Security theater indeed. Although this bit in the NYT strikes me as BS: The district attorney described how Georgia’s “lax gun laws” allowed the baggage handl

Security theater indeed. Although this bit in the NYT strikes me as BS: The district attorney described how Georgia’s “lax gun laws” allowed the baggage handler to buy weapons online without a background check. There's no such legal thing, except using the net to connect yourself with private sellers in your state (and they can't sell too many guns per year, or otherwise be "in the business" of doing so). As for the whining about gun smuggling into NYC, if the city trusted as many people as Soviet Georgia did in its capital Tbilisi there wouldn't be as much motivation to do this. Less than 60K legal licences each for handguns and long guns (I personally counted the number when the lists were leaked a few years ago). An estimated 2 million "illegal" guns in the general population of 8 million. A question: lots of you have lived in both NYC and SF, the latter of which is infinitely more liberal ^_^ when it comes to gun ownership (California law due to state preemption prevents de facto or de jure bans like NYC's). Does this make much of a difference that you've noticed? I might expect one with burglaries of unoccupied residences vs. robberies when occupied, but that's probably as much a function of regimes like the U.K.'s where effective self-defense is simply outlawed to begin with.