4 ms·

I wondered this, I'm not an American so the whole gun thing totally mystifies me. I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a gun, not the government, crim

I wondered this, I'm not an American so the whole gun thing totally mystifies me. I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a gun, not the government, criminals, and certainly not people with mental illnesses. That being a somewhat naive hope then I think restricting them as much as possible is the thing to do. However, I'm not an American so I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do with your own country. You're welcome! /s But at what point does it become a database and searchable, does he have to deliberately pile up the boxes of receipts higgledy-piggledy lest they accidentally fall into some sort of organised and therefore searchable order? Seems crazily broad, no? Edited to Add: Wow, form 4473 doesn't get sent to any kind of centralised place until the gun shop that sold the particular con goes out of business. So this to my mind means a family gun business this been open for 100 years has every 4473 form they've ever written since the law came in, am I reading that right? Surely that can't be right? As in not correct, I don't mean morally, I mean that's just crazy to have a central database that doesn't centralise regularly.

kabdib 10y ago
Firearms have been nicknamed "equalizers" for a reason: An 80-year-old grandmother can successfully hold off an assault by someone many times her strength, size and agility. Get rid of guns and you now leave a large subset of society defenseless. Personally I think the 4473s should be destroyed after a reasonable time, and never subject to bulk capture. It's no business of the government's what purchases I make.
- dalke 10y ago
  How many times has that "80-year-old grandmother" scenario happened? In all those countries with stricter gun laws, how many more times are those defenseless grandmothers been assaulted than in the US? I believe it's a fraction, perhaps even a small fraction. In the US, how many times has a child picked up a gun and killed someone by accident? More times than grandmothers have defended themselves, or less? How many times has a police officer shot someone for worries that the officer's own life was in danger of being shot, only to find that the person had no weapon? How many times have SWAT and no-knock warrants been justified for worries that the person being served might be armed? And of those, how many people have died? And how many died when the police went to the wrong house? How come having a gun didn't help Clarence Daniels keep from being assaulted by Michael Foster? http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/01/black-man-gun-permit-walmart-florida-vigilante http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/01/black-man-gun... Regarding your last sentence, I think real estate titles have shown some of the advantages to having the government track who has purchased a piece of property, so I disagree with your blanket statement.
  - hga 10y ago
    In the US, how many times has a child picked up a gun and killed someone by accident? More times than grandmothers have defended themselves, or less? Easily less, there are only ~600 accidental firearms fatalities a year, and we managed to get that number down from ~800 in 1980 in a period when both the population and and the number of guns it owns have increased by very roughly 50%. Those warrior cops you cite two examples of? We still had a huge gun owning population back when they were peace officers, it's not guns per se that have resulted in that change. Real estate titles are a very different thing, I submit to you, in that trying to take someone else's land has a much longer and greater pedigree than their weapons, and for entirely different motives.
    - dalke 10y ago
      And how many grandmothers have successfully defended themselves with a weapon? That's the missing side. (And yes, the numbers for that vary from 55,000 to 4.7 million total home defense use - good luck on narrowing it down to kabdib scenario of 80 year old grandmothers.) I believe the higher number includes grandmothers who defended herself with a weapon without firing it, in which case the balance has to include all crimes which were committed with a gun. Really I'm annoyed with kabdib for using a hypothetical scenario to justify personal gun ownership, when for decades everyone has pointed out how meaningless such scenarios are for meaningful policy change. I never said it was "guns per se". I'm well aware of countries like Switzerland and Finland with a high gun ownership, though not as high as the US, and don't have the same sorts of gun-related violence. I agree that real estate and vehicle titles are different things. My point was that I disagreed with the blanket statement "It's no business of the government's what purchases I make."
  - kabdib 10y ago
    > How many times has that "80-year-old grandmother" scenario happened? Substitute "aged grandma" with "anyone weaker than an attacker" being able to successfully make themselves an unattractive target, and it's going to be a pretty significant number. Figures are debated on both sides. Real-estate titles appear to be more about taxation and revenue generation than anything else. Take away that incentive and you'll find governments doing a crappy job of it.

kabdib 10y ago

Firearms have been nicknamed "equalizers" for a reason: An 80-year-old grandmother can successfully hold off an assault by someone many times her strength, size and agility. Get rid of guns and you now leave a large subset of society defenseless. Personally I think the 4473s should be destroyed after a reasonable time, and never subject to bulk capture. It's no business of the government's what purchases I make.

dalke 10y ago
How many times has that "80-year-old grandmother" scenario happened? In all those countries with stricter gun laws, how many more times are those defenseless grandmothers been assaulted than in the US? I believe it's a fraction, perhaps even a small fraction. In the US, how many times has a child picked up a gun and killed someone by accident? More times than grandmothers have defended themselves, or less? How many times has a police officer shot someone for worries that the officer's own life was in danger of being shot, only to find that the person had no weapon? How many times have SWAT and no-knock warrants been justified for worries that the person being served might be armed? And of those, how many people have died? And how many died when the police went to the wrong house? How come having a gun didn't help Clarence Daniels keep from being assaulted by Michael Foster? http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/01/black-man-gun-permit-walmart-florida-vigilante http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/01/black-man-gun... Regarding your last sentence, I think real estate titles have shown some of the advantages to having the government track who has purchased a piece of property, so I disagree with your blanket statement.
- hga 10y ago
  In the US, how many times has a child picked up a gun and killed someone by accident? More times than grandmothers have defended themselves, or less? Easily less, there are only ~600 accidental firearms fatalities a year, and we managed to get that number down from ~800 in 1980 in a period when both the population and and the number of guns it owns have increased by very roughly 50%. Those warrior cops you cite two examples of? We still had a huge gun owning population back when they were peace officers, it's not guns per se that have resulted in that change. Real estate titles are a very different thing, I submit to you, in that trying to take someone else's land has a much longer and greater pedigree than their weapons, and for entirely different motives.
  - dalke 10y ago
    And how many grandmothers have successfully defended themselves with a weapon? That's the missing side. (And yes, the numbers for that vary from 55,000 to 4.7 million total home defense use - good luck on narrowing it down to kabdib scenario of 80 year old grandmothers.) I believe the higher number includes grandmothers who defended herself with a weapon without firing it, in which case the balance has to include all crimes which were committed with a gun. Really I'm annoyed with kabdib for using a hypothetical scenario to justify personal gun ownership, when for decades everyone has pointed out how meaningless such scenarios are for meaningful policy change. I never said it was "guns per se". I'm well aware of countries like Switzerland and Finland with a high gun ownership, though not as high as the US, and don't have the same sorts of gun-related violence. I agree that real estate and vehicle titles are different things. My point was that I disagreed with the blanket statement "It's no business of the government's what purchases I make."
- kabdib 10y ago
  > How many times has that "80-year-old grandmother" scenario happened? Substitute "aged grandma" with "anyone weaker than an attacker" being able to successfully make themselves an unattractive target, and it's going to be a pretty significant number. Figures are debated on both sides. Real-estate titles appear to be more about taxation and revenue generation than anything else. Take away that incentive and you'll find governments doing a crappy job of it.