Why would this be? Why would you needing to jump through extra hoops to acquire your gun made it any harder for someone to subsequently break into your home and steal it? The biggest effect would be people giving up on making the purchase altogether because of the hassle (not because they’re no longer able to), so that there is no gun to be stolen, which is why there is such objections - it’s hassling people out of, effectively denying them, what’s considered their right, by making it too inconvenient to exercise that right.
And a vast majority of deranged gun owners do not present as being deranged at the time of their purchase, which could be years prior to them going crazy, and thus would’ve passed any additional restrictions anyways.
I understand there would be some effect, and just one life saved would technically make restrictions effective, but it’s not going to have anywhere near the effect that proponents keep trying to claim it will.
The unfortunate reality is that we already have nearly 400 million firearms in the USA, so stopping sales entirely would still leave what is effectively 40% of all private firearms in the world still floating around within our borders.
The scope of the issue is large enough that it’s way beyond the “easy answers” stage.
In a country where laws are properly enforced, this logic would be… logical. The problem is that we don’t enforce our current gun laws that, when enforced, actually do a good job keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Instead, the left wants more gun laws. And since we have so many laws already, the laws that the left wants will disproportionately affect law abiding gun owners/purchasers.
If you are wondering what laws I am referring to specifically that aren’t enforced, there are two main ones that would stop specifically what you are referring to (legal guns becoming illegal guns):
When a prohibited possessor tries to get a gun legally and fails the background check, they have broken the law. These people then choose to buy a gun on the black market. The ATF (or whatever agency you give the job of investigating attempted illegal purchases) could arrest that person, search their home, find the stash of illegal guns they have, and lock them up for decades. In reality, they are rarely ever arrested, let alone convicted and given long prison sentences for trying to buy a gun while being a prohibited possessor.
When a prohibited possessor gets a gun through a straw purchase (their friend with a clean record buys the gun they want for them), and that prohibited possessor later gets caught with that gun, that straw purchaser is almost never arrested, let alone convicted and sent to prison. This is a super common way that a legal gun becomes illegal and we almost never see the people facilitating it (the straw purchaser) sent to prison. If we started enforcing this one, straw purchases would drop dramatically in as short a timeframe as two years. Word would get out, you buy a gun for Pookie and he robs a store and gets caught, you’re going to jail. No one would buy a gun for Pookie anymore.
There are a few laws that could help fix this, but I bet both sides would be against them.
A law that makes it a crime to not report a gun stolen within 90 days of it being stolen. If you can’t check your gun collection ever 3 months to make sure they are all there, you’re either too lazy or doing straw purchases.
Repeal any laws that require safe storage. No one is going to report their gun stolen if they think they are going to be arrested for not having a safe.
Change the straw purchaser law to say that not reporting a gun stolen within 90 days is Prima facie evidence that the purchaser is guilty of a straw purchase.
If these laws are in place, 91 days after the gun crime happens (assuming the police have the gun and figured out that Pookie’s friend, baby momma, neighbor, gang associate etc. bought it), check to see if that person has reported the gun stolen. If they haven’t they can be charged with a conducting a straw purchase. If they have, they are smarter than your average straw purchaser. But also, now you add another charge onto Pookie for possessing a stolen firearm. If the purchaser of the firearm refuses to come to court in Pookie’s trial to testify that the gun was stolen (they don’t have to testify it was stolen by Pookie, just that it was stolen), then the report they made saying it was stolen is now a false police report. They can be charged with that AND with a straw purchase if a gun from their collection was later found on a prohibited possessor or used by a prohibited possessor in a crime.
I had actually typed out virtually the same thing before posting that last comment, that something like this would make a better new law than any new restriction. Only I was going to say 30 days, not 90. And restrictions on future purchases should someone become a habitual vicitm of theft soon after buying new guns.
Yup. There’s no point in putting in a super-secure front door with a glass window next to it.
And note “gun show”–there are also casual private-party sales at gun shows: Put a price tag on your gun, attend the shows and hope for an offer. The dealers have to do background checks, but unless private party sales also require them those transactions are unchecked.
Which means the de-facto intent to ban guns. Otherwise this isn’t going to make a difference.
This assumes you are there to check your collection. People take extended trips for various reasons, some even put their stuff in storage and are technically homeless for extended periods. People develop medical issues and aren’t going to deal with things like checking their collection.
Owning a gun is a right, but also comes with obligations. If you dont want to bother checking on your collection, you bear the risk. And that risk is commensurate with how you choose to store/secure that collection - if you want to toss them in a storage locker and hope for the best, the consequences are on you. If you cannot keep track of the stuff you own, either directly or by using a third party, then perhaps you arent in a position where owning them is a sound idea.
I’m generally against restricting gun ownership. But I’m fine with making people respect the responsibilities that come with ownership, including imposing individual restrictions after they’ve shown the inability to be responsible owners.
A lot of thefts are inside jobs–what third party should you trust? And note that I didn’t say “don’t want to bother checking”, I was talking about cases where checking is impossible (medical) or a big problem (extended absences.)
I’m fine with in general unreported thefts being an issue, but there should be exceptions for cases where it’s an undue burden or impossible.
There’s no such thing as an undue burden when it comes to the responsibility of owning a gun, you’re either keeping track of it or you are not. Sure, if you want to designate a surrogate to assume that responsibility (and potential liability) in your absence go right ahead - but that’s delegating responsibility for the gun, not absconding responsibility. Someone needs to remain accountable for it’s security at all times.
But, I’m against the whole “I didnt want [the bad thing] to happen so it wasnt my fault” defense that far too many people expect should absolve all personal responsibility in numerous other areas as well.
And what happens with any other unexpected situation in life? Those who plan ahead simply deal with it, and those who dont bother planning ahead claim it’s impossible to deal with. If you want the responsibility of gun ownership, you need to take that responsibility and drop the “but but but how could I have known that might happen!” excuses.
In my city, when you left town you could let the police know. For free, we would check your house daily (sometimes once a shift) to see if there were any signs of forced entry. It doesn’t cost the police extra to provide this service. I think one could argue that if they took advantage of this service and the police never discovered the burglary, that they had every reason to believe their guns had not been stolen.
Notwithstanding all that, I am of the opinion that if you are going to take extended vacations and leave your guns unsecured enough at your home that someone could steal them and use them in a crime and 90 days could go by before you found out they were stolen, I don’t actually consider you a responsible gun owner and I don’t really mind you being arrested for violating the 90 days to report a gun stolen law.
Not even remotely close to impossible.
Along with the laws we suggest, the state government can appropriate funds (it wouldn’t require much) to each police department to slightly increase their property and evidence storage space. If you become hospitalized or incapacitated, you or a family member can ask the police to take possession of your firearms for safe keeping. Then you can get them back by proving who you are when you get out of the hospital. Or the executor of your estate can come get them if you don’t make it.
When I was a cop (before mental health was being blamed for mass shootings), we would take the guns of people that were suicidal, but were willing to go to a hospital for a voluntary committal. I checked a box marked “for safe keeping” when logging them in. We were forced to give them back when the person got out of the nut hut, asked for them, and were never committed against their will. So this solution of holding guns for safe keeping isn’t foreign to police departments.
I may have missed this up thread, but was there an exception for people who properly secure their guns? … and was there a specific definition of “properly secured”? We semi-regularly go out of town for extended periods of time. During those times, most of my guns are stored in a gun safe (and not a 200 lb tin box). If the safe isn’t considered secure what would be - removing the firing pin, breech plate, or lower receiver?
The point was the “within 30 (or 60, or 90) days” part to report them stolen/missing. Whatever you consider to be properly secured, if you have ignored them to the extent of still not knowing they are missing after 1-3 months, you are being inherently negligent no matter how you’ve stored them.
Except they like to charge for this sort of service now–to the point that you very well might not bother to reclaim your guns because the fees are more than the guns are worth.
And that doesn’t address what happens if the trigger event is sudden.
If your idea of being prepared is to just claim that it wont happen to you, then the consequences of not having a plan when it does happen to you are no one’s fault but your own. Meaning you better hope that your judgement about what constitutes secure storage was more prudent, so that your guns dont go missing to begin with.
