It seems one of my earlier comments has caused some confusion and I'd like to clear this up.
When I read this:
See, my own state, Oklahoma, is one of a few where we don't require people to register their firearms or get a license to own them and the only way this would work is if a law were passed at a Federal level requiring firearms to be registered.
I was horrified. In America there are more regulations on owning a car than there is on owning a firearm. According to Damen, in Oklahoma, there is technically no such thing as an illegal firearm because they are not a controlled product.
Here's where there seems to be some confusion. In the United States, there is no Federal requirement to register personally owned firearms that are not Class 3 (or Title 2), that is left up to the states. My state of Oklahoma is, surprisingly, not an anomaly in the lack of required registration. Back in 1986, the United States Government passed the
Firearm Owners Protection Act which, among other things, actually
prohibits the Federal government from having a firearm registry. Honestly, I was baffled to find out that
only three states and four cities, California, Michigan and Hawaii and DC, Chicago, Omaha, and Clark County, NV, require some type of firearm registration. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
However, a non-registered firearm in the state of Oklahoma (and other places) can still be an illegal firearm at the Federal level if that firearm or the owner of that firearm violates certain prohibited laws regarding the ownership or transfer of that firearm, or if that firearm has certain prohibited features. An example of a prohibited feature would be a rifle which has a barrel length of less than 16 inches (406.4mm) or an over-all length of less than 26 inches (660.4mm). Anything shorter than this is classified as a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) and is a Title 2 firearm requiring special paperwork, more extensive background checks, a tax stamp and a sign-off from the chief of the local law enforcement stating that it does not violate any laws. The actual law, as written, states:
The term ''short-barreled rifle'' means a rifle having one or
more barrels less than sixteen inches in length and any weapon made
from a rifle (whether by alteration, modification, or otherwise) if
such weapon, as modified, has an overall length of less than
twenty-six inches.
In the case of shotguns they are required to have a minimum barrel length of 18 inches (457.2mm) but most all manufacturers make their barrels with a length of 18.5 inches (469.9mm) and an overall length of, again, 26 inches (660.4mm). Any shotgun or rifle with an overall length of less than 26 inches (660.4mm) would be illegal in my state.
Here is an over-view of the firearm laws in Oklahoma, if you're curious about them.
I am completely baffled that the concept of just requiring everyone to be registered with the state and having all their firearms registered also is considered an attack on someone personally. Why can we not have a real legal discussion about having people register their weapons? It really is the very absolute least we can do.
Because a common theme you'll hear from the rabidly right-wing pro-gunners is the belief that "registration always leads to confiscation." To back this up they'll cite the various dictatorships that have cropped up throughout history, the common three would be Hitler, Stalin and Mao, where the leaders first registered and then confiscated civilian firearms. I find this to be paranoia and silly and that the likelihood of this happening in the USA is minimal. Personally, I'd have no problems with a Federal law requiring registration of firearms on the condition that the information would not be able to be made public so we won't end up with another flare-up like with the newspaper publishing them. That is the sort of info that does nothing to serve the public good and can only harm. Do I support mandatory registration? Well, to be honest, I neither support or oppose it.
These excuses are rubbish. Gun control laws are not a personal attack on anyone, stricter gun control laws will reduce the amount of crimes that happen with legal weapons, as well as making getting possession of an illegal one harder, and despite the monumental effort to implement, it can still be done. It will always seem impossible until you actually start doing something about it.
My personal favorite idea is the one I mentioned to QueenOfHearts: subsidize the purchase and installation of firearm safes. One of the best things we can do is make it harder for thieves to get to a person's firearms. That means a good, heavy, bolted down safe that will take a lot of time to get into. From there we can move on to other areas, like stiffer penalties for straw purchases, crack down on dealers who will illegally sell firearms, make it a requirement that police who find an illegally owned weapon are to confiscate that weapon and open the NICS background checks to the public.
Seriously, it is not to hard. Implement registration requirements and limitations on firearms both in type and number owned. Allow people to turn in their weapons if they do not meet the requirements, and provide about a year window for this. I don't want to hear how people cant afford to register themselves and their weapons because that's a lie, these people can afford their guns to begin with. If they cant afford to register, the correct option is to then hand them in to the police. The police then melt down and destroy all the collected firearms, and in their normal duties any unregistered firearm they come across is also collected and destroyed. In this process you gradually reign in the wanton gun ownership and violence. Nothing worth doing happens overnight.
I actually have less of a problem with prolific legal firearm ownership, regardless of the type of firearm or number of firearms anyone owns than I do with people thinking that if you just make this type of rifle or that type of handgun illegal that it'll solve the problems we have. There would be less firearm crime, yes, I will not deny that because it is simple math: fewer firearms, fewer firearms to commit crimes with. However, fewer firearms does not always equal less crime overall. Something the pro-gun side is half right about is that it is a complicated issue. That is completely correct but no, that is not a reason to try to do something about it. However, I find the idea of banning this or that to be simplistic at best and ineffective at worst.
For example, the biggest thing I am hearing from the anti-gun side (to borrow a term) is that we have this overwhelming and burning need to ban modern sporting rifles (more popularly, and incorrectly, known as assault rifles). I keep hearing that these rifles are the greatest threat to public safety ever. But this is demonstratively false. According to the
FBI, more people are killed each year by knives than by all rifles (bolt action, lever action, pump action, and semi-auto) combined. According to the FBI, more people are killed each year by blunt objects such as clubs and hammers than by all types of rifles combined. According to the FBI, more people are killed with "personal weapons" than all types of rifles. "Personal weapons" in this case includes "hands, fists, feet, ect." According to the FBI, the most common weapon used for homicide in the United States are handguns.
Another thing I hear from the anti-gun side is that "assault weapons" are the weapons of choice of mass shooters. This, too, is false. I just looked up mass shootings in the United States on
Wikipedia (yes, I know, I'm lazy) and have seen...frankly, far more than I wanted to. But the ratio of rampage killers using semi-auto rifles to killers that used handguns was quite astonishing in that there were more of them using handguns than rifles and even less of them used semi-auto rifles.
I wasn't kidding when I said this is a complicated issue and that's because the problems we face go much deeper than just having access to firearms. If we continue to focus only on the method and not the motive for these actions we will have failed: both the victims and in getting the perps the help they need. Not long after the Sandy Hook shooting I saw a woman being interviewed who was saying that her son needed to get help for his mental problems but the only way she could get him into an institution was if she pressed assault charges against him. Keeping mental healthcare expensive and difficult to obtain while combining it with crushing poverty and social stigmas is a recipe for tragedy.
This turned into a far longer rant than I originally anticipated, it is just that I see the same arguments from the pro-gun side and it is starting to get to me.
Don't worry, I fully understand where you're coming from. For me, I keep seeing the same arguments from the anti-gun side, so I can sympathize with your frustrations.
I have a personal little bet going. I predict that given the last 2 years, that there will be another mass shooting event in America within 5 months. I am waiting to see if I am right.
While I agree, I think the bigger problem isn't the mass shootings. It's the ones and twos that happen every day in most major cities. They seem to happen a couple times a night in my own hometown.
For what it's worth, I too want stricter gun control. And please bear in mind who it is typing this. I want stricter, effective gun control. What worries me is it will be practically useless feel good while accomplishing nothing legislation that comes out of D.C. and the various state capitols. If we can avoid that and find some sort of gun control that would do something, I'm all on board. As would be most regular posters here I'd bet. Even Damen, Shep, and Stormwarden.
Oh hell yes I'd be on board with that in a New York minute.
But the problem I'm seeing is that right now the majority of the President's task force to reduce gun crime isn't consulting with the people they need to. It's made up of legislators who have a history of pushing for gun bans/harsher restrictions and people who have been victims of firearm crimes and they're talking to shooting victims, hunter groups and fucking Wal-Mart. I think they'll finally have a chat with the NRA tomorrow, but even then they're not talking to the people who would have the most knowledge of what to do: gunsmiths, firearm instructors, ATF, law enforcement, criminologists or psychiatrists. This is largely why I am so skeptical that anything meaningful will be done and the only people who will be affected are legal firearm owners.
