"Delvin Benet" wrote in message
...

On 1/31/2013 6:07 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:


"Delvin Benet" wrote in message
.. .

On 1/31/2013 2:48 PM, rangerssuck wrote:
On Thursday, January 31, 2013 5:16:56 PM UTC-5, Ed Huntress wrote:
Sorry, Chris, that this is a mess. I'm rusty and I messed it up.

Hey, Ed -

Welcome back. I *thought* this might draw you out from under your
rock. Thanks for responding to Chris - even at your rustiest, your
writing is very well thought out and to the point.

What you said about registration is exactly what I meant. If you can't
keep track of the guns, how can you know how they are getting into the
hands of the criminals? I fail to see how this places any restrictions
on any law-abiding person to bear arms.

You *don't* know how the guns got into the hands of the bad guys, even
*with* registration. You don't know if it was stolen, borrowed, sold
outside dealer channels, or anything else. Besides, a gun first has to
be recovered from a criminal, but frequently they aren't - if the gun is
stolen, it will often be simply discarded or passed on to some other
criminal.

The only rationale you've given for registration is unsound.

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Let's see what a sound program would be. By the way, this system is
something like the one we will almost inevitably have, sooner or later,
so we'd might as well get it all out now.

First, universal background checks. To have background checks for
purchases from FFL holders, but not from the "collectors" gag who sell
at gun shows, is insane. Even Wayne LaPierre stumbled and bumbled trying
to explain it, knowing that it's sheer lunacy. The background check
system has stopped well over a million illegal purchases. How many just
turned around and bought from a "private" seller? We don't know. We
don't have the stats. There is a claim that only a couple of percent of
guns recovered in crimes came from gun shows, but that refers to guns
bought from FFL holders who sell at shows. We don't know how many came
from "private" sellers. We can't tell.

Second, make the background check rational. In other words, provide
enough money to police and mental health institutions to get the
databases up to date and fairly complete. Since conservatives believe in
direct fees for users in opposition to funding things from general tax
funds, finance it with a tax on guns and ammo. I'd go along with that.

Third, 100% registration at the time of sale, [...]

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(DB)

No. There is no sound rationale for that whatsoever. It's nothing but
a step toward ultimate confiscation, not to mention muckraking
journalists posting names and addresses of gun owners. Absolutely not -
non-negotiable.

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The "confiscation" is noise in your head -- pure paranoia. It doesn't happen
in the US, nor is there any reason to expect that it will, except among the
delusional. Even the California case that required registration of ARs only
threatened confiscation for those who DIDN'T register. (They were not
criminally charged, however.) I prefer to live an evidence-based life, and
I'm not worried about it, based on the evidence and US law.

Beyond that, not having registration creates about four problems for law
enforcement, two of which are serious. One is strawman purchases. As it
stands now, without registration, once a gun changes hands through a private
sale, the trail is lost. The police have no one to charge. If they go
through the onerous process of finding the first retail purchaser, they have
no required record-keeping or background checking and certification that
would enable them to find the next purchaser, the first *private* purchaser.
Remember, all of these guns were sold with a background check and identity
certification at least once. If the trail is kept secure, through background
checking and registration, they will be able to follow the trail of most
guns to the first case of negligence or criminal sale. As with all laws, one
expects that serious prosecution and a higher likelihood of getting caught
will restrain the flow of guns from legal to illegal marketplaces.

The second serious problem is that, without registration, there is no
practical way to follow up on a person who is adjudicated mentally unstable
and dangerous, or who becomes a felon, and who also has a gun bought before
these conditions occur (under federal law; a few states have ways of dealing
with this). California says that some thousands of nuts and felons have guns
they bought legally, but the follow-up to disarm them is onerous and
expensive. Registration and coordinated databases would make it practical to
get guns out of the hands of those nuts and felons. The felons would face
another felony charge as a result. They'd be disarmed and off the street.

The journalists are another problem, which I believe will soon cease to be a
problem at all.


All of that will put a damper on strawman sales.

================================================== =============
(DB)

No proof of any such sales.

================================================== =============
(EH)

?? Where did you get that idea? Look up where the Columbine killers got
their guns (hint: look up Robyn Anderson and "private seller" purchases from
the Tanner Gun Show. She was the straw purchaser for the shotguns and the
carbine.)

An ATF study of guns traced in NYC, back in the '90s, showed that 40% of
them came from straw purchases in southern states.

And so on.

================================================== =============
(DB)

Regarding the provision of money to make the databases up to date:


California unable to disarm 19,700 felons and mentally ill people

Despite being able to take weapons owned by felons and the mentally ill,
state officials say staff shortages and funding cuts have slowed seizures.

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times
January 29, 2013, 6:18 p.m.
SACRAMENTO — California authorities are empowered to seize weapons owned
by convicted felons and people with mental illness, but staff shortages
and funding cuts have left a backlog of more than 19,700 people to
disarm, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Those gun owners have roughly 39,000 firearms, said Stephen Lindley,
chief of the Bureau of Firearms for the state Department of Justice,
testifying at a joint legislative hearing. His office lacks enough staff
to confiscate all the weapons, which are recorded in the state's Armed
Prohibited Persons database, he said.

The gun owners typically acquired the firearms legally, before being
convicted of a felony or diagnosed with mental illness. Each year, the
state investigates and seizes the guns of about 2,000 people on the
Armed Prohibited Persons list, Lindley said, but each year about 3,000
names are added to the list.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...0,418551.story


It is simply a lie that the government doesn't have the money to do
this. What they don't have is the organization and the will. More
money isn't necessary.

================================================== ===================

(EH)

A couple of points the article in the LA Times missed: When the system
started operation, in 2007, there were suddenly over 15,000 people on the
list. They showed up because, prior to that time, CA operated like every
other state, with paper records and no system for cross-indexing felons and
crazy people with gun ownership. Their APP database is the first in the
country. It only includes handguns and ARs. So that fact alone tells us the
magnitude of the problem ATF has to work with, since their records are
mostly paper, too, and the federal laws (thanks, NRA!) don't allow them to
keep much of the data to begin with. (A Univ. of CA Criminal Justice expert
estimates there are 190,000 felons and nutjobs, which make up 35% of the
ineligibles, in the US as a whole.) Half of the data is on paper, in bound
books, in the hands of somewhere around 60,000 FFL holders (there are
132,000 total FFL holders, but only half are significant in terms of gun
sales records). The other half of the data, the felon/nutjob records, is a
mess, because the states that are supposed to supply it, often don't.

Another thing is that Lindley's department in California, as of Feb. 2011,
consisted of 20 people. Total. For the entire state of California. The
database they set up is great, and a model for the country. But if you're
going to have a database, you need enough people to run it, and then you
need the people in the field, to collect the guns. A lot of the ones they
want to collect from are violent felons. Lindley sends out teams of four
armed officers at a time. They're among the 20 people on his staff. The
enforcers are supposed to include local police departments, but California
has slashed their staffs, too, and those police officers already have a job.
Most of them don't even check the database, let alone doing anything about
it.

When I started in publishing I managed a database of around 2,000,000
records, half on paper and half on an IBM 360 system that allowed me access
once a week. My system was a hell of a lot better than anything anyone
(except CA) has for guns, and I had similar kinds of cross-referencing to
do. I had 9 clerks and 6 keypunch operators just to enter and maintain the
data into the computer, including changing over the paper records to
computer records. None of them had to go out in the field with guns on their
hips. g We were not overstaffed. California gun sales run around
500,000/year. I don't know the total size of the database, but their
per-year additions are about equal to the per-year changes I had to deal
with. I feel for them.

California's staffing for their felon/nutcase/gun system is farcical.
Lindley estimates it will cost him $25 million in staffing to catch up with
the backlog -- most of which appeared on day one of the operation.

Now, about the money: do you know people who will do this work for free?
California is busted on its ass. The local cops who were supposed to be part
of the system really don't have the resources. Their backs are already
against the wall.

So, although California has created an exemplary model, somebody forgot that
you need a staff to implement it. Nevertheless, they're doing better at it
than any other state, and it's exactly the kind of thing that I believe must
be, and eventually will be, implemented on a national basis. Paid for by the
users. That's us gun purchasers.

--
Ed Huntress