The Onion’s Tips For Passing Gun Control Legislation

[metalbot]

44. You could start with the easy ones

"Any crime committed with a stolen or unregistered firearm will carry a mandatory 20 year sentence in addition to sentencing for the crime itself."

I'm not sure why you would limit this to stolen or unregistered. I mean, if someone decides to rob a store, and they have a licensed gun, that's no worse than having an unregistered one. There is nobody on either side of the political fence that will object to this, and possession of a firearm while committing a crime carries enhanced penalties in most states. Of course, by crimes, I assume you mean drug crimes as well, like marijuana users who are busted at home and have a hunting rifle in a safe?

"A failed background check renders the applicant ineligle to purchase firearms for one year. This is cumulative, so that the second failed check will render him ineligible for two years, etc. "

Background checks can fail for one of two reasons:
1. The system misidentified the person making the check. Clearly, we should not be banning someone from owning a firearm because they have a common name and the system did something wrong.
2. The person is not eligible to buy a firearm, never will be, and has committed a felony by attempting to do so.

Those are literally the only two possibilities. If we decide that #1 does not warrant a penalty (which it shouldn't), then maybe we should just enforce the existing penalty (multiple years of jail time) for felons who attempt to purchase guns and commit perjury on the form? In 2010, the last year for which I can easily google statistics, there were 34,000 people who were either convicted felons or facing felony indictments who committed perjury when filling out a form applying for a NICS check. The DoJ prosecuted exactly 44 of them.

Could we maybe start with that, see if jailing 34,000 felons who are trying to buy guns affects gun violence levels, and take it from there?