rbernie
Contributing Member
OK - review the last dozen or so reported 'mass shootings' and tell us how many of them would have been stopped if only UBC had been implemented. The answer is pretty much guaranteed to be the square root of zero - almost every mass shooting in recent record was conducted by an individual with no prior disqualifying characteristics, or by someone who did not obtain their gun through legitimate means in the first place. Offhand, I can think of only one instance in which a mass shooting would have been stopped by a proper NICS check - the Virginia tech shooting in 2007, in which a known mentally disturbed student was able to legally buy a gun (including undergoing a NICS check at the time of sale) because the NICS record failed to include his mental illness disqualification.Who said anything about Registration but a Background check to try and stop the nuts and mass killings.
Moreover, every time that the DoJ has studied where criminals get their guns, the answer is almost NEVER a gun show or a legal private sale. Feel free to take a peek : https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/suficspi16.pdf
Bear in mind that this seven percent number are folk who were NOT prohibited at the time of sale, but who went on to Do Bad Things subsequent to the sale. They underwent a NICS check, and passed.An estimated 287,400 prisoners had possessed a firearm during their offense. Among these, more than half (56%) had either stolen it (6%), found it at the scene of the crime (7%), or obtained it off the street or from the underground market (43%). Most of the remainder (25%) had obtained it from a family member or friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.
We, as a community, need to be very clear on this - UBC is a red herring. It diminishes the ability to freely exchange a durable good, under the premise that managing the durable item somehow will make dangerous people less dangerous. It will fail in the stated goal, because it's actually not a root cause. And when it fails to achieve the presumed goal, it will be posited by the gun control community that it failed because people are circumventing the law, and the only rational way to address that is by keeping centralized records to really know for sure who has guns and if they're the 'right sort' to have them.
And that is how we get to registration.