Ahh man. I came for the Horseshoe sale, stayed for one of Meddler's gun control threads... Oh well. *Opens a Beer* Here we go...
Guns need to be registered in much the same way and for many of the same reasons that vehicles are registered. Public safety is only a part of the value of registration. There are other valuable benefits to a comprehensive registry of firearms.
Title and registration of a motor vehicle is part of the agreement you enter in with your state to in order to get access to public roads. If you have a vehicle on private property that will never use a public road, registration may be omitted in most states. In addition to that, 8 states do not require a title. It is possible to own a car in the US and operate it on private property without the knowledge of the government.
A better analogy would be licensing and registration of firearm owners who carry a firearm in public. In the interest of public safety, the state has a right to register and screen those would like to use that right in public. That's already being done. The difference here is that it doesn't associate a license holder with a particular firearm. The possibility of adding that to the license wouldn't be out of the question in my mind. The list of license holders is basically a de facto list of firearm owners, so having serials of carry firearms wouldn't be that much of a stretch.
How can we understand the mechanics of the flow of guns from legal manufacturing, through the chain of commerce into lawful public ownership but then into the hands of criminals without tracking via registration? I want to try and stem the flow of guns into criminal channels, especially focusing on the profit seeking suppliers of guns to criminals. Right now we have limited information at best.
I agree the we need to better understand how criminals obtain firearms. How about setting aside some money for the ATF to deep dive the
abundance of trace data they currently have? Currently, some of the most cited statistics rely on
inmate surveys (Table 2, pg 730), and how honest do you think they really are? We can effectively make the decision to implement a firearm registry without having a clue as to what the actual impact would be.
Lets say we take the inmate survey numvbers as fact. If we have 100% registration requirement, you may be able to cut down the cited 41% of purchases made friends and family, but what about the remaining 59% that remains unaffected. You'll never turn that 41% to 0%, so how much are we actually going to accomplish? Is it actually worth the burden an individual's protected right? Also, the problem with registration is that failure to register a firearm
can not be used to prosecute a criminal. (Haynes v. United States)
How can owners gain proper insurance coverage for their guns without registration? The insurance companies are going to need to know what guns the citizen holds to properly price the insurance and to limit coverage only to the firearms registered to the insured party.
This one is easy. Do homeowners / flood insurance companies require you to have the serial numbers of all the appliances you lost when you made a claim? Not at all. Pictures go a long way in supporting an insurance claim. There would be a tremendous amount of overhead cost associated with maintaining a current list of insurable goods in the average household. I'm not sure why we would expect exceptional treatment for items that are similarly priced.
How can a gun owner expect to recover stolen property without some proof of ownership? A nation-wide registration would help reunite legitimate owners with their missing property.
Do you have three minutes and a file? Then you have a gun that is not traceable by registration. How about ten minutes and some steel wool? Twenty minutes and a paperclip? Removing serial numbers from a firearm is a trivial matter at best.
Registration is one of the ways we separate law abiding citizens from criminals. If you have an unregistered gun in your possession, then you are open to criminal sanctions.
Again, not possible with Haynes v. United States.
I advocate that accessories to gun related destruction and death to be held civilly and criminally liable. Negligent owners need to held to account but that is hard to do when we don't have a good way to prove who owned a gun in the first place. Registration is as much about fiscal responsibility as anything else. If one of the guns registered in your name ends up in the hands of a criminal or even an unauthorized user and damage results, then the registered owner would be expected to show their police report for the stolen weapon or expect to be subject to civil and/or criminal sanctions.
Negligent gun owners should be held liable for their actions. The issue is that criminal negligence of a firearm varies by state, and is not often defined as in a manner that compels prosecutors to bring cases. Cases require more effort, and prosecution offices with finite budgets tend to shy away from cases with high effort and modest effect. They could still do it if it were priority, but this is currently a case of not enforcing the laws we currently have. As far as holding firearms owners who have their firearms stolen liable, whats the point? The inmate study indicates that very few criminals use stolen guns. If the stolen gun was registered, the criminal cannot be charged with possession of an unregistered firearm. The only person that can be punished is the owner. Is it the owner's fault that it was stolen? How does the owner prove they were storing it properly?
Registration is needed to facilitate mandatory training and licensing. Gun permits need to be matched to the weapons the citizen is qualified to own. A citizen needs to have a license for each gun they own. Law enforcement can not effectively do their role in this type of regulation without a proper registration.
Commonsense gun safety and public safety benefit from good gun tracking. We need this data to make better informed decisions, to effectively enforce the laws of the nation and to facilitate fiscal responsibility.
The Canadian Firearms registry has been costly and ineffective. A US version would have to operate on a larger scale, so I am very hesitant to believe that we can accomplish more than Canada has with this approach. Law enforcement needs more tools, but I don't think the registry is a silver bullet.
I'd also like to say that we need the exact opposite of commonsense for gun control (or for any new law for that matter). Commonsense is "sound judgment derived from experience rather than study," What we really need is rigorous statistical analysis and evaluation to better understand the root causes of gun violence in the US. Only then can be begin to change our situation for the better. If we don't, then we're just wildly swinging a hammer around trying to hit a nail because it feels like the right think to do.
Now after typing out this detailed post, knowing firmly in my heart that nothing I say on the Internet will every change anyone's option, I'd like to thank you for stating your opinion and giving me the opportunity to respond.
Now, back to the pr0n...