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> Have a licensing scheme for purchase and possession, but not registry of individual weapons within that class. I wouldn't care nearly as much about Obama's b

by nthj 14y ago

> Have a licensing scheme for purchase and possession, but not registry of individual weapons within that class. I wouldn't care nearly as much about Obama's background check talk if we just exempted anyone with a state-issued CHL license. Maybe add a new class of license, which is optional: run the background check once + training + pay $200, receive a "here's your buy a gun card", or you can just run the background check every time like we do now. I don't mind that the government does a sanity check on whether a given citizen should own a gun; but if they've decided I'm responsible enough to own a gun I don't really think it's any of their business if I own 2 guns or 12, any more than it's any of their business knowing I own a MacBook, read /. over morning coffee, or bought Star Wars on blu-ray from Amazon 3 weeks ago. Just like we have state-issued licenses for driving cars, but we don't run federal background checks every time I go test-drive a new ride at the Chevy dealership. It's trivial to run a SQL query to the effect of "how many times did citizen #12784728 request a background check and when", so if you hear somebody complaining about background checks in the coming weeks, it's probably not because they think crazy people should buy guns, it's because they just want the government to leave them the hell alone.

rdl 14y ago
I think there should be an online check for the validity of the gun owner license at time of purchase/sale, but it should be done in a way which shields the identity of the buyer from the government. That's a technical problem more than anything else. If it's not an online check, it at least should be easy for the FFL or private party individual (with direct sales) to know with high certainty that the person is the correct person matched to the credential, and to know that the credential hasn't been revoked in a certain window of time (daily CRL or something). I'd have more faith in private industry putting something like this together than government developing it internally or contracting development out.
Cushman 14y ago
> I don't mind that the government does a sanity check on whether a given citizen should own a gun; but if they've decided I'm responsible enough to own a gun I don't really think it's any of their business if I own 2 guns or 12, any more than it's any of their business knowing I own a MacBook, read /. over morning coffee, or bought Star Wars on blu-ray from Amazon 3 weeks ago. How about in the context of having recovered a gun from a crime, and wanting to trace it to the supplier? My understanding is that most illegal guns were first purchased legally.
- rdl 14y ago
  One idea someone proposed was putting the name of the buyer encrypted with a (key physically recorded on the gun) into storage each time, so if the gun is recovered, and the secret exposed, government could trace the chain from manufacturer to last known legal transfer buyer. I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns.
  - nthj 14y ago
    I wouldn't trust the government to not intercept gun shipments from the warehouse with an NSA-style gag order & read in all the secrets ahead of time. You'd have to be able to stamp the secret at purchase time in the presence of the buyer, which is both doable, and works retroactively on guns manufactured prior to the legislation. > I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns. Exactly. Well put.
- hga 14y ago
  Errr, what are you trying to accomplish here? Most traces dead end at the point the gun was stolen, the whole registration and trace thing is pretty much never useful in solving a crime. Now there is some merit in discouraging straw purchases, which are a more than tiny but not "large" source of guns used in crimes, but that's not likely to prevent many criminals from procuring weapons, which in theory is what we're most interested in. Whereas gun confiscations are always preceded by registration unless they're done during a revolution, so there's a lot of resistance to anything that smacks of registration.
  - rdl 14y ago
    I can't find the stats to cite, but straw purchases are a major source of handguns for gangs. They're not the majority of weapons IIRC, but the majority of weapons-actually-used. (this was ~8 years ago that I heard it, and it was being used as an example about something else, so it may be correct, but it came from an LAPD guy)

by nthj 14y ago

rdl 14y ago

I think there should be an online check for the validity of the gun owner license at time of purchase/sale, but it should be done in a way which shields the identity of the buyer from the government. That's a technical problem more than anything else. If it's not an online check, it at least should be easy for the FFL or private party individual (with direct sales) to know with high certainty that the person is the correct person matched to the credential, and to know that the credential hasn't been revoked in a certain window of time (daily CRL or something). I'd have more faith in private industry putting something like this together than government developing it internally or contracting development out.

Cushman 14y ago

> I don't mind that the government does a sanity check on whether a given citizen should own a gun; but if they've decided I'm responsible enough to own a gun I don't really think it's any of their business if I own 2 guns or 12, any more than it's any of their business knowing I own a MacBook, read /. over morning coffee, or bought Star Wars on blu-ray from Amazon 3 weeks ago. How about in the context of having recovered a gun from a crime, and wanting to trace it to the supplier? My understanding is that most illegal guns were first purchased legally.

rdl 14y ago
One idea someone proposed was putting the name of the buyer encrypted with a (key physically recorded on the gun) into storage each time, so if the gun is recovered, and the secret exposed, government could trace the chain from manufacturer to last known legal transfer buyer. I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns.
- nthj 14y ago
  I wouldn't trust the government to not intercept gun shipments from the warehouse with an NSA-style gag order & read in all the secrets ahead of time. You'd have to be able to stamp the secret at purchase time in the presence of the buyer, which is both doable, and works retroactively on guns manufactured prior to the legislation. > I don't think there's a problem with people knowing who owns a specific gun; the problem is knowing what guns a specific person owns. Exactly. Well put.
hga 14y ago
Errr, what are you trying to accomplish here? Most traces dead end at the point the gun was stolen, the whole registration and trace thing is pretty much never useful in solving a crime. Now there is some merit in discouraging straw purchases, which are a more than tiny but not "large" source of guns used in crimes, but that's not likely to prevent many criminals from procuring weapons, which in theory is what we're most interested in. Whereas gun confiscations are always preceded by registration unless they're done during a revolution, so there's a lot of resistance to anything that smacks of registration.
- rdl 14y ago
  I can't find the stats to cite, but straw purchases are a major source of handguns for gangs. They're not the majority of weapons IIRC, but the majority of weapons-actually-used. (this was ~8 years ago that I heard it, and it was being used as an example about something else, so it may be correct, but it came from an LAPD guy)