Have always advocated for gun safety training and insurance. Licensing is probably a bridge too far for most people. Training and insurance would get closer to the spirit of the 2nd amendment's language of "well regulated."
Right there with you. The folks that I shoot with at competitions are above and beyond sticklers for safety. It teaches respect, and good habits with firearms. That and background checks would do wonders.
thanks. I grew up w guns and they’re like part of the family fabric. If I didn’t have a smart father and uncles training me for safety? ... disturbing thought. Even then they had a hunting accident with ricocheted bird shot getting one of them in the leg. We really need standardized training.
Background checks are already in place, and nearly all firearms sales have a background check. Those that don't are individuals selling firearms to other individuals, without intending to be in the business of selling firearms. Even that group is further limited by state law. For example, in California, no person can sell, lease, or transfer a firearm without a license, which means California already has universal background checks. California has the 19th most firearm homicides per capita in the United States. Only one of the five states with the least restrictive firearm laws has a higher firearm homicide rate than California, which is Mississippi. California also mandates obtaining a firearms safety certificate in order to purchase a firearm. So, unless insurance is the big missing piece to this puzzle, I would hardly say these laws do wonders.
Only 13 states in the Union force background checks for private sales. Roughly 34% of all firearm transfers in this country go through private sales. That's millions of firearms that exchanged hands that never went through a background check.
As you well know though CA can't close it's borders and there is no stopping firearms purchased outside of CA coming into CA.
According to politifact, 22 percent of transfers, including 13 percent of sales, were done without a background check. A good number of those are going to be things like a guy selling his rifle to his friend who he hunts with or a grandfather leaving his old lever-action to the grandkid in his will. So yes, there are millions of transfers without a background check. That is not at all responsive to the point of my post, which was that California already has the restrictive gun laws that people are asking for and they are not working. California is 19th of 50 in highest rates of gun homicides. Vermont has some of the least restrictive gun laws, and they have about 60% lower gun homicide rate than California. It is almost as if mandatory background checks on private transfers and mandatory safety rules do not correlate with reduced gun violence, or that absence of same doesn't lead to increased gun violence. Areas with a lot of gang activity have high gun violence, regardless of the gun laws in place. As it turns out, criminals who have no issue with murdering people also have no issue with making illegal firearm purchases and transfers.
So a family friend can't have a history of domestic violence and violent tendencies? If you hold people who transfer weapons privately monetarily and legally responsible for a felony committed by an individual you privately handed your weapon to with said weapon without them going through any checks, it will prevent a lot of those transfers without background checks because people don't want to be dependent on someone else not ****ing up to not **** them over. Your statistics on gun violence is silly as it ignores severely confounding factors. There are many other reasons for gun violence. No one is not acknowledging that. Areas with higher urban populations and larger population densities are going to have more homicides because of higher probability of human interaction. Also since state borders have no "border control" the free exchange of firearms between state lines routinely happens so the lack of regulations of neighboring states can make a state's own regulations ineffective.
This is where I have issues with my gun nut friends. They always bring state restrictions and I know they are being intellectually dishonest because they know how easy it is to buy a gun and move it around. Nothing prevents a person from buying a crapload of guns in Texas without ID from "private sellers" at gun shows and transporting them to where they are illegal. There is almost no legal liability for the seller in practical terms. There is almost no enforcement of straw buying laws either because they are hard to prosecute unless the person literally does hundreds of guns.
Actually it as if it is too easy to still get guns from places that don't require private sales transfers. It needs to be a uniform policy.
The other thing about private sales is it breaks the tracing chain. They trace guns from the manufacturer forward. If grandpa sold a gun to his friend in the 1980s, and his friend then sold the gun to Bonnie and Clyde a few years later, when they try to trace the gun, maybe Gramps is dead, or has alzheimers, welp that gun is list to the gun tracing system. The gun trace dead-ends at Gramps. Once a gun goes through a private transfer it might as well not have a serial number on it at all.
I doubt most people believe that mandatory background checks on all purchases will stop all mass shootings. What it might do is prevent felons, who under most state laws shouldn't be able to purchase a weapon and people such as the V-Tech shooter from getting a weapon, or at least making it much harder and alerting authorities that such an individual is looking to get a weapon. Like so much too often the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is a matter of making marginal steps that have large support of the public and then working on that for greater change.
I'm not sure background checks would stop most mass shootings at all. But as you point out, it can help to prevent gun violence and get guns out of the hands of felons.
That isn't what we see. Most of the guns we see used in crime are stolen or purchased "on the streets" from other bangers (who of course claim they were "stolen" but not reported. They don't generally trace back to out of state sales. It is a nice excuse for the failure of gun control to control gun crime. Our biggest importers of guns used in crime are Nevada and Arizona, but guns originating in California are 6 times as common as those from Arizona and Nevada combined, per this Huffpo article specifically trying to blame states with lax gun control policies. Imported guns are also required to be transferred to an in-state FFL, who then runs the background check and firearms safety certificate, which means even many of the out of state purchased guns from states with lesser requirements are still subject to the same gun control. You will see imports from wherever budsgunshop etc. are located, but those go through an FFL.
The mass shootings on TV are actually a very small problem relatively. Most mass shootings are gang related. Drive-by shootings are technically mass shootings since they are normally shooting with other people around. Just look at this list of mass shootings and see how many of them are the types we see on television. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2020
I think we need to drill down on the well regulated part of the 2nd amendment since that's the basis for most pushback it would take awhile to seep into the culture but it's a good argument against owning a gun is my unrestricted right.
Again you are ignoring the private sales in states that don't require background checks for them such as at gun shows in these states from private sellers that aren't licensed that are selling some of their used collection because their wife thinks they wasted too much money on them. There is no avenue in which these firearms are tracked across state borders.
survey of prisoners data 2019: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/suficspi16.pdf excerpts: Based on the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI), about 1 in 5 (21%) of all state and federal prisoners reported that they had possessed or carried a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison (figure 1). More than 1 in 8 (13%) of all prisoners had used a firearm by showing, pointing, or discharging it during the offense for which they were imprisoned. Fewer than 1 in 50 (less than 2%) of all prisoners had obtained a firearm from a retail source and possessed, carried, or used it during the offense for which they were imprisoned. 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. HIGHLIGHTS * About 21% of state and 20% of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense, while 79% of state and 80% of federal prisoners did not. * About 29% of state and 36% of federal prisoners serving time for a violent offense possessed a gun during the offense. * About 1.3% of prisoners obtained a gun from a retail source and used it during their offense. * Handguns were the most common type of firearm possessed by state and federal prisoners (18% each); 11% of all prisoners used a handgun. * Among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source. * Among prisoners who possessed a firearm during their offense, 0.8% obtained it at a gun show. * About 1 in 5 state and federal prisoners who possessed a firearm during their offense obtained it with the intent to use it during the crime. * Among state prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 27% killed someone with it, another 12% injured someone, 7% fired the gun but did not injure anyone, and 54% did not fire it. * State prisoners with no military service were more likely to possess a gun during their offense (21%) than prisoners who had served in the military (16%).
Almost all guns were obtained legally during the first sale. The question is how do these guns get from legal gun owners to illegal gun owners. As an avid gun shooter I have some theories and it has to do with almost no legal liability for a private seller who sells or gives a gun to a criminal as long as they don't ask any questions of the recipient. Almost no liability of the parent when their kids opens up their closet and picks up a gun, and assaults someone with it. For context, I think the war on "assault" rifles is stupid. You can't even define what an assault rifle is based on any objective attributes. However, I also think the current gun culture and marketing of is stupid. Nothing like going to the range and watching some moron with multiple ARs tricked out with tacticool lights that can't hit paper from 50 yards. I honestly think you should restrict the advertising of guns like we do cigarettes.
