Keeping Guns Out Of The Hands Of Criminals
Posted by Chris Martin at 3/24/2009 1:09 PM 
Categories: The Second Amendment
Tags: Personal Responsibility
Categories: The Second Amendment
Tags: Personal Responsibility
Saturday four Oakland police officers were killed by a paroled felon who happened to have at least two automatic weapons at hand. Two of the officers were shot during a traffic stop with an automatic pistol, two others were shot with an AK 47 when they tried to arrest the suspect later. Details here from the SF Comical, fine paper that happens to be a good source of news about the left coast.
Now Wonks Anonymous knows many committed gun owners and he has heard the arguments for widespread ownership of automatic weapons. He understands that a large group of his law abiding fellow citizens feel that they need these weapons to protect their homes and families from terrorists and to defend themselves against unwanted government intrusion.
He is skeptical of these arguments, mainly because he lives in a populous urban area where far too many of the gun owners seem to be anything but law abiding. He will let that pass in the interest of making a constructive proposal that he feels both sides in this debate can accept:
The Oakland shooter was a convicted felon and no doubt got his guns from our huge domestic black market, the same market that also furnishes Mexican drug gangs with their weapons. Nevertheless these weapons were probably not always illegal. At some point this man's AK 47 and automatic pistol were the legal property of some gun owner, gun dealer or gun manufacturer.
Through carelessness, or negligence or greed this owner allowed these weapons to enter the black market. They may have been left around a house that was broken into. They may have been given to a relative or a friend. They may have been sold to someone who the owner did not really know all that well.
From there they fell into the hands of a felon and now four police officers are dead.
So here is the simple proposal: The last documented legal owner of any gun used in a crime like this should be considered to have the same legal and civil responsibility for the crime as the shooter. Mitigating circumstances could be considered at trial - for example if the gun were stolen from a house but had been stored in a properly secured gun safe with the theft reported to authorities.
"I did not think that he would use it for that when I sold it to him" would not be considered mitigating circumstances.
Now Wonks Anonymous knows many committed gun owners and he has heard the arguments for widespread ownership of automatic weapons. He understands that a large group of his law abiding fellow citizens feel that they need these weapons to protect their homes and families from terrorists and to defend themselves against unwanted government intrusion.
He is skeptical of these arguments, mainly because he lives in a populous urban area where far too many of the gun owners seem to be anything but law abiding. He will let that pass in the interest of making a constructive proposal that he feels both sides in this debate can accept:
The Oakland shooter was a convicted felon and no doubt got his guns from our huge domestic black market, the same market that also furnishes Mexican drug gangs with their weapons. Nevertheless these weapons were probably not always illegal. At some point this man's AK 47 and automatic pistol were the legal property of some gun owner, gun dealer or gun manufacturer.
Through carelessness, or negligence or greed this owner allowed these weapons to enter the black market. They may have been left around a house that was broken into. They may have been given to a relative or a friend. They may have been sold to someone who the owner did not really know all that well.
From there they fell into the hands of a felon and now four police officers are dead.
So here is the simple proposal: The last documented legal owner of any gun used in a crime like this should be considered to have the same legal and civil responsibility for the crime as the shooter. Mitigating circumstances could be considered at trial - for example if the gun were stolen from a house but had been stored in a properly secured gun safe with the theft reported to authorities.
"I did not think that he would use it for that when I sold it to him" would not be considered mitigating circumstances.
On the surface, your proposal to make responsibility for the later effects of a firearm incumbent upon the last registered owner sounds like a reasonable proposal. The idea has some merit.
The first problem with your proposal is that not all firearms are registered, nor should they be, in my opinion.
Registration of all firearms would severely limit the freedoms enjoyed by our citizens under our beloved, and entirely necessary, second amendment.
Holding a subsequent owner of firearm somehow less responsible than a former owner is, in all practicality, ludicrous. Such a scheme assumes all subsequent possessors (I'll take this past "owners") are as law-abiding as the last legal owner. The simple fact that a firearm has been used in a crime casts a huge shadow of doubt on the present possessor of that firearm whether he owns it legally or not. It is not difficult to imagine that a person who uses a firearm in committing a crime might also be disinclined to keep the registration current.
The second problem with your assumption is that either of those firearms were at one time legal. If these weapons were automatic in the nature of the way they fire, they were not legal. If they were, at one time SEMI-AUTOMATIC, they were then legal, but as soon as they were modified, if that is proven to have occurred, they became illegal at that time. Fully automatic firearms are, and have been since the 1930s, illegal to possess without special, stringent licensing. Very few people are allowed to legally possess fully automatic operational firearms...it is the law across the country.
You also failed to point out that, as a convicted felon, the shooter was in violation of the law by simply possessing a firearm of any kind. How he happened to procure these firearms, while interesting, is fairly moot.
It also serves to show that too many convict are released too soon and that they continue to break the law once released.
We do know that, depending on the crime, the death penalty, properly administered, prevents recidivism.
If the gun is not registered then it becomes the manufacturers problem to track it. Sure I would like to punish subsequent illegal owners but they are hard to track. I also have a serious problem with anonymous gun ownership since it allows owners to behave irresponsibly while remaining unidentifiable.
If you believe that you have a right to own a gun why not stand up and publicly acknowledge your gun ownership.
We do not allow anonymous purchase of Pseudofed in this country because it might be used to make amphetamine. Why allow the anonymous purchase of guns?
As to the automatic/semi-automatic issue, I am under the impression that kits to modify semiautomatic weapons are widely available to gun enthusiasts. Thus I have heard numerous arguments against bans on automatic weapons that point out that you can buy a conversion kit so that the bans are useless.
Finally we must admit that there is really no hope of capturing and confining all crazy people. We can try to act responsibly in our exercise of our rights and thereby keep at least some of these people from arming themselves.
WA
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This from a friend; thought you would like to hear what a hardcore 2nd Amendment proponent would have to say:
Poppycock! The fault is of course not the fault of the initial buyer/owner of the weapon who should retain the right to buy and sell what weapons he wishes to in a free country! Your answer to the real problem and its solution is right there in the very first sentence: a paroled felon It's like "HELLO MC FLY"! Why was the friggin felon paroled in the first place?? I'll bet anything he was convicted of some henious violent felony to begin with and the odds were he was almost predestined to commit another violent act, but the sorry parole board would'nt do their job for whatever reason so this is what we get, 4 dead policemen, probably all good family men, and liberals up in arms about talking about taking away everyones constitutional rights because they feel in their ignorance, that the rest of us are the same as that psycho convict! It really baffles the mind some peoples logic!
The real problem is our wishy washy society wants to coddle violent criminals. They don't put those to death that deserve it and those they do are done so long afterwards that it's almost meaningless! Most of these scumbags live longer on death row than they would have were they still out on the street! Because it's enforced so seldom, and so delayed it really presents no real deterrent, except maybe in texas where they still seem to have a clue how to take care of business.
If these supposed black markets which I presume is the liberal name for legal gun shows were to be shut down by uncle slick, I mean our Orwellian big brother, then they could keep tabs on every person who has everygun and gun registration and confiscation are only a quick step away. Hitler couldn't have suggested a better way to go! In fact he chose quite a similar way in his rise to power. Always seemed ironic to me how americans marveled at how seemingly complicit the german populace was in enabling the nazi thuggery and murder of those years especially when you take into account that Hitler was one of the early participants in gun registration and confiscation. There wasn't a whole lot the people could do when they were disarmed! I just don't see how it could have happened, they would say, we felt safe, surely the government won't harm us!
In other words you guys take no personal responsibility for selling guns to whoever:
"So what if he said he admired Osama and wanted to kill all the Jews etc. It's really the responsibility of the police to arrest him and if they don't, well I didn't know that he would really shoot all of those people!"
-WA
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