How does gun registration make us safer?
There’s some incoherent jibber-jabber at the Washington Post about how Americans responded to a Pew poll that they want more gun control by mandating background checks for private sales and creating a federal database to track gun sales. I get the feeling that the people who responded to the poll didn’t understand the question. I’m wondering, mostly, how creating a federal database would make us safer.
For example, last night in DC there were six shootings. Now, if gun registration is a law enforcement tool, did the DC police check on all of the registered gun owners in the district to see if they had an alibi for the shootings? There are only a handful of legal gun owners in the District, so it wouldn’t take long. Right? Yeah, well, needless to say, the DC government didn’t contact their residents who legally own guns as part of the police investigations.
So, really, what does gun registration do to make us safer? All it does is tell federal authorities where the guns are, you know, if they ever decide to come and relieve us of our firearms and our Second Amendment right. Creating a federal database just makes the gun grabbers feel better about themselves, it doesn’t do a damn thing to make us safer.
The poll also says Americans want that everyone buying a gun in a private sale should go through background checks. The intent of course, is to make it illegal for someone to get a gun who couldn’t pass a background check, which is illegal now anyway. I’m pretty sure that those guys who sell guns in a dark alley or a parking lot will start taking it seriously when private sales require background checks.
Also, Pew found that Americans think that there should be laws banning the mentally ill from buying guns. Um, yes there are laws in that regard already, it’s just that the gatekeepers aren’t doing their jobs. So, see there’s something in the poll that the people want that is already in place, but the government, the health care profession, law enforcement, the judiciary just aren’t doing their jobs. I don’t see the Washington Post coming out for more enforcement of existing laws. Because it’s easier to write more laws that only the law-abiding citizenry will take seriously, than it is to enforce existing laws on criminals.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists
All this is indeed true, but I’d add that more and more firearm owning citizens are simply ignoring onerous new gun laws in New York, Connecticut, and Maryland.
And the powers that be who passed them are helpless when it comes to enforcing them.
Well, there’s that whole thing about ‘do something’ and ‘feel good about themselves’.
If those poll respondents ever find themselves in the real world, someone please let me know. Thanks.
Washington Post who?
No, I am serious!
I have never read that paper!
But it does have 2 pages of comics in the Style section.
and the editorial pages are usually unintentionally funny.
Well SMACK me!
I did NOT know that!
I will have to check out the comics!
How well does it work as shitpaper?
Work OK as bird cage liner, but I wouldn’t use it for fish wrapper. Might ruin dinner.
Probably works just like it did in Vietnam. Not all that well.
All registration does is ID the gun owners that have LEGALLY purchased a firearm… doesn’t do a damn thing for those that have access to one via illegal means.
“All [registration] does is tell federal authorities where the guns are, you know, if they ever decide to come and relieve us of our firearms and our Second Amendment right.”
Yep. That’s it. Substantively, there is no more to it. The emperor truly is naked as a jaybird. The rest is feel-good fluff doled out like so much candy to make the sheep feel that something is being done to end gun violence. And that something is hollow, devoid of substance, which allows the mammas and grandmamas of the gang members and other thugs with guns to believe someone out there cares about them. No one really does, of course. It’s all about votes and power, and if another gun law will further those ends, we’ll have another law. Ultimately, if anyone truly wants to stop gun violence, the guns will have to go. And if anyone thinks that the government in power when the large-scale gun-grab finally occurs will be focused on illegal guns, he is wrong. It will be numbers that count and the easiest and safest way to have large numbers of guns grabbed is to go for those owned by law-abiding citizens who dutifully registered.
Ten Bears will give nothing to the government except the double bird.
When you look at the sampling of those polled, the reason for the answers becomes clear.
Of 2002 people sampled, 462 were Republicans, 643 were Dems and 796 were “independents”. These are self-identified members of those persuasions.
Usually, Pew is about 3-4% weighted in favor of dems, dems and so-called independents seem to skew these results way to the left.
Gun registration will prevent crime like car registration prevents auto accidents and drunk driving.
Eventually, like in many countries, you’ll have to re-register your gun every year, for a fee.
Fail to register and you’ll get a visit from the cops. If you still have the gun, they’ll seize it as an unregistered weapon.
I think the Washington [Com]Post is about as neutral as the NY Slimes (*OOP*, Times).
According to our Governor, Terry McAuliffe, when you go to a gun show here in our state, there are booths that have big banners that say,”Buy your guns here! We don’t to background checks!”. For one, that’s a lie. All the gun shows I go to here in VA, I’ve yet seen anyone with a sign like that. But let’s put that out there and tell that lie enough then the GA will have to do something.
That should be, “We don’t do background checks!”.
Matt,
I think you misspelled McAweful. How did a partisan communist hack like that get elected anyway?
I try not to lower myself to the other side’s level. Actually more people voted against Terry than for him (I think he won with less than 40%). We had a 3rd party candidate that sucked the votes from Cuccinelli.
Actually he won with 47% to Cuccinelli’s $45%.
I can’t type today…..
Robert Sarvis, the third party candidate. He was funded by an Obama cash man, to take votes from Cuccinelli. http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-bundler-funds-libertarian-candidate-to-disrupt-virginia-gubernatorial-race
Gun registration.
Takes me back to a scene in the movie Red Dawn when the Cuban/Soviet commander tells someone to confiscate all of the guns in town. When asked how would they know who had guns, his answer was to pull the registration files at the police station.
Red Dawn may be a movie, but “Blue Dawn” could be reality if we’re not careful.
Actually, he said to pull the 4473s from the sporting goods store. Still sends the same message, though.
Thanks for the assist.
I was kinda close. That was probably almost 30 years ago when the movie came out. I’m actually surprised I remembered it.
Has anyone here ever seen a study regarding what percentages of guns used in the commission of crimes, especially murders, were obtained by legal means? How about a study that lists the top ten sources of guns involved in crimes? How about a study to show if the perpetrators of gun crimes have ever filled out the federal firearms form and are therefore in the federal data base?
If the liberal gun-grabbers were truly interested in doing something meaningful about gun crime rather than just being hell-bent on disarming America, those are the kinds of relevant and worthwhile research studies we’d be hearing about, not the baahing of the liberal sheeple.
Oh, come on! If it’s slow news day, the WaPo patooties and their friends have to do something to stir the pot. Don’t you know that?
All stuff like this does is draw clicks on their website. They’re still feeding off the 41 years since Nixon was caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
Since the courts have ruled that it violates a criminal’s Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination to register his illegally possessed firearms, by definition, the only guns registered would be those legally purchased and legally owned.
Net effect on crime and violence? Virtually zero.
Yes, and then I would invoke the 5th and the 2nd.
On the other hand, I’d load the gun safe with the decaying carcass of a large wild hog, in case they wanted to open it for inspection.
I would suggest to those who read here that the most effective tool to counter this Washington Post type liberal lunacy is the National Rifle Association. If you are not now a member then join and help support their efforts on your behalf.
They are also a source of truth about gun control and gun issues in politics. Just after Reading Jonn’s article, I checked my email and found an NRA update which once again substantiates that while gun ownership is at its highest level in history, gun crime is actually down in the nation at large, something you’ll never hear from WAPO and their ilk.
The bitter truth for liberals is that it is their urban utopias with the most restrictive gun laws where gun crime is rocketing past old records. But will they admit that fact? Hell no, they’ll ignore that inconvenient truth and continue to put out fraudulent studies to justify disarming America, which, as we all know, is the real goal of the hard core communists controlling the direction of the progressive movement.
How ironic and laughable it is that when the hard left finally gets a Chicago communist in the White House, he turns out to be the best gun salesman in America’s history. Another example of that law of unintended consequences that all too often pops up and bites liberals in the ass just when they think they’ve achieved a major gotcha! You gotta love it.
Support the NRA; they’re supporting you.
As I still keep tabs on the old homegrounds, I can verify several things:
Chicago’s violent crime is WAY up this year in comparison to past years.
Drive-by shootings on interstate commuter routes, e.g., the Dan Ryan and the Eisenhower expressways, and now the Kennedy, are higher now (24 last count) than they were for the entire 12 months of 2014.
Drive-by and in person shootings are rising, and occurring now in neighborhoods and towns where they have never happened before. (Matteson and Wauconda, IL, both last week)
Smash-and-grab robberies are now being made in daylight and accompanied by guns.
Violent crime on the CTA has risen drastically in the past 18 months.
I’m quite glad I do not have to do that commute any more.
And yet, voters still support that imbecilic twink mayor, who has closed neighborhood schools within a mile of most home and expects small children to walk up to 3 miles in foul weather to other schools. According to him, there is no money for these schools, but he’s spent money to open several new libraries.
Well, they voted for him. They can have his sorry ass.
Those “Safe Routes to School” in Chicago magically protect the children from boolets, right?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/01/22/canada-tried-registering-long-guns-and-gave-up/
Just a remember the Canadian’s have tried for almost 20 years to have their long gun register. They finally gave up after billions spent and there was all manner of issues with creating the registry and it caused all manners of hate on both the law enforcement and the civilian side.
Look at the numerous websites the US Government have been hacked, found the have null data inserted and even backlogs of data being put in. I don’t think that a federal registry would work even if they could capture all the data.
I wonder, if registration ever comes to pass, would the incompetence of the federal government when it comes to data protection and use, be an affirmative defense against registering one’s guns? Probably not, you’d be going up against judges mostly appointed by Obama.
Yet another reason to vote for anyone, other than a dem nominee.
You want another example of WASTE? Check out MD’s gun law that says every gun sold in the State has to have a shell casing from a round fired in it on file in their archives. Millions upon millions have been spent on that lead (Pb) albatross of a program, it’s been in effect for at least 15 years, and the number of gun crimes it has helped solve to date? ZERO.
Britain required gun registration. Then in 1997 passed a nationwide law requiring the citizens to turn in all their guns and ammo. They said at the time that all but 8 registered guns had been turned in.
I suppose there hasn’t been a gun related crime since…
The antigun types will tell you a gun registration database will allow the police to “get the person who sold the gun illegally and allow the police to know when a gun is a stolen gun”. The idea being (in their world with unicorns) that all sales will be background checked and crossed with the registration data base, so if a gun is used in a crime the police will be able to track down the last legal owner who sold it with out a background check to an illegal buyer – and charge that person with a crime also. Which “should” reduce the willingness to “sell in the back alley”.
They will tell you that 100% back ground checks will reduce the sale of guns to criminals because most guns (about 60% per the Bureau of Justice Statistics) are bought in private sales or given to the criminal, while less than 30% are stolen by the criminal *, AND less than 2% are from sales with background checks. [* which raises the question – how many of the 60% were stolen THEN given to the criminal?]
Now, honestly I kind of lean towards the background check for all transfers not to family members, IF the police were doing their job of putting the mentally incompetent, criminals, and drug abusers in the system. But until they start doing that, it is just a waste of effort and money.
(I say this because my brother in law sold a gun to a co-worker of 14 years, who two years later got pulled over for speeding and had the gun on him and it turned out he was a felon who served time for assault and attempted murder. He had worked with my brother in law for years and attended parties and even when hunting and fishing with him and his friends. Then never knew and he never told them. My BIL did know he had a temper but it was not “that bad”.)
We don’t need more laws that won’t be enforced, we need the current ones enforced.
We need to pass two new law:
1. Make it illegal to kill someone with a gun.
2. Make it illegal not to follow the law.
I see that some geniuses in Hawaii just destroyed 1/2 million $ worth of firearms, bought with taxpayer money and, usually, placed up for auction to law-abiding citizens when replaced.
“Mayor Kirk Caldwell and the Honolulu Police Department agreed that they would not allow the guns to be sold to the general public and end up on the streets of Honolulu,” Honolulu Police spokeswoman Michelle Yu told FoxNews.com. “The same goes for selling the individual gun parts that could have been used to assemble a gun.”
The “streets” are apparently the homes of law-abiding citizens. Imagine if they melted down, oh, 50 perfectly good but old police cars, rather than auction them whole or for parts. And why not? Those things would most certainly be on the streets, could be used as getaway vehicles, could be used for drug transport, could be used by drunk or drugged drivers, could be used by parents who didn’t have car seats for their kids, could be used to break every driving law on the books. Did I omit anything? Did I say the mayor and police chief are idiots?