About those who think the government is going to take their guns...

[krispos42]

50. I appreciate that you're not dancing around the subject

Also for a civil conversation. Thank you.


This may in time happen; however I do not think it will save any lives. Not overall, not in a statistical sense. And I don't think we can lower the firing rate of guns low enough to prevent a madman from committing mass slaughter; our gun technology would have to be knocked back over a hundred and fifty years.

FWIW, I posted this in another thread about gun control. Somebody asked me where we should start; this was my answer.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#AFEEEE]1) Universal background checks. The ATF should create a special kind of license. This license, which I'll call "Firearms Transfer Agent License" or FTAL, would be issued by the ATF to people that would make money acting as a transfer agent from a private seller to a private buyer. An FTAL would not be a stocking firearms dealer, but would have access to the NICS system and would have all the appropriate forms to purchase a firearm. The fee the FTAL could charge would be no more than 3x the federal minimum wage (currently, $21.45) to transfer a gun.

I think that there would be a lot of people that would make some extra money on the side by doing these transfers. A nice little kitchen-table business. Currently, only federal firearm licensees (FFLs) can access NICS.

I guess we could call the permit "FaTAL", too...

2) A purchase limit of 12 guns a year. After your 12th gun is purchased in a calender year, the NICS system will not approve any more transfers until January 1st of the next year. If you want to buy more guns than that, get a permit.

I'll even go lower, down to 10. I based the "12" on the fact that some states have a one-gun-a-month policy, or 12 per year total.

This should cut down on trafficking.

3) A sale limit of 12 guns per year, unless the sales are to a federally licensed dealer. Again, after you sell your 12th gun, the NICS system refuses to approve any more transfers until January 1st, unless you're selling them to an FFL.

Again, if you're selling this many guns to private individuals, you're really a dealer and should be licensed as such.. This also should cut down on trafficking.

4) The ATF should keep records of what guns are sold by who. Not bought; that would be national registration, which I am not for. But if the ATF knew a gun's sale history, they could track down the last owner of a gun recovered in a crime by paying a visit to the last seller of the gun. This would keep the DoJ and the various police forces from trolling through databases (or the newspapers from printing lists of gun owners), yet still provide them with the ability to quickly find the owner of a gun. And if the last seller didn't know... then they've collared a guy feeding guns illegal to criminals.

5) Start denying transportation funds to states that are not in compliance with reporting mental-health and criminal records to NICS. If you don't want to spend the money to keep NICS current, you can maintain your own damn highways. Give the money as a bonus to states that ARE compliant!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2301318


The first half is a general rant about politicians and stuff; the part I posted is in the bottom half. I think I got the federal minimum wage wrong, though... I think it's $7.05, so the maximum fee would be $21.15.