An article about where criminals get their guns.

[Hasaf]

It would be nice to think it could be cheap and easy. But when someone has a sale almost done, and the buyer says "Ah, going to the police station is such a hassle! What if I give you an extra $20 and we don't worry about it?"..... How many people lack the moral fortitude to say "No. I have to be sure you're not prohibited from possessing a firearm."?

We need laws in society, because human nature is often self serving. Many people will not do the right thing when no one is watching. From littering, on up.

Strawman Alert! At no point did I ever say that we do not, "need laws in society." You may be entirely unaware, but there are a lot of laws already. The issue that remains is where we will bring about more benefit, or harm, from yet more laws. Ane these laws restrict the rights of otherwise lawful gun owners, in particular.

Most people would see, "Ah, going to the police station is such a hassle! What if I give you an extra $20 and we don't worry about it?" as a deal-breaking red flag. Yes, criminal-to-criminal transfers will still occur. However, we are not talking about that here because no background checking scheme, be it mandatory, as you call for, or voluntary, as I call for to be legalized, would have a significant impact on criminal-to-criminal transfers.

Here is a snip from a letter I wrote a while ago about mandatory background checks:

. . .One that is often proposed is an expansion of background checks to include all private transfers. Such a policy could, if it had been in place, cost the life of one of my friends.

He was in a bad spot in life, doing through a divorce and having problems at work. He a couple of us, his close friends. His request was that we come to his house and remove his firearms until his life was back together. Of course, we did that for him.

About a year later he was back on the right path and asked for his firearms to be returned, and we returned them. This was all a simple moving of firearms among friends, however, it would have been legally considered to be a transfer.

Mandatory background checks and the associated fees would certainly not have been a problem if we had a sense of certainty that it would have saved the life of a friend. However, those policies may have made him slower to ask for help and may have interfered with his willingness to take part in a “just in case” intervention.

I cannot believe that we were the only people in this country that have taken part in such an intervention. As such, I oppose the programme of mandatory background checks for all firearm transfers. We need to make it easier, not harder, for friends to ask for help.

How many, otherwise lawful gun owners, should be sent to prison because their house was robbed?

How many people who may have otherwise have been willing to ask friends for help are we going to allow to die, just so we can feel a little better?

 

[WrongHanded]

Strawman Alert! At no point did I ever say that we do not, "need laws in society." You may be entirely unaware, but there are a lot of laws already. The issue that remains is where we will bring about more benefit, or harm, from yet more laws. Ane these laws restrict the rights of otherwise lawful gun owners, in particular.

Most people would see, "Ah, going to the police station is such a hassle! What if I give you an extra $20 and we don't worry about it?" as a deal-breaking red flag. Yes, criminal-to-criminal transfers will still occur. However, we are not talking about that here because no background checking scheme, be it mandatory, as you call for, or voluntary, as I call for to be legalized, would have a significant impact on criminal-to-criminal transfers.

Here is a snip from a letter I wrote a while ago about mandatory background checks:


How many, otherwise lawful gun owners, should be sent to prison because their house was robbed?

How many people who may have otherwise have been willing to ask friends for help are we going to allow to die, just so we can feel a little better?

Let's get this straight. If I gave you the impression I was accusing you of claiming "we don't need laws in society", you've misunderstood. I was simply stating that human nature often takes the path of least resistance, even if that is in some way detrimental to society.

I disagree with your opinion on the deal-breaking nature of a buyer not wanting to go do a BGC. I think many people (though probably not many here on THR) would be okay with an extra $20 and a quicker sale, if it were legal to do so. Call me a pessimist, but honestly I see the justification being something like "If I don't take that deal, someone else will, and this guy will get a gun anyway, but he's probably cool, so whatever."

As for you buddy and his gun, if he'd had a lockable container, he could have locked his guns up and given you the keys. No big deal.

 

[stillquietvoice]

In cases like Buffalo, Uvalde

Can't really include Buffalo shooter. He had said he was going to shoot up his graduation. Had several run ins with law enforcement as well as school officials. He was actually held for psychological evaluation for 2 days, yet was not red flagged dye to his parents influence with politicians Leo's and school principal.
Ny safe act, was inplace limiting magazine capacity, which he violated, by acquiring standard cap mags out if state, but most importantly wasn't reported as a threat despite being a threat to others.

 

[Handshaker]

A big part of the problem is letting a teenager sit on a shoot um up game for endless hours. A male teenagers brain doesn't fully develop until 25 years old. Remember when you were a kid and watch a kung fu movie? You came out feeling like you were a Jedi master. Couple that with our society removing the 10 commandments, in God we trust and not spanking a child and you get exactly what we have today. A kid that's never learned wrong from right and was given no consequences when wrong is done.

 

[herrwalther]

Unenforced law is about as useless as no laws at all. Criminals will break laws. But if the punishment isn't enforced, they are more likely to reoffend. Most states have a mandatory add-on sentence for felons committing crimes with firearms. Vast majority of the time those charges are dropped or otherwise nullified, such as a concurrent sentence instead of consecutive.