish private information of anyone prescribed anything related to conditions that increase their chance of being at risk of committing a violent crime?
> Open carrying similarly can directly lead to gun thefts.
Ok? So we agree?
> Its not the governments responsibility to secure your guns either way.
Ok? But that’s not been argued. It is also the government’s responsibility to not endanger the lives of citizens.
> If anything more public detailed information about who owns guns is better so that people can properly avoid dangerous gun owners
This list contains the names and employment details of judges and corrections officers (and their families) who are at risk of revenge. It may also contain the name of survivors of assault who wish to protect themselves from their abusers.
Ukraine already had shit load of firearm from the Soviet Union. Enough to fill the black market even without help from the US. What the US is sending now is more advanced and heavy, most likely not going to end up in the black market. IN some countries drug cartels probably can buy some of the heavy stuff directly from the manufacturer.
The first link you mentioned is about a failed operation, rather than Obama arming gangsters. Is it bad, that it failed, yes. But it's not like they were given to them to arm them. There is a lot of context missing there.
> were given to gangsters in Mexico by Holder and Obama.
There are two options here.
One, you believe this is true, and that it is somehow relevant.
That means you are arguing for more gun restrictions. Which means you are a person that makes it harder for me to preserve an important fundamental right of gun ownership.
The second is that you are playing the part of an ignorant rube that plays into stereotypes of gun owners which are ultimately self-defeating to anyone who actually cares about the issue.
Either way I can’t come up with a way that you are simultaneously making an interesting and honest argument.
As has been stated elsewhere, straw purchases are probably a major source. Smuggling is possible too. I couldn't say how these compare to theft, because I've never seen any solid data on the topic.
I don’t understand this line of thinking. Regardless of other sources of black market guns publishing this list increases the number of stolen guns. At best it accomplishes nothing.
You misunderstand my statement. I was answering your question, not arguing that the leak was good.
I don't subscribe to the argument that firearms serve as an effective deterrent to robbery, so it almost certainly can't help.
But you asked where the black market gets it's merchandise. Theft, smuggling, and straw purchases immediately spring to mind. It would be interesting to see data comparing the effectiveness of each.
> I’m surprised, seems more likely they would buy off the black market.
Reads to me as:
“I’m surprised [criminals steal guns] seems more likely they would buy [stolen guns] off the black market.”
The suggestion guns are sourced from a black market is not a compelling argument against those items being stolen. Invoking the black market itself establishes the incentive to steal.
I made no error. You seem to have lost track of the context in this thread. I replied to a comment (not yours) that essentially said guns come from the black market instead of being stolen. I pointed out through a rhetorical device the possibility that the black market sells stolen products and so both are true. You then replied to that rhetorical.
You’re clearly still confused and I think that’s why you are being defensive.
I replied to sha256sum’s (not you!) comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31912312 with a rhetorical question. You then answered it as if it were an actual question. Since that wasn’t the reason for the question I then explained my interpretation of the original post (that again, you did not make).
Since that point you seem to believe I claimed sha256sum’s post was yours but in fact I did no such thing and actually disclaimed it specifically.
By "a lot of opinions" you seem to mean that I gave two suggestions of possible sources of firearms, and then openly admitted I don't know how they compare to theft.
Would you rather I have simply stated those two sources and omitted the part about not having the data to compare the quantity of firearms obtained through those sources?
Do you have access to data we could use to make this comparison?
This took place in 2007. It was about midnight or 1AM and we were watching Clone High when there was a knock at the door. This being Canada and such I just opened the door, and the three guys pushed their way in with what I believe to be a Beretta 92 pointed at my face. Two of them guarded me while the other retrieved my then-girlfriend, now wife.
They proceeded to steal basically all of my father's firearms. They had significant difficulty in opening the safes and at one point brought me down to the basement (where my father's workshop was) to try to help them out.
They loaded everything into my mother's Dodge Neon. This process took them about two hours, during which time they rotated who was guarding us. Once they were finished, they bound us at ankles, wrists and hands with duct tape, flipped the main breaker, and drove off.
I gave them a count of approximately five minutes, and then worked to free us. When our hands were bound I moved my hands a bit apart to be able to get the tape off easier. I could then reach into my pocket for my knife (a Kershaw Leek) and cut the rest of the tape off both of us. I then called 911.
Over the next few weeks, I was the main suspect in the police investigation. I was interviewed repeatedly and polygraphed (the results of which were inconclusive, apparently). At one point one of the detectives basically asked my wife to "flip" on me, which she thought was pretty hilarious.
These guys are basically still at large, I guess you could say. Two of the guns have since been recovered but the rest have never been seen again.
Throughout this incident I remained quite calm. In fact, they played for me the recording of the 911 call, and suggested I must have orchestrated the incident because of how calm I sounded. Funny stuff.
I sounded too calm on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, I used "big words" ("affirmative", etc.) when giving my statement, and, and this one is my favorite, I didn't get super angry when they asked me what should happen to the bad guys. Yeah, like from that episode of The Office. I said something like "well, whatever the law says... do that" and apparently I should have said something more like "TEAR THEIR FUCKIN HEADS OFF AND SHIT DOWN THEIR NECKS AND THEN RIP THEIR DICKS OFF AND SHOVE THEM UP THEIR ASSES".
As far as I understand, PBS data is based on the guns, that were recovered and which it was possible to establish, that it was stolen, which depends on how this data is collected and reported by the states.
Doesn't it do the opposite though? It gives criminals a map of exactly who they shouldn't rob, lest they risk getting shot. I imagine criminals will go after the softest, easiest targets, not the hardened, well-armed ones.
>Criminals get guns through burgling and robbery.
Are you sure about that? I thought it was more via buying guns in states where they're easy to get and which don't keep registrations or records, then illegally, covertly transporting them across state lines, and then sometimes removing/filing serial numbers and other identifying info.
>Doesn't it do the opposite though? It gives criminals a map of exactly who they shouldn't rob, lest they risk getting shot. I imagine criminals will go after the softest, easiest targets, not the hardened, well-armed ones.
I'd say thieves generally want to rob when _nobody_ is home so it doesn't matter if they are armed or not. Knowing that there are guns stored in the house is just advertising something specific they might be able to steal.
In the city I reside in, trucks are targeted specifically because many truck owners have guns in the glove box. Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean you’re always around to use it.
Just because you own a gun, using it is not without ramifications.
In high school, my driver's ed instructor (here in California) said (jokingly) if you screw up and hit a person, you better hope they die. The implications of a death on your hands is a bounded lawsuit / jail problem. Someone surviving is a much less constrained problem. While crass, it made a point.
If you shoot someone in self defense and they are killed, you are dealing with voluntary manslaughter as the most likely charge, argue accordingly. If they survive, they get the opportunity to muddy the waters.
Employers have rules about no guns in the building. Stores post signs asking you not to carry. I wouldn’t even think of carrying into a bank or a police department office.
> It gives criminals a map of exactly who they shouldn't rob, lest they risk getting shot.
This is the mythos the gun owners fashion for themselves, but in reality, they don't live in forts camped out behind sandbags. They only have two hands, work day jobs, own cookie-cutter houses in the suburbs, drink at night, have kids and bitter ex-spouses, follow predictable routines, and are as bad at security as everybody else.
There are plenty of opportunities to get the drop on a gun hoarder. Being brazen has its rewards.
I imagine organized criminals would say hmm, let's wait until they're gone away for the weekend, bet they're not taking all those assault rifles with them.
If I’m looking to steal guns and I know you’ve got them, then I’ll just wait outside your house for you to leave and then go in and get them. Or worse.
Depends on the criminal. Some are after goods they can quickly sell - others are after guns they can use to help commit more crimes. I imagine most criminals will not consult this document, but of those who do, some will be avoiding those houses and some will be directly going to those houses.
And yeah, you risk getting shot if you just barge into a house with a strapped owner, but all you need to do is ambush him when he's going to his car, or just enter his house when he isn't at home.
Firearms are nice targets for thieves because they are have a high profit-to-size ratio, are easy to fence, and are untraceable (unlike, say electronics that have built in tracking devices).
> and are untraceable (unlike, say electronics that have built in tracking devices).
That much doesn't really matter. It's still lucrative to steal iPhones and fence them at those "recycle your device" kiosks.
Even if the owner calls the police and leads them to the box, there's nothing they will do-- by the time they get a warrant, the phone will be on its way to Brazil.
Leaks like this are one of the main reasons national registries get opposed. A few years back there was a paper in NY that published a Google map with similar data IIRC.
I believe that American crime literature indicates that the presence of guns offers general protective effects against home robberies for the entire region, and that the visible presence of alarms offers very specific protective effects for that home alone (while pushing the crime to other homes), and that the presence of invisible alarms confers a modicum of protection to the region.
I'm inclined to believe that this will push home robberies onto those without guns.
One thing I dislike about the news is that every article drops you into a situation, but you don't know how it ended up like that or what happened afterwards. It would be nice if some modern news site placed stories on a timeline.
Most burglaries happen when the occupant isn't home. Unsurprisingly burglars don't like people to be there when they break in. Guns don't operate themselves so it's not crazy to think that people who have them would have their homes targeted.
If you break into an unoccupied house, that’s burglary and is a relatively minor crime. If you enter an occupied house, it’s more likely to be considered robbery which is considered to be a serious violent crime.
The AG said they were releasing the data for "increased transparency", so it seems like pretty clear retaliation for the recent CCW Supreme Court decision
When people make emotional decisions like that, it scares the hell out of me. They don't think of the repercussions. That stunt will probably get several people killed. I hope the leaker gets prosecuted.
"Criminals get guns through burgling and robbery."
True. But, not BY robbing people on the CCW list. That is a damn death wish. CCW is a privilege in CA. CCW permits are difficult to get, a large portion is issued to ex-police and judges. CCW holders practice at the gun range as it is required to pass and hold the CCW. EG. There isn't dust on their pistol.
God help you in court - if you are standing there charged with armed burglary of another judges / officers house [with CCW].
Apparently (based on Reddit posts) the DOJ used some kind of graph or map generation package to create the statistical summary that they put on the web. The package worked by accessing the raw data (complete with PII) and producing summaries and a map from it. It also inserted a helpful link to download the raw data. Oops. And that the raw data was reachable from the public-facing server at all was a double oops. And that the web dev department had access to the raw data rather than having it compartmentalized (presuming this happened) seems like a triple oops.
I don't know if the map was dynamically generated from the data on every page load (thus requiring the data to be there), but the slowness of the server suggests maybe it was. Another good reason to use static sites unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. This database only went through 2021, so it wasn't changing.
Last year Californian passed the bill that allows the release of the entire registry with PII to any research institution [1], that studies gun violence. So not only they leaked it themselves, but they also made sure that a grad or undergrad student at one of the universities can loose a flash drive with a info about all gun owners in California.
Robbing the home of a gun owner is a double edged sword. You know there’s a gun in there that you might want. You don’t know if it’s pointed at your head.
Doesn’t seem any different than accessing public records to see house sale transactions and then going and robbing people who spent a lot on their home?
I haven't viewed the whole thread, but one thing I haven't seen any discussion on is how dangerous this is for survivors of abuse. It's not uncommon for victims of domestic abuse, stalking, sexual assault, etc. to apply for CCW as a means of defense. Their address and other PII was made immediately available to the general public, _including their abuser_.
I've not submitted a PRI in the state of CA (which is what I believe is required for CCW data), but based on privacy laws I assume they're not handing out addresses on a whim.
Imagine you have a safe at your house to keep your important documents protected.
Now imagine that the government requires you to register your safe because a child could be trapped in your safe.
Now imagine that the database was leaked.
Your important documents were safer because you had a safe, now they are less safe because thieves know exactly what houses have home safes and thus where they should go to steal from.
My anonymous gun ownership make me and my neighbors safer because I:
1. Can protect myself and my family.
2. Gun seeking criminals (e.g. Mexican drug cartels) that are better armed for the occasion do not know to target my house for my rifles, shotgun and handgun.
3. Burgling my very (yet cool) progressive neighbors is risky since every other house in America has a gun (I found a corner of swing state America that looks down on lawn signs). Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime.
im not stating a statistical fact. All Im saying is, all else being equal, there is an extra nevative term in the expected value equation that goes boom and has a P ~ 0.5
South states (where AFAIK at least looking at international news, people is more willing to own a gun) have incarceration rate really high:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
Probably there's a problem with illegal immigration, that doesn't explain everything, overall is incredibly higher than other western countries.
This is quite old
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9715182/
"Conclusions: Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.
But, there's a 2013 CDC study
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-...
that says
* "that guns are an effective and often used crime deterrent and that most firearm incidents are not fatal"
* "stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals."
Or another one
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm:
that says
"In summary, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."
Also, you must really be willing to use a gun. Uvalde police waited 45 minutes before going in, protocol says to go in as soon as possible, they were scared. They are humans afterall, even if trained.
So, it's not really clear to me that more arms means more or less safety.
But I know this: in 2020 Chicago alone (where AFAIK there are what you could call "strict laws") there have been almost 3 times murders than whole Italy. Rate is about 60 times, and Chicago is not even in top 10 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...). Something to think about.
However, I didn't state a statistical fact, or assert the effect of guns on the amount of criminality.
"Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime."
EV is expected value, not expectation. That is, I didn't say that crime is less likely. I said that a person who comes into a house in the US has a not insignificant chance of leaving on a stretcher, which I consider negative value from the invader's PoV.
I'm not sure. Less than half US households have at least a gun, considering 120 arms every 100 people, there's quite a concentration.
Also, commonsense tell me that, if armed, criminal comes in already branding the gun, to react quickly people inside should always have a gun with them, even when inside home. I don't know if US people is used to, I would find it a terrible way of living, a way of fear.
As all statistical evidence indicates, your family is far more likely to be killed by your gun than by any other. Your gun ownership endangers your family.
Like everything in stats you have a conditional probability given that I, like most gun owners, am a responsible gun owner.
I have a safe, trigger locks, don't have a history of violence, etc. The small minority who are irresponsible gun owners get slaughtered increasing the numbers for the larger pool.
That partition function in the denominator is key!
Sure but that's always been the case. People with guns at home shoot themselves, their spouses, or are shot with their own gun by burglars, at a rate obviously greater than that of people without guns at home. People with guns at home kill themselves at triple the rate of normal people.
CDC report under Obama demonstrated those with guns at home have much less physical injury during home invasion than those without guns.
>People with guns at home kill themselves at triple the rate of normal people.
Those studies are widely known to have serious statistical problems since those with suicidal tendencies also may purchase a gun, completely breaking the independent variable requirement to make such a claim. [1] for example at least addresses that these are real issues.
Also, Japan's suicide rate, without guns, is larger than the US suicide and homicide rates combined.
I think you're pushing as true things that are not demonstrated, and may well be untrue.
> Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18319.
It's important to remember, in the context of this obviously intentionally vague language, that until 2018 the CDC was explicitly prohibited from conducting research into the statistics of gun violence by the Dickey Amendment, and has only published cursory data in the few years since that research ban was abolished. But -- that language still remains in legislative force: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/03/22/...
> Language in the report accompanying the bill clarifying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can, in fact, conduct research into gun violence. A long-standing rider known as the Dickey Amendment, which states that no CDC funds “may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” has been interpreted in the past to bar such research. The amendment itself remains.
>For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use
This study is quote controversial, not reproducible, and Kellerman would never release his dataset for others to check. This lack of credible scientific behavior is what led to the Dickey Amendment. The summary in the 2013 report is being quite kind to Kellerman (who was on the report committee - knowing his research and history I suspect he was livid about this conclusion dismissing his most famous work).
>that until 2018 the CDC was explicitly prohibited from conducting research into the statistics
This is false, which is why Obama called them on it and had them do a study, even though no law was changed. Also during the years 1999-2018 there are CDC sponsored studies on gun violence, which show up on their site and can be found via Google scholar.
Also there are many other national and private sources of funding to do the same research, from NIH (with 10x the budget of the CDC), to Bureau of Prisons to DoJ funding, to many private foundations.
You're being downvoted (or were when I commented) but that last part is absolutely what the data say, and I've seen data that say the rates are much higher than triple vs non-gun owners. Lots of suicides are in the heat of the moment and when there isn't an easy, painless way to kill yourself, you don't (e.g. if you take a lot of pills, you have a window where you can realize you don't want to die and call 911). Of course there will be people who plan it out and go through with it in other ways.
Not all gun owners are shy. I see lots and lots of gun stickers. Not just NRA, but "Glock Perfection" is another one that stands out. Lots of people with "Protected by Smith and Wesson" or whatever their preferred choice is. This is probably not the majority, but a LOT of people advertise that they have or like guns. So it would make me curious to know if people with stickers are more or less likely to get robbed for a gun. Likely we will never know, and everybody will continue to argue whether the sticker helps or hinders without any real info to back it up.
> Gun owners are shy. Thats why we prefer concealed carry instead of open carry.
Concealed carry also has the benefit of a criminal not knowing who is armed or not and thus can't really assume that any one person is a soft target, which is a great deterrence factor.
I was not able to find a good state on this one. Some stats are reporting a stat from 30 to 40% of ownership with data jumping up and down every alternate year, whereas others are porting 20-something percent ownership. About half of households in US having guns means gun control issue being totally dead.
Good comment! I was hesitant to put a number. Thats why I chose "household". But its pretty close to the right figure (probably closer to the low to mid 40s).
No one knows how many guns there are in America (more than one per person though) and who owns them. We know its mostly men, with a significant, increasing, number of women. Minorities are also increasing their share of legal gun ownership.
About 20%-30% of the adult population owns a gun, but many women don't say they "own a gun" if their husbands own one - guns are, for many reasons, very much "personal" property. It's the husband's gun or the house's gun, not necessarily hers [1]. However, in my experience talking to other gun owners, the wives support or encourage their continued ownership. Hence "household" ownership estimated somewhere about a third to half.
(Its actually probably closer to the mid to low 40s, but varies regionally. Chicago has very little legal handgun ownership, Kennesaw GA has basically universal gun ownership.)
Furthermore a lot of Americans own a gun without considering themselves a "gun owner". The single shot .22lr they got for their 12th birthday. The Ruger 10/22 that was passed down. An emotional relic they cling to that is still very much a firearm. Then there is the "shy conservative" who will lie on a survey. This to say, there is a significant amount of people with guns who will answer "no" to a survey question about gun ownership.
I think the best way to gauge this, an to your point about gun control, is its electoral significance. Democrats aren't really affected at the pols for failing to deliver gun control, but Republicans are demolished if they waver a little bit (note every GOP senator who voted for bill is retiring or not up for election). I think this hints that gun ownership and tolerance is widespread among the GOP and independents.
[1] imagine 250 lb hubby has a double stacked 10mm and is married to a 90lb petite. The physics doesn't work.
Even myself, Id love for my wife to come to the range one day, but Ill have to rent her a smaller pistol - the 92 has a very large grip even for me.
Republicans failed to deliver abortion bans for 50 years. "Failed to deliver" isn't a major driver of voting decisions, since the failure is usually due to an election in a different jurisdiction controlled by the other party.
"Republicans failed to deliver abortion bans for 50 years. "
Indeed but pro-life voters voted for the GOP with their nose pinched, mostly aghast (their perspective) at the alternative (the Dems have long moved away from "safe, available and rare").
Anyway, gun control is far less popular than overturning Roe. At least until you slice "Roe" up (partial birth, first, second, third trimester). Gun control will have to happen through the administrative state
40% of people (or adults, not sure) live in a household with a gun. Not all of those people consent to the gun's presence.
"percent of households" is probably in between.
Gun control issue is not dead, because the percentage varies regionally, and gun control can stop people from buying and using a gun immediately in a fit of passion.
"Not all of those people consent to the gun's presence."
No, of course not. But most do.
Anyway, to my original post, a criminal entering a household has about an even chance to burgling an armed home. It varies regionally, so in Kennesaw the chance is nearly 100%, in Chicago it's nearly 0% (legally owned anyway).
I think you just fundamentally misunderstand human nature, the criminal mind, and the overall practicality of running a criminal enterprise even if you assume well-informed rational actors.
If you get burglarized, your ham radio equipment probably won't get stolen. And if it does, it's a crime of opportunity, not because someone found you in a database and somehow knew you had the good equipment.
But sometimes criminals are desperate for guns, or the quick cash that guns can bring. You don't want desperate, potentially violent criminals finding out that your house has exactly what they are desperate for.
If they want the cash, they could even prearrange a fence based on the database search. That's a little too convenient.
"If you get burglarized, your ham radio equipment probably won't get stolen. And if it does, it's a crime of opportunity, not because someone found you in a database and somehow knew you had the good equipment."
I think you missed the premise here: ham radio equipment = $$$, open registry of people who may have ham radio equipment available for years, chance of having other expensive things very likely, correlation to crime and open registry of names pretty much zero. The article is just trying to foment a controversy when there isn't one.
I mean, on one side they're saying that owning guns is necessary to protect their property. But now they're saying that owning guns makes them a target for crime? To me it seems like they're trying to have it both ways on this.
> Criminals get guns through burgling and robbery.
Private transactions are still legal. The gun show loophole is still around. Buying a gun and gifting it is legal.
Having a gun allows you to protect your life and property with force. Owning valuable property like guns can make you more of a target. It is ideal not to have the ownership of that property broadcasted. The vast majority of gun owners hope never to have to use their weapon except to put holes in paper from a distance.
The "gun show loophole" doesn't exist. It is still a crime for a prohibited person to possess a firearm no matter how they get it. In many states including California, it is illegal for a private sale to occur without a background check. Somehow, many prohibited persons still acquire them, and their info wasn't just leaked by the California AG.
> But now they're saying that owning guns makes them a target for crime?
They're saying that the government leaking their personal information makes them a target for crime. Is this comment a joke? I'm having trouble believing that anyone could seriously view this as somehow indicating that gun owners are hypocritical. I guarantee you that no gun owners wanted California to track and subsequently leak their personal details. If you're being serious, this is some of the (unintentionally) funniest sophistry I've seen in a while.
> Private transactions are still legal.
If you can't legally buy a gun at a store, you can't legally buy a gun privately.
> If you're being serious, this is some of the (unintentionally) funniest sophistry I've seen in a while.
Almost without exception, every discussion with anti-gun advocates is predicated on this kind of attitude, in concert with an astonishing ignorance of the subject they wish to further regulate.
Kind of like conservative men and their beliefs on women's reproductive rights.
Generally you don't want to give more information to potential attackers.
The reason is because it allows improved matchmaking of criminals and victims, and allows criminals to improve the efficiency of their crimes. A criminal that's looking for guns could go outside your house, wait until you leave, then rob you looking for the guns and getting out quickly (with a fence ready to buy them). A criminal looking for something else could see that you're not on the list, break in with their gun while you are home, and do who-knows-what to you.
Sure, there are exceptions. Maybe you want a "beware of dog" sign or a "closed-circuit camera" notice that might push the criminals to keep looking for their next victim. These notices are best to prevent crimes of opportunity, and probably better posted on the house than in a leaked database online.
> They're saying that the government leaking their personal information makes them a target for crime
Why is this? Are we talking about burglars who want the valuable guns? That does seem odd as the number two deterrent to burglary is knowledge that the home-owner has a gun (the number on apparently are large dogs).
If the above is the case, the idea is that a burglar will scan this list for nearby homes and target them? On the basis that they have a gun alone (which again, is the number two deterrent to burglary). Plus, there is a lot of precedent that it takes almost nothing to use deadly force against an intruder and have zero consequences.
> I guarantee you that no gun owners wanted California to track and subsequently leak their personal details.
I'm guessing that California gun owners are perhaps amongst those who particularly do not want their personal details leaked. There are all sorts of reasons to not want that for anyone. This argument though of "we're now bigger targets for crime", when they have guns to "prevent" that crime, I can't reconcile that. So is the gun a deterrent, or not?
I can think of a lot of other things that would make someone the target for burglary, like having a 4 car garage and gated fence.
> If you can't legally buy a gun at a store, you can't legally buy a gun privately.
While that is the case, if there is no obligation to run a background check (gun-show loophole) - then how do you prevent these people from purchasing guns?
The loophole is not that it's legal or illegal, the loophole is that someone is obtaining a gun that shouldn't.
The reason guns are the number two deterrent behind dogs is because the overwhelming majority of burglaries generally, and in particular, for the purpose of theft, happen when the homeowner is gone. A gun won't operate itself, but people often leave their dogs home alone.
Given this context, the fear that those looking for guns would use this information to target a relative minority that have them becomes much more plausible.
The guns are supposed to be locked up in a safe, right?
So, the fear is that burglars would actively mine this data, go to the physical location, wait and ensure nobody is home, then break in? All that compared to say doing the same for someone that has an expensive car in their drive way?
How would the burglars feel about travelling to that neighborhood to first case it? Would you go a few dozen miles to first just find out if there are security cameras, neighborhood watch, etc..?
I think this speaks to a sufficiently motivated burglar. Would this list be the different for that motivated burglar to target someone on that list, compared to any other target? For that motivated burglar, was this leak really the difference in who they target?
Thinking through this scenario concretely, it seems like there are plenty of other actual dangers to worry about.
It makes me think that this side of the coin is just high-pitched whining (my opinion),vs a very legitimate complaint regarding data breaches.
And the laws still apply to them. They are not allowed to sell to anyone not allowed to legally own a firearm, e.g. under 18, felon, out of state. If they do they are committing a crime.
And they will need an FFL if they make a business of selling privately.
>The law also says they need to file taxes on that purchase, but what is required and what people actually do often differs
I think you inadvertently hit on why people are opposed to further gun regulation. The people committing the crimes aren't gonna follow the law and it stands to only further burden regular citizens.
There is more than one kind of regulation. Regulating people with an incentive to obey (professionals running businesses, like stores or shows) makes it harder for criminals to obtain guns they aren't allowed to possess.
>Regulating people with an incentive to obey (professionals running businesses, like stores or shows) makes it harder for criminals to obtain guns they aren't allowed to possess.
Can you give me an example of how this would work?
Just to clarify, private sellers couldn't perform a NICS check even if they wanted to. There were some proposals to open the system up to regular people (kind of akin to my understanding of how Switzerland does BG checks), but they never passed.
Anyways, it's kind of a moot point in California because that's a felony here.
The fees from that are rather exorbitant. At least around me, most FFLs charge $100-$200 since they'd rather you buy from them directly (except for PPT transfers, where the cost is legally capped at like $50). IMO people should be able to run BG checks at cost.
It's 2022. Every web dev knows you don't just spit out PII on your website. But everybody involved kept their mouth shut because they thought to themselves "this is dumb, but I'm not responsible for it and if I try and champion the cause of fixing it I will be" and so they took it to prod. These sorts of "incentive to not rock the boat" or "it will take me months to get clarification on this requirement" type failures are rife in government bureaucracy.
Edit: Clearly I'm wrong and this is all malice from top to bottom /s Use your f-ing brains. You think someone is gonna risk their cushy government job to dox a bunch of gun owners and the managers are gonna risk their jobs signing off on it?
I think it is more likely the web devs didn't know or care what they were doing and they were just working on contract and they were told to put a button there so they put a button there. The middle management responsible for it probably fucked it up due to simple negligence and not carefully reading a stack of requirements and just not being at all engaged in the broader issues other than delivery. Someone who actual gave a shit probably got a few sentences into the requirements doc somewhere around access controls and PII concerns, but it was not called out clearly and just missed.
But yeah whatever really happened I'm quite certain that "the government of California just DELIBERATELY and with MALICE doxxed all the judges with carry permit" is the argument which needs to be met with "that's a hilariously large load of speculation".
I don't think GP had any way to actually know or think the code involved did a "SELECT *", he was just using that as a clever jokey way of saying "looks like they published all the details they had on gun owners?"
Whether they selected * is immaterial. The requirement probably said "publish all", or something along those lines and the person who did it had probably been burned in the past when they had tried to do anything other than implementing requirements like a dumb robot so they rolled their eyes and implemented requirements like a dumb robot while counting down the days to retirement. Somewhere there's probably a closed Jira ticket in which they covered their ass.
> You think someone is gonna risk their cushy government job to dox a bunch of gun owners
I doubt anybody will lose their jobs for this as long as there is even a modicum of plausible deniability (every unruly child knows the "it was an accident" excuse, but somehow adults seem to conveniently forget about it in cases like this.)
Good job, jackasses, now this will get trotted out as an example against anything that ties a name to a firearm (i. e., registration). And though I might fall in with the "if not Sandy Hook, then what is it going to take?" crowd, I can't say it's an invalid argument. I mean, a government is unlikely to be so bold as to just outright publish the PII. But what if we suffered a "data breach"? If it's the way I'd do it, is it really a conspiracy theory? :-)
No, this was no accident. California has been leveraging gun regulations as a foil to anti-abortion movements elsewhere in the country, including discussions of dissemination of lists of abortion recipients, providers, and facilitators for targeting by bounty hunters.
Now we have an accidentally-disseminated list of gun owners. "Oops," indeed. Turnabout is fair play?
Yep. This is an established pattern and practice by California.
Here's a famous one:
> Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, Inc., for the 2009 fiscal year was publicly posted; the document included the names and addresses of hundreds of donors.
I'm not afraid to make it; there's no burden of proof online.
It's too conveniently timed--and too specific in content--to be coincidence. They didn't leak a list of everybody on food stamps during a slow news cycle.
Everything other states have threatened to do regarding abortion, California has responded to by doing the exact same thing, only replacing the word "abortion" with "guns."
Some states have actually banned all abortions so it seems like you should be able to point to a single statewide official suggesting all guns be banned. Otherwise you might be guilty of exaggerating just a bit.
AB 2847 is a clear attempt at a handgun ban (requiring California to ban 3 handguns for every new one- that's not a sustainable process). California also copied the Texas law about suing abortion providers, except for manufacturer's of gun parts (although that one hasn't gone into effect yet)
It's no body else's business, especially the power hungry federal government, to know if I own a firearm. If you want to see what happens when you disarm citizens there are plenty of examples through history. You can look at Australia during covid and the camps they setup. The citizens could do nothing. The government should always be kept in check and having armed legal citizens is a wonderful thing for freedom.
How does private gun ownership check the government?
How would the government act differently if citizens owned fewer or different or no guns? Where does the fantasy that the everyone is out to get you and you had better be armed and ready come from? Cowboy movies? The whole idea of the cowboy is myth[0].
If you want to see real power hungry government in action, don’t think SWAT coming for you, look at the Missouri State Health director keeping a spreadsheet of women’s menstrual cycles, in order to make sure that if any became pregnant the state could intercede [1].
If you’re reading HN, you’re probably some kind of engineer. So tell me, how is a problem which is itself generated by the accumulation of brute power solved by a countervailing accumulation of brute power? Which then just becomes an arms race. Which is objectively insane. It is an infinite loop. How do you break it?
> How does private gun ownership check the government?
It raises the stakes for oppression. How would Hong Kong look right now if the population were lightly armed? Instead of a civilian police force repressing millions the Chinese military would have had to occupy its own territory. That has political and international consequences.
I believe in gun regulation. But I recognise the civic core of the opposition’s argument.
> How would Hong Kong look right now if the population were lightly armed?
Let’s be honest, if they were armed and gun ownership weren’t already against the law, the Chinese government would sweep in and pass a law that day and start going door to door, seizing weapons, take the people from their families and send then to reeducation camps. It wouldn’t forward their cause at all.
The word “civic” is odd here too (I recognize that your comment is about the intent of the parent comment’s argument), because the opposite pole to political violence is… civil discourse. There is an unavoidable incoherence to the idea that gun ownership is about civic responsibility.
During the start of the coronavirus pandemic Minnesota enacted a stay at home order. Protestors arrived at the governor’s residence armed with guns after the lockdown order was extended. The stay at home order was modified to be less restrictive THAT DAY by the governor. He claimed that the modification was unrelated, but everybody knows that’s not true.
So you're saying that rather than communicating our will to our elected officials with ballots and phone calls, we should use the threat of violence against them?
Great idea, let's apply it in other contexts. Next time I get a parking ticket, I'll follow around the traffic cop with an assault rifle until they lower the fee.
The GP asked “How does private gun ownership check the government?” The government of Minnesota was checked by private gun owners in 2020.
You may think that waiting to vote at the ballots or having your phone calls dumped to a voicemail and never returned is an appropriate response to being locked up in your own house against your will with the threat of state action if you leave; however, a few people in Minnesota did not think that it was appropriate. So they showed up and they showed up armed.
That’s their right and it’s the right the second amendment protects. You may not like it, but that’s just because you haven't disagreed with the government hard enough yet.
> The government of Minnesota was checked by private gun owners in 2020.
Sure, if by "checked" you mean "threatened with violence." My comment is intended to question whether or not that's a good idea, by attempting to applying the same principle to other walks of life.
> being locked up in your own house against your will with the threat of state action if you leave
You mean the usual way of dealing with the outbreak of a deadly contagious disease?
> That’s their right and it’s the right the second amendment protects.
The answer to your question is obvious: gun owners buy into a fantasy, probably inspired by action movies, that they will one day be able to use their weapon "righteously" against another human being. Possibly in simple self-defense from a crime, but especially in a poetic-heroic setting, such as defending their god-given rights from an oppressive government.
Never mind that gun owners in America don't have the organization, training, resources, or equipment to effectively combat a police department, much less the US army quelling an armed insurrection, even if their rights ever were legitimately threatened. Never mind that private gun ownership as it currently exists would never be a realistic check on any government. The macho fantasy endures, and colors so much of our discussion on gun rights.
The other missing datum from the macho fantasy is under what conditions is armed revolt justified. The sibling post mentions Hong Kong as an example. So what if, on the other hand, the government wants to compel citizens to vaccinations? Are the citizens justified in murdering cops and healthcare workers in order to avoid mandatory vaccination? What if the citizens believe that an election was fraudulent? Are the citiens (legally, ethically) justified in raiding the Capitol to forcibly overthrow the government?
There are no good answers to these questions because the justification for gun ownership is not based in any real-world conditions: it's purely a fantasy.
>Never mind that gun owners in America don't have the organization, training, resources, or equipment to effectively combat a police department, much less the US army quelling an armed insurrection, even if their rights ever were legitimately threatened.
This is a common argument, but completely ignores what the Taliban/Iraqis/ISIS did to the best and most well funded military for 20 years. What the Vietnamese did 40 years before that; completely ignoring 60 years of actual events.
The Taliban were repelling an invading army. The Viet Cong were strictly trained.
Do you think ordinary Americans have the skill or appetite to take up arms against other Americans? Especially better trained and equipped Americans?
How far do you think the Jan 6 insurrectionists would have gotten had the capitol police taken the threat at all seriously?
The argument that "America's armed forces have lost wars" does not support your conclusion that "ordinary Americans are capable of defeating America's armed forces."
And you also conveniently ignore the rest of argument, pointing out that a democratic government doesn't need armed insurrections.
>Do you think ordinary Americans have the skill or appetite to take up arms against other Americans? Especially better trained and equipped Americans?
IDK. Ask the Irish.
The Taliban, VC, etc, had basically ZERO ability to mess with the invading army's supply lines or the political process keeping those supply lines open. Furthermore, the martial law steps taken in places like Iraq to stem the violence would be much more politically costly domestically. I can crap out plenty of non-US examples of this kind of thing if that helps.
This shit is all basic stuff covered in Armchair General 101. Educate yourself.
> This shit is all basic stuff covered in Armchair General 101. Educate yourself.
Based on the snide tone of condescension, this response sounds like it was written by precisely the kind of delusional macho wannabe who fetishizes firearms and dreams of one day murdering someone.
>this response sounds like it was written by precisely the kind of delusional macho wannabe who fetishizes firearms and dreams of one day murdering someone.
Or maybe I've read just a little bit of history and think you're the delusional one.
Civil wars don't go down like foreign occupations. If this nation breaks down into widespread violence (I don't personally think it would, I think it would balkanize before we ever got to that point) I hope that you live long enough to be subject to is so that you may learn an important lesson and that some future generation may be spared the task of mopping up the mess.
The point wasn't how much I've read. The point was that "just a little bit" is the threshold amount of knowledge above which people stop spouting the kinds of things you're spouting. Nobody from armchair generals all the way up to real professionals says the hand-wavy things about foreign war tactics being portable to domestic wars without losing substantial efficacy like you're saying.
> You can look at Australia during covid and the camps they setup.
What camps? At some points, some international arrivals were quarantined in "camps" and, interstate or international travellers were variously required to isolate in hotels. The US had a range of at-home and government supervised quarantine too.
TO say they "set up camps" is disingenuous.
Having armed citizen is terrible for freedom. It means that the kind of person willing to use violent force against another person has power.
Yeah exactly. Can't fathom using it as an argument. The terrible consequences of Australians not having firearms: drastically lower COVID deaths per capita. Also, no mass shootings this century.
Gun ownership has to go into the calculus of making a decision like this. Government officials will have to ask themselves what they are willing to tolerate in terms of armed resistance. Even if it's just one loon with a gun killing whatever officials try to get him out of his house, the ends have to justify that occurrence.
The idea that the person your forcing to do something (anything) may be armed makes the government less likely to force people to do things.
Sometimes we all need to heed the rules of the society in which we live.
If an elected government cannot make rules because "someone might get shot" then the government needs to control the guns. Otherwise we're all at the mercy of those willing to kill so they don't have to abide by the rules.
Government officials already need to worry about the political implications of their actions, they shouldn't need to worry about being murdered by a loon with a gun who disagrees.
I don't need to look up what happened in Australia because I live there. The "covid camps" were illegal border crossing camps. So all an American has to do to fully understand this event is look into at US border detention and the way that guns have, or have not, prevented these from ever being created.
> The "covid camps" were illegal border crossing camps.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Australia was violating human rights every time they made it illegal for one of their citizens to enter the country. Don't lump these "illegal border crossing"s in with foreigners trying to illegally immigrate.
There is a large gap between "I like what the government is doing right now" and "time to keep the government in check with guns".
In other words, just because guns aren't being used to keep the government in check right now doesn't mean there aren't valid situations where they could be. I'm not entirely sure if your comment is insinuating that. If it's not, sorry for misinterpreting it.
So if an election were believed to be fraudulent, for example, that would be a legally/ethically justified opportunity to raid the Capitol building in an armed mob? Inquiring minds want to know.
In other words, can we have some concrete example when, in your opinion, it is appropriate to shoot a cop?
Any time it would be appropriate to shoot not-a-cop. Cop with his knee on someone’s neck where that person is obviously suffocating? It’s appropriate to shoot that cop.
Why is suffocation a prerequisite? Why shouldn't I be able to shoot a cop any time they abuse their authority? For example, if violence is appropriate in defending individual liberty, then by your argument I should be able to shoot a cop if they arrest for me a crime I'm innocent of. Or for a crime that I'm not innocent of, but feel that I would not get a fair trial for. Or if a cop inconveniences me by pulling me over when I'm in a hurry. Basically, it sounds like you're supporting a principle of violence left at the discretion of the individual.
I’m supporting a principle of violence against police any time it would be justified against an ordinary person. False arrest where you fear for your life? Yes. Arrest for a crime you’re not innocent of? No. Pulling you over in a hurry? No.
The government wants to maintain a monopoly in the use of force and violence. I don’t think they should have that option. Call me a libertarian.
> I’m supporting a principle of violence against police any time it would be justified against an ordinary person.
This does not clarify the issue. When is violence justified against an ordinary person in your opinion? If you're proposing a legal principle, there should be a clear line.
Moreover, who gets to decide when violence is justified? Are we leaving that up to each person's own sense of justice? Or does everyone have to use your standard? How do we resolve post-facto disagreements about the justification of use of violence?
What punishment would you support for someone who uses unjustified violence that they feel is justified? What if they disagree with that punishment?
Self defense and defense of others is a clear line with case law and statutory interpretations going back centuries. I refuse to be pulled into your argument and its attempts to recast my position: police should have no privileges above an ordinary citizen when using force. Use of violence is justified in a court of law subject to a jury of your peers.
I recognize that what you term "refusing to be pulled into my argument" is a standard libertarian motif of pretending that a complex subject is very simple.
"Defense" is not a simple idea. Proving self-defense in court is quite difficult. Self-defense has not ever been in the US a legal defense against the charge of resisting arrest. We currently discourage violence against cops by giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are acting in the best interests of the law; we may in fact give them too much credit, but to give them no credit at all would turn any arrest procedure into a brawl.
Allow me demonstrate: if a cop A wants to arrest person B, rightly or wrongly, A is using physical coercion, which is violence. By your argument, under ther principle of self-defense, any citizen has the legal/ethical right to oppose use of violence. So now we have a situation where two people simply have differing opinions: A thinks that B should be arrested, and B thinks that B should not be arrested. In your argument, the way to resolve this dispute is not in courts, but immediately, with violence. Either way, someone will get hurt or killed.
Another aspect: if a person's legal justification for resisting arrest depends on their guilt or innocence, why would anyone voluntarily submit to arrest, since doing so would be interpreted as a sign of guilt? If only guilty people can be arrested, then what is the point of courts?
I fail to see how this legal framework would not lead to massively escalating violence everywhere in society. Your worldview is juvenile.
>> we may in fact give them too much credit, but to give them no credit at all would turn any arrest procedure into a brawl.
This is possible and I accept this end point. My worldview is consistent, yours is bound up in perverse gotchas and outs for when force that is otherwise unjustified has to be justified or else "bad things" will happen to society. You assume that my framework ends with "massively escalating violence everywhere in society" but you haven't proven that and, more importantly, your worldview (assuming it's the current one) has resulted in the same problem. Or are we to take George Floyd's death and the related national civil unrest as not a massive escalation of violence everywhere in society?
> You assume that my framework ends with "massively escalating violence everywhere in society" but you haven't proven that
Come on man. You're arguing like a 12 year old here. "You can't prove that!" is not an argument. Try to at least form a cohesive logical defense of your position.
> Or are we to take George Floyd's death and the related national civil unrest as not a massive escalation of violence everywhere in society?
Overall, violent crime is massively down since the 1990s. George Floyd's death and the resulting civil unrest highlights important problems in our society nonetheless, and should result in reforms. The fact that those reforms have been weak or non-existent is a result of regulatory capture by the police, the unjustified strength of police unions, a judiciary that gives too much credit to police, the police culture of protecting each other, and other issues. Hopefully, we will, through legislatively-enacted reforms, reach a position where the actions of those police officers are sufficiently disincentivized that they will become rare. I don't think that an appropriate resolution of the George Floyd incident would be for by-standers to execute the cops.
> bound up in perverse gotchas and outs for when force that is otherwise unjustified has to be justified or else "bad things" will happen to society.
Yeah. What you call "perverse gotchas" is what I call "necessary complexity," because human society is complex and the rules regulating is are complex. I understand the allure of using simple rules at all costs, but thousands of years of jurisprudence suggest that humans are too complex for that; that's why we have thousands and thousands of laws. Understanding that a complex system requires complex rules is not hyprocricy, it's just good engineering.
OK, that's two ways it could leak - data breach, and honoring an FOIA request. And that makes me think of a third way - improperly redacted evidence in a court case.
Paranoia about my data in government databases wasn't on my radar 15 minutes ago...
See, the state banned them before the feds did. But unlike the feds, the state did the right thing and compensated the owners who surrendered theirs to the State Patrol (which required filling a form with a bunch of PII). That program was put together rather hastily due to the impending federal ban tho, and they didn't really consider the privacy angle.
Then they got two FOIA requests for all the submitted forms, one of which explicitly stated that it's to compile and publish the registry of former owners. The legislature actually had to scramble to pass another law to specify that data as private before the response was due.
Hi. I'm from Appalachia and am a fan of the second amendment.
Please don't call me a jackass.
Now that we have that out of the way: Gun owners have brought this kind of thing on themselves. I've observed them for years.
Most of the demands for "privacy" for gun owners stem from the fact if you did a fair and accurate background check... they wouldn't be able to own them.
I don't own one, but they took me out on Pearl Harbor day when I was sixteen and showed me how to shoot a 1911 at the local range. Prior to that, I learned on BB guns, then at the archery range in Cub Scouts, then finally on bolt action .22s in the Boy Scouts. I can't hit a target accurately with a pistol more than 10 yards out, but I know enough if someone gives me one I can make use of it.
Anyways, the ugly truth is most gun owners in America... shouldn't. They're obsessed with movie plot threats and movie plot guns, when if you truly want to have a militia geared at ovethrowing fascist oppressors, you want to take a look at how they handled such things in places like occupied Prague or Amsterdam.
Hint: they didn't run up on the Nazis with deagles or AK-47 clones with drum clips so large they jam sooner than if you stuck with a 30 round banana clip -- they walked up with a .22 revolver so quiet you can't hear it from the next apartment over, emptied it into the skull of some local party official, dropping no casings, because it's a revolver, not a deagle with a dick extender, then dropped it in a canal or whatever and never spoke of it again, and slit the throats of those who felt otherwise as they slept.
The second amendment was about maintaining arms for hunting and/or a small guerilla force to hold off invaders until an organized militia could provide reinforcement, not so every tom dick and sally could replicate the National Guard armory.
This is made possible - ultimately - by the absence of criminal and statutory civil penalties for exposure of confidential data. Congress (gotta be federal) needs to jump on this for domestic and national security reasons, but the tech/data/corporate lobby will fight this to the bitter end.
> The Reload reviewed a copy of the Lost Angeles County database and found 244 judge permits listed in the database. The files included the home addresses, full names, and dates of birth for all of them.
How did this ever go live? Like, was it a bug or did they actually think putting this on the web was a good idea?
Bug. Incompetence. It looks like they put a giant spreadsheet with all the PII into Tableau and then embedded a web view to serve a geo visualization of some of the columns. Except they made the full underlying table accessible by anyone in Tableau.
> If I’m choosing a house to rob, sounds like a really really dumb idea to choose one where the person owns a gun.
Unless you want to steal a gun of course.
> If anything the gun owners should be happy, the government gave them free deterrence from being the target of crime.
Unless they are the kind of person exposed to abnormal risk. The same people who are more likely to need or want a concealed weapon. Examples include judges and correctional officers who are called out in the data explicitly. Or anyone with an abusive partner or stalker who can look them up by name.
I'm thinking that we should have a MTBL (Mean Time Between Leaking) companies and government. The data they have in their system will only be safe for X number of years, on average.
Also given how political the process of getting a CCW permit is in California (i.e. if you're not in a county with a sheriff willing to give a permit to everyone you either need to be rich or have connections) a disproportionate amount of cops, jail guards, celebrities, and wealthy businessmen (along with their home addresses) are going to be on that list.
Last year, SCOTUS ruled that California could not collect donor information from non profits. A large part of this was that California did a poor job of securing this information. They accidentally posted over 1700 Schedule B forms online for anyone to access over the last 10 years.
Agreed. And feel free to do so in your country home.
Like the 1A, 2A isnt absolute, even conservatives say it isnt. You cant shoot guns for fun in a patio in NYC (but you should be allowed to own a mortar!). Not absolute but unconstitutionally stifled for decades.
You just have to pony up $200 for the mortar itself, and then $200 for each shell, to register them with ATF as destructive devices. Well, and find someone to willing to sell them for you. Or make your own.
IANAL, nor 2A case law buff...but given the Troubles of 7 February 1991 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack ) - and much other mischief that they'd be "just the thing" for - I suspect that U.S. law enforcement could be very interested in private owners of mortars.
That's partly why they set it up that way in the first place - ATF gets to review all those applications, and while they cannot reject them except for specific enumerated reasons, they can certainly investigate and/or notify other agencies.
Nevertheless, if you follow the procedure, it is legal, and rich collectors do it. Also applies to larger artillery pieces, tanks with working main gun etc.
Do you have a source for this? My understanding of the second amendment comes from reading America’s Constitution: A Biography by Akhail Reed Amar. I’m trying to find reference to this meaning you cited, but coming up short. I also don’t find it in the article by him in The New Republic:
DC vs. Heller settled the meaning of the term in regards to Constitutional law. There's also a long history of "well-regulated" meaning well-equipped, in proper working order, etc. in English going back hundreds of years.
(linking to that site rather than its source since the source is sending a bad SSL cert)
There are other writings by the Founding Fathers from the time of the ratification of the US Constitution reiterating the need of a right for people to own arms in case it's necessary to overthrow the government, specifically including the government they had just created.
Gun registries only exist to support eventual confiscation via further erosion of 2A rights, such as red flag laws, assault weapons bans, and other restrictions on ownership.
So we can have separate state registries of: residents, voters, drivers, students, people on disability, people who are unemployed, among others, but gun owners would be too much?
Why should there be any need to determine who can concealed carry? It should be inalienable right afforded to anyone, but those currently at the moment incarcerated.
I assume “anybody” includes people with 0 hours of gun training, convicted felons, children, non-residents, non-citizens and those with serious mental illnesses?
> What is the purpose of a gun registry other than to enable confiscation?
The purpose is to ensure that the guns are in the possession of the registered owner, and not sold illegally; to ensure that the gun is being stored in a safe manner that will not lead to its theft or accidentally use; and so that the government can call upon lawful gun owners to defend their country in time of need.
There really has been no tradition of forced weapon confiscation in this country, and I think your insinuation to the contrary is born of paranoia.
I'll definitely keep that line of argument in mind next time my rightist friends tell me I'm being paranoid for taking Justice Thomas at his word when he says he wants to roll back gay marriage and contraception.
How about this: the federal government already has sales info on FFL weapons via 4473, no?
So mandate that the last registered owner of a firearm is an accomplice to any crime committed with it, unless it was reported missing or stolen prior to the time of crime.
This would have the incentive effects of:
Parents keeping their nutso incel kids from their guns.
People would voluntarily get a notarized bill of sale for transfers, even private. They could not, but then they would be putting a high level of faith in the buyer and all future owners in perpetuity.
The notaries and bills of sale are now a de facto, decentralized but private source of record for transfers.
Unless there is something I don't understand about notaries.
Since you obviously don't own guns and therefore have nothing to lose, just replace "guns" with "cars" in your statement and maybe you'll understand why that's ridiculous.
I own between five and ten firearms including an AR-15. I have, not including .22LR, about 3000 rounds on hand. (I don't shoot as much as I used to).
You put no intellectual effort into rebutting, and made senseless and incorrect assumptions about me. I made a good faith attempt at making an incremental improvement in keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them.
You just compared two objects. State your case or move on.
Then you are overconfident in your ability to safely store them. Your guns can be found in the hands of criminals through no fault of your own. My mistake was assuming your ignorance rather than hubris.
I'm not liable for a criminal taking my car and running over pedestrians even if I leave the door open and engines running in a public place.
Reading your comment history, you have a very bad faith manner of making your points. You speak of hubris to me but nothing in your tone suggests humility, decency or the willingness to debate with people as if they are partners in the community. You're looking for a fight. You aren't looking for solutions.
No, someone would not be immediately thrown in an incarceration pit if someone stole their gun on a Saturday afternoon and killed someone on a Saturday night. Jesus, this is a HN thread. It's a whiteboard, not legislative text. Open your mind.
Ahh, the true sign of someone arguing in good faith.
> you have a very bad faith manner of making your points.
As opposed to your "stay calm and passive aggressive" nonsense.
> nothing in your tone suggests humility, decency or the willingness to debate with people as if they are partners in the community. You're looking for a fight. You aren't looking for solutions.
I'm not willing to debate your insane proposal. There's no humility here because I'm right. You're not going to change my mind because it's a stupid idea. I'm not looking for a fight, your idea is dumb. It has no corollary in any situation where something deadly is stolen (cars, prescription drugs, literally anything). To make an exception for the one thing that is constitutionally guaranteed is the most absurd way of going about such a thing. Not to mention the fact that it's completely _impractical_ politically, even if you could convince someone that it was a good idea.
I have the solution, stop proposing this bad idea.
Epic fail, it's pretty hard to discern if it's malice or incompetence that caused this. Either way, the jackasses responsible for this should have been mopping the floor in a grocery store by now, not explaining how this whole operation was to elevate trust.
Obviously I have no proof for this, but the timing would definitely suggest malice.
The Supreme Court just handed down an opinion that essentially struck down California's concealed carry law, not to mention Dobbs. This smacks of childish retaliation for not getting your way.
They only eliminated requiring a “good cause” to obtain a CCL. Self-defense was not considered a good cause in a number of cities and counties. Being a celebrity or donating was.
Bonte is leaning hard on the other requirement of “good moral character”, so there’s going to be more lawsuits.
They effectively did. Many counties were using the CCL as defacto gun control and/or sources of bribery and corruption. Now _anyone_ who is willing to follow the has equal access to a CCL instead of relying on the whims of a sheriff.
California politicians don't use the phrase "only" when they talk about removing the "good cause" requirement.
I recall the Journal News, of New York, making an online map of locals who held gun permits, back around 2012. Of course, someone published the addresses of those journalists who were -- unsurprisingly -- all boo-hoo-hoo about it.
> Licenses and applications to carry firearms are public. CBS Inc. v. Block, 42 Cal. 3d 646, 652-53, 725 P.2d 470, 230 Cal. Rptr. 362 (1986). However, certain information contained in the application is expressly exempt. Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(u) (information indicating when and where applicant is vulnerable to attack, information concerning applicant’s mental health, and home address and telephone number of prosecutors, public defenders, peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates set forth in the application and license is exempt). The agency must segregate the exempt from non-exempt material. See Cal. Gov't Code § 6253(a).
The data includes judges, police officers, and correctional officers. There's even a special column to identify them. The data also includes mental health information for people whose CCWs and RAWs were rejected (as well as physical health information for people who died during the application process, but maybe that's considered public knowledge)
I find this leak to be incredibly ironic in light of the recent California required political disclosure law that got struck down. One of the key arguments from the charities that challenged that law was that California has a history of leaking sensitive information and that they would likely leak this list of donors, and California's primary argument against this was "well, we've changed!"
The brief filed by the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says that we should regard your system as a system of de facto public disclosure because there have been such massive confidentiality breaches in California. And from the perspective of a donor, that may make sense.
A donor may say: This is a state that has been grossly negligent in the past.
No sanctions against anybody who's leaked this information.
I have to assume that this may happen again. Why isn't that a reasonable way to look at this?
Aimee A. Feinberg
I don't think even the district court regarded it that way, Justice Alito.
At 62a of the Law Center petition appendix, the district court said that the Attorney General's Office efforts to rectify past lapses and to prevent them in the future were commendable.
Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
It said your past record was shocking, did it not?
Aimee A. Feinberg
In the foundation decision, it did.
Following the court's analysis of the evidence regarding the changes to the State's protocols, it called those efforts commendable.
Its concern at the Law Center -- its concern at that point was that the State could not guarantee confidentiality.
So the information listed seems like information I would expect to be on something like a concealed carry permit. Are the permits themselves not public records?
Private information, such as home addresses and good cause justifications (as they can contain highly sensitive info - ie details about an abusive partner, etc) are specifically excluded from public release by law.
A common justification is that you have to carry around large amounts of cash or other fungible valuables. If I dealt in gold or diamonds I wouldn't want my home address to be public either.
Until proven otherwise, I'll assume it's incompetence. I mean, I can't imagine why the Attorney General's office would want to do it. What would they stand to gain? There's no question who is responsible for it, and very little question that they'll be punished for doing it. What would the hoped-for benefit be?
The Supreme Court recently forced California and 9 other states to loosen up CCW rules and there's probably going to be a large increase in applications. Doxxing people with CCWs will have a chilling effect and prevent at least some people from going through the process.
Edit: something else I just thought of. Gun-owning judges are explicitly called out in the spreadsheet. Gun-owning judges are also probably less likely to agree with Attorney General Bonta when he's in court. Is it possible that those judges will have to recuse themselves in cases involving Bonta?
Not really a surprise, sadly. Philly did something similar when they created a map of all LTCF holders in the city. Disclosing that information is a felony under the law, but of course nobody was prosecuted for it. The city was of course sued and ordered to give each LTCF holder $1200 for the violation.
I'm 100 percent against government "lists"; In order to have a right taken away, the only Constitutional way is through a guilty verdict in the the judicial system.
Events/(choices) like this have disastrous consequences for any hope of bridging the widening polarization. I'm starting to think we may never get back to where we were.
Criminals don't comb records of concealed carry holders to rob them, they do straw purchases or more often just buy guns with serial numbers already removed. Its just Cali gun owners worked up because gun regulation works well for the country.
All the news stories say "leak", but the URL looks pretty official, and has "firearms data portal" built right in. Sadly, the site is currently down, so I'm not sure if they meant some other kind of firearms data.
To be honest, I expect this to become even more of a thing. With the erosion of Roe v Wade and the supreme court signaling that it's deciding to pull back on any rights to privacy, blue states will fight back by adopting the same measures that were used to curtail abortion against gun owners. Texas provides an excellent blueprint for a way you can do so without violating someone's rights, and the court even signed off on it.
Nothing in the constitution signals you have a right to privacy as so decreed the court, so while you may have a right to own guns it can be made as public as the state wants with no recourse. In this scenario it's more pure incompetence, but that's the way I see it going down.
> Nothing in the constitution signals you have a right to privacy as so decreed the court
That's not true. There's a previous ruling that determines that "liberty" in the 14th amendment includes privacy for many things. Roe v Wade determined that abortion was one of those things. Overturning Roe doesn't overturn the precedent it was based on.
More disruptive things will inevitably come down now that the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is not a constitutional right. Left. Right. Doesn't matter. No one is safe anymore.
The leaked information includes the person’s full name, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge.
Well, mapping between the databases. If DROS data is available, yet the individual doesn't have a CCW, what does the DROS info have? Given what I understand, if an individual has a CCW and the info exposed there, mapping to what firearms they own may be relatively straight forward. If they don't, then what info is available?
For transactions, the only PII is DOB, transaction time, and location. I think it'll be easier to correlate transactions with the Assault Weapon permit and FSC tables than with the CCW table (since there's a clear temporal relationship, and the firearm make/model carries over too)
Based on my personal experience with California gov, this must be malice.
Moreover, the personnel who made this “mistake” and who “discovered” it must be the same person.
I don't see why people of a different religion need privacy either, we should make a list of them so that I can ensure that I am not living near anyone who might have different values. /s
If yours is a sincerely held view, I think you need to take some time and meet new people.
Are you saying that you would like for bad things to happen to firearms owners at any cost, including their firearms being distributed to thieves for nefarious use?
In other words, you aren't trying to solve a social issue, you're trying to punish your ideological enemies?
Do they? We're currently entering an era of strict Constitutional textualism, and a right to privacy is mentioned nowhere in it. If women don't have a right to privacy regarding their own bodies, why should gun owners get to keep their guns secret?
>"If women don't have a right to privacy regarding their own bodies, why should gun owners get to keep their guns secret?"
This isn't a zero sum game. To lose a right to privacy somewhere doesn't mean it deserves to be lost everywhere. If you are upset that privacy is being violated you shouldn't be happy this happened.
Unless, of course, they want to get a medical procedure. (Because you somehow don't have an inalienable right to body autonomy, but you do have the inalienable right to own a gun.)
If you murder someone in private, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from murder charges. The same logic is being used with abortion laws, your euphemizing it as "a medical procedure" notwithstanding.
Nobody else is entitled to occupy space in, or take nourishment from my body. It's their problem if they can't survive outside of it.
Just like it's not murder to refuse to have your organs transplanted to save a life, because of your right to body autonomy, it's not murder to evict someone living inside it. Refusing help to someone isn't murder, even in a life-or-death situation - and if it were, I've got a long list of impositions for you.
>Nobody else is entitled to occupy space in, or take nourishment from my body.
If you have a newborn baby and refuse to feed them and they die, you'll be tried for murder. The baby being inside or outside of the body doesn't change the responsibility the mother has to it.
The mother can give up that child any time she wants. Nobody's forcing her to take on those responsibilities. If the child fails to survive as a ward of the state, it's no longer her problem. The child doesn't have the right to make this imposition on anyone in particular, whether via money, or via blood.
Speaking of blood, I need a kidney, you have two. Can we cut you open against your will, and take one, for my use? I'll die without one. Surely, my right to life is more important then your right to your own person. After all, that right isn't enumerated anywhere in the constitution...
That would be like saying "Post Jan 6th I don't think anyone should have free speech.". Removal of a right because of abuse by somebody else is ridiculous.
The comment is pretty confrontational and hostile though
I guess I could see an argument going either way for allowing it. There can only be a flame war in response to it, but maybe that flame war needs to play out?
It's not a question of agreement or disagreement, the comment is just unrelated ragebait. I'd love to read an analysis of the costs and benefits of modern air travel, but if this were article about a United Airlines data breach and someone commented "That's good because I wish airplanes had been banned after 9/11", I'd flag that too.
As a property owner in another state, I don't care specifically about CA but I do very much for my own locality. IMO a CC permit holder and owner who is not a member of a regulated entity is more dangerous than a sex offender.
Could you clarify that for me? You think that a convicted rapist/child molester/pervert, who has committed a crime (> 12 percent being repeat offenders [1]), is less dangerous than someone who has a gun, 24% being women [2], who has not committed a crime?
> who is not a member of a regulated entity
I think their name being in this database means they are a taking part in a regulated entity, does it not?
Sex crimes as a whole occur at an appalling high rate. I tend to believe the figures that in the US 1 in 5 or more women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. The vast, vast majority of those occur through relationships. Stranger rape is pretty rare. The risk from a stranger recidivist in general falls into that category, even rarer. And non-stranger recidivist relationships- every woman develops her own spidey sense- imperfect, to be sure, but still there. In our family we work a great deal on developing that spidey sense when it comes to relationships, though comparatively speaking that's a much greater concern to me in general than stranger rape. I'm just not worried that my daughters or wife are going to find themselves assaulted by a stranger, one who doesn't have a gun.
If that stranger has a gun, everything changes. And that's not a function of the risk of sexual violence, that's a function of the possession of the gun.
In general guns represent an unacceptable- to me- escalation of violent potential. The availability of guns is the most extreme form- that of violence- of inequality between people.
The reason we have a society, a political system, rule of law, regulated military- is so that disputes can be settled as much as possible without violence. Of course people participating in regulated violent entities- police forces, the military- have great difficulty controlling gun use. Many of them join because they want to use guns! But the use of weapons by those entities is vastly (!!) less dangerous than any category of use by even trained civilians.
So that's why. The bottom line is that both sex crimes and gun use are about violence and power. Someone who wishes to exercise power without a gun is vastly (!!) less of a risk than someone who does so with a gun. And I see vanishingly few use cases for the possession of a gun that don't involve the exercise of power.
Hope that makes sense. Best wishes. Thanks for the engagement.
I understand your concern, and appreciate the explanation you provided. I respectfully disagree in so far as in the United States, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Your interpretation that this requires the bearers to be part of a 'well regulated militia' has not been the interpretation of the appellate courts nor the supreme court. Definitions change over time, and 'well regulated' meant 'well equipped' and 'militia' was the entire body of males able to fight. More to the point, however, the appellate courts and the supreme court state that the key part of this is 'the people' and not the explanation as to why the right exists.
I absolutely believe you have the right to have your opinion that guns are dangerous, and that we need to do something about them. At this time, however, that will require changing the US Constitution and I believe that is not likely to happen in the future. There are only a few ways for the constitution to be changed, and getting this changed as an amendment is likely never to happen and calling for a constitutional convention could result in massive changes across the board that noone can imagine right now.
And with respect to you- we'll see. That particular line of argument is relatively recent and novel and "original"- in the creative sense, not in the originalist sense- and I have hope that one way or another the "plain meaning" that was dominant for 200 years prior to Scalia's and others inventions will return. Cheers.
Right, right. Guns are absolutely about power. What is interesting to me about this difference between us is that I really, really want people to have that power: I think it is very important that regular people have this "violent potential" as you put it. Having the potential is obviously not the same as deploying it, but having it still matters very much.
Most people are good, trustworthy, and deserving of this power. A few people are not, but taking power away from regular people really won't do so much to help them. In fact, at the end of the day, all it does is force them to become like children, dependent on someone else -- or really, a special class of person, since people absolutely should work together -- for their own security.
"Society" is really nothing more than these people: those that choose "cooperate". It's not the same thing as the "political system" or even the "rule or law". Some people choose "defect", and view the cooperators as prey. Correct me if I misunderstand, but it seems to me, that out of fear of defectors, you want to take power from cooperators and give it to a sanctioned, "regulated" class of people. Presumably because you think you would be safer.
I think you can imagine why this would be ill-considered. If you are concerned about "equality", it's hard for me to imagine a more unequal state. We've basically arrived again at a medieval distinction between peasants, warriors, and priests. Who keeps your warriors in check? The unarmed peasants? The priests with their "regulations"? I'm guessing you are more of a priestly type. I would caution you, your magic is not as strong as you think it is, and it doesn't seem to work at all on the bandits.
It's a bad idea to dox gun owners, but I personally would be very pleased to learn that my neighbors are well armed. I already know a lot of them are. Perhaps you would not be. But if not, consider that you might need better neighbors or maybe a better relationship with them.
I couldn't disagree more. With respect, all of these arguments are specious and exist in the world of fantasy, not reality.
The "dependent on someone else" business is in fact the way the world works, with billions of people, trillions of capital, millions of businesses, deeply interconnected trade, etc etc.
In this reality, everyone has a few jobs that they perform, and many, many jobs they don't. Doing your job, and leaving other jobs to others, is what adults do.
Children are people who don't understand reality and live in their fantasies, dreaming about days that never come, inventing stories about the creatures in their minds, not living in the world.
The question of "who keeps the warriors in check" in fact empirically answers itself, every single day.
Similarly, every single act of civilian gun violence- so unique to the United States- is the evidence against any argument that there is a legitimate role for gun possession.
Finally, with respect to well armed neighbors- the data and logic and every ounce of decency know that a world where everyone has a gun is a world where everyone dies prematurely, violently, needlessly.
The magical thinking is yours. I hope that you come out of it some time. Cheers.
Writing an insult and punctuating it with “cheers” is so insincere and sanctimonious that your argument is it’s own counter-argument.
If you think civilian gun violence is unique to the US, you should really r check in on any country south of our border. All of which have much more restricted gun ownership.
>We've basically arrived again at a medieval distinction between peasants, warriors, and priests. Who keeps your warriors in check? The unarmed peasants? The priests with their "regulations"? I'm guessing you are more of a priestly type. I would caution you, your magic is not as strong as you think it is.
Except, in reality, the peasants are armed to the teeth and not keeping the warriors in check at all, rather they and the warriors tend to pay fealty to the same lords. Although the armed peasantry does like to boast that if they weren't as armed to the teeth as they are, things would be much much worse, that claim seems as dubious to many as the priests' magic.
Isn't it a good thing that armed citizens and the professional warrior caste like police and military -- who are also really just other citizens -- work together?
If you are asking why the glorious revolution hasn't happened despite having an armed to the teeth peasantry, then the answer is simple: the peasants are still getting their bread and circuses.
>then the answer is simple: the peasants are still getting their bread and circuses.
I think you're half right. The answer is the armed peasants like the feeling of power and "violent potential" of their guns, and claiming to be champions of the people keeping the warriors in check, but really couldn't give less than half a rat's ass what the warriors do as long as they get to keep their toys.
"We are investigating an exposure of individuals’ personal information connected to the DOJ Firearms Dashboard," his office said via email. "Any unauthorized release of personal information is unacceptable.We are working swiftly to address this situation and will provide additional information as soon as possible."
Per Cal. Gov't Code § 6253(a)
details such as when and where applicant is vulnerable to attack, information concerning applicant’s mental health, and home address and telephone number of prosecutors, public defenders, peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates set forth in the application and license is exempt from public disclosure and must be segregated to avoid being released.
If you want to know, it's pretty easy to tell whether a household has guns, so not sure this is such a big leak. Sure it's incompetence, but big picture, probably doesn't change anything.
I don't think you are right. Can you list the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the judges in California that have guns? Because without this data, I'm curious how you are going to answer such a question.
Bumper stickers, t-shirts, 2nd-amendment-related flags are probably a good place to start. Campaign signs, etc. Voter registration, political donations, etc. I'm guessing pitbull ownership is also correlated. Souped up trucks. Mailers from firearms-related organizations.
What if I told you there were millions of gun owners out there that don't subscribe to any of the cliché things you listed in your comment? Gun owners aren't a monolith caricature like you imagine.
That's a straw man (I never said this applied to ALL gun owners), and I'd actually say that making straw man arguments in response to perceived negative comments about guns is also correlated with ownership - thus, I assume you are a gun owner. Not that hard.
Clearly, it is not all gun owners. It's just that there are plenty of people who do fall in this category that you will have an endless supply of houses to rob, if so inclined.
There are FAR more people like me, with none of that shit, than the caricature you described. I worked a gun shop counter for a few years and boy would you be surprised who has guns.
You may be right - but enough people do make it obvious that criminals wouldn't ever have a problem locating those households. Even without that obvious stuff, I've found that a lot of gun owners can't resist 'gun talk' which is also a pretty obvious giveaway.
Not necessarily strangers, but just in casual conversations with people in public places. Which guns they think are badass, the high price of ammunition, the annoyances of new regulations, etc.
Because a lot of people claim they want a pitbull for home protection purposes, so it makes sense that they'd be more likely than average to have other means of protection as well.
If you asked pitbull owners what the benefits of their dog was, I assume most would put something like 'protects my family/house' on their list, or joke around about what would happen if an unlucky intruder chose their house to break into.
> The idea of the dog protecting the family is common amongst all large dog owners, it's not really specific to pitbull owners.
Ok then my argument still holds true, and you're just upset that I called out pitbulls specifically. Your argument for negative correlation also doesn't really make sense - if it did, gun owners would just stop at buying one gun because they already have one. People who take their self-defense seriously don't usually just stop at the bare minimum.
> Ok then my argument still holds true, and you're just upset that I called out pitbulls specifically.
You stereotyped pitbull owners specifically, not dog owners. Then you backed off as the logic fell apart. You're just spouting off assumptions (which you've admitted are assumptions) without anything to back it up.
> if it did, gun owners would just stop at buying one gun because they already have one.
Many gun owners do only have one gun for protection. Again, another stereotype assumption.
Some people aren't comfortable with guns, so they get a dog for protection.
Now that you've done "gun owners" and pitbull owners would you like to stereotype anyone else?
Or do you just want to stop at the one that is acceptable to?
> Many gun owners do only have one gun for protection
You keep using this logic, but it's just another strawman. I've never claimed these statements apply to everyone - that's a very weak interpretation, so I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
You keep using strawman incorrectly in this thread.
First off, that response was not refuting your main point, but a secondary point. (I'm really not sure what your main point was as you changed it from profiling pitbull owners to profiling dog owners after I pointed out the flaw in your logic)
I was simply disputing your statement that dog owners would have also have a gun because gun owners own multiple guns. That's not sound logic.
Your logic is jumping around and you don't have a cohesive point.
Would you like to rephrase your main point so we can add straw back to the man?
I'm not using the term incorrectly. You're changing my argument's meaning from 'some' to 'ALL' - and then refuting the weaker argument. I feel like you're arguing from a place of emotion and clearly are offended, and I'm not interested in continuing that.
I'm staunchly pro regulation but this even I can't understand. Like someone just did SELECT * FROM GunOwnersDB and pushed is straight to the web.