NY Proposal to Screw Gun Owner's a Little Bit Further

[Courier]

So... how is this relevant? Are you suggesting that people should have a court-appointed firearm so they can exercise their Second Amendment rights?

The right to keep & bear arms is no less important than the right to a trial by jury, the right to representation, the right to know the charges against you in a reasonable amount of time or be released.

Its also no less important than the right to not be forced into testifying against oneself.

Should we start charging folks to exercise these rights?

 

[Courier]

It costs money to operate a court and a trial. Perhaps we should start charging folks for putting them on trial. They won't have to pay this fee if they plead guilty.

Sound good?

 

[triforcharity]

The point is that there is no law that punishes those who supply to the criminal unless they KNOW that the criminal is a criminal. If a guy comes up to me at a guns show and asks to buy a gun that I just bought from a dealer there is no law that requires me to make sure he is not a felon. None. So even if he is an undercover cop and I sell it to him for cash without even asking his name, I can't be prosecuted. I have done nothing wrong.

Contrast that to the system that controls kegs of beer. The seller can expect to be fined and even sent to jail for selling a keg of beer to a minor. If a guy comes up to me outside of the beverage mart asking to buy the keg of beer I just bought I know that if he is an undercover cop I will likely be going to jail that night if I sell it to him and will have to at least pay a hefty fine. "**** that, dude, get your own beer." Is the only logical response unless the guy is offering a real premium for the beer and I'm pretty sure he isn't a cop. Even then it is a bit risky.

So, if we can make kegs of beer hard for minors to buy why can't we make guns hard for felons to buy?

Actually, you just shot yourself in the foot with that comparison. If you didn't know, or didn't suspect he was under 21, you'd be good. Since you're not a retailer of alcohol, you've got no duty to ID that person, or inquire of their age. You just need to think they're over 21.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

There is no corrolation/causation relationship between the number of guns a society has and its crime rate.

Many nations that have much lower gun-ownership rates than the USA have MUCH higher murder rates.

Again your point only holds up if you're talking about crime and murder. You must ignore suicides, which comprise the majority of gun deaths in the U.S.

Few countries rank higher than the U.S. (10, to be precise) in total firearm related death rate. I doubt any of them have a "much lower" gun-ownership rate than the U.S.

 

[Ziggurat]

The point is that there is no law that punishes those who supply to the criminal unless they KNOW that the criminal is a criminal. If a guy comes up to me at a guns show and asks to buy a gun that I just bought from a dealer there is no law that requires me to make sure he is not a felon. None. So even if he is an undercover cop and I sell it to him for cash without even asking his name, I can't be prosecuted. I have done nothing wrong.

Contrast that to the system that controls kegs of beer. The seller can expect to be fined and even sent to jail for selling a keg of beer to a minor. If a guy comes up to me outside of the beverage mart asking to buy the keg of beer I just bought I know that if he is an undercover cop I will likely be going to jail that night if I sell it to him and will have to at least pay a hefty fine. "**** that, dude, get your own beer." Is the only logical response unless the guy is offering a real premium for the beer and I'm pretty sure he isn't a cop. Even then it is a bit risky.

So, if we can make kegs of beer hard for minors to buy why can't we make guns hard for felons to buy?

First off, there's basically no secondary market for used beer (and no, Pabst isn't actually used, it just tastes that way). Many requirements that we put on commercial entities just won't work for private individuals. I'm not sorry that garage sales don't charge sales tax.

Second, I suspect that if you sold a gun to a minor, you WOULD get in a heap of trouble. But selling beer to a convicted felon? No problem. So you haven't actually convinced me that beer sales are more restrictive than gun sales.

Third, straw purchases are illegal, and you can get in trouble for doing them. At least in theory. In practice... we've had problems. But that's a different issue.

Fourth, the proposed law doesn't actually place any requirements on private sales of guns. So even to the extent that we decide that we should make it harder for felons to buy guns, the proposed law simply doesn't do that at all.

 

[Mudcat]

The right to keep & bear arms is no less important than the right to a trial by jury, the right to representation, the right to know the charges against you in a reasonable amount of time or be released.

Three of these rights don't involve keeping and maintaining an instrument of war that can maim and kill others if it falls into the wrong hands. The other is the second amendment.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

But don't come up with bull **** pricing schemes with the goal of pricing middle-class folks out of the ability to own a firearm.

Wait a second. You mean the risk of killing someone is so high that it's likely middle class people won't be able to buy the liability insurance? Did that happen when states required liability insurance to register a car?

I have no idea what such insurance would cost, but my public liability for doing my juggling show (including fire juggling, fire-eating, etc.) will cost me $250 for this coming year. That gives me up to $3 million liability for each occurrence and up to $5 million per year.*

I doubt very much there is any evidence to support your position that requiring $1 million in liability insurance would put gun ownership out of the reach of the middle class. But I'd be happy to look at whatever evidence you'd care to offer.

*It's a "shared policy" through Specialty Insurance and includes the following limits:

Each Occurrence: $3,000,000 (bodily injury & property damage to others)
Damage to Rented Premises: $100,000 (to rented premises)
Personal & Advertising Injury: $3,000,000 (hurting someone's feelings)
General Aggregate: $5,000,000 (the most the policy will pay out during the policy year)
Products – Completed Op. Agg.: $5,000,000 (the most the policy will pay out during the policy year)
Medical Expenses: $5,000 (emergency medical to others injured by you)

 

[Courier]

Three of these rights don't involve keeping and maintaining an instrument of war that can maim and kill others if it falls into the wrong hands. The other is the second amendment.

Amend the Constitution, if you feel its soo very backwards & knuckledragging.

And no, many firearms are NOT instruments of war, and would never be used on a modern-day battlefield.

So spare us the colorful hyperbole.

 

[Courier]

A baseball bat can very quickly kill someone.

Should ownership of a baseball bat require $1 million in insurance?

How about axes, chainsaws, bows & arrows?

 

[Ziggurat]

Again your point only holds up if you're talking about crime and murder. You must ignore suicides, which comprise the majority of gun deaths in the U.S.

Few countries rank higher than the U.S. (10, to be precise) in total firearm related death rate. I doubt any of them have a "much lower" gun-ownership rate than the U.S.

You can doubt all you want, but you're actually wrong. Let's go through those 10.

Country        gun death rate      Gun ownership rate     
Jamaica        47.44               8.1
Honduras       46.70               6.2
El Salvador    41.11               5.8
Guatemala      38.52               13.1
Swaziland      37.16               6.4
Brazil         19.02               8.0
South Africa   18.5                12.7
Colombia       11.10               5.9
Mexico         11.07               15.0
Panama         10.92               21.7
United States  10.2                88.8

So basically, they all have much lower gun ownership rates than the US. And there doesn't appear to be any positive correlation within that list between gun death rates and gun ownership rates either.

 

[NWO Sentryman]

In Mexico's case, they are currently in the middle of a civil war, which is getting extremely messy at this stage, so I'd just say they are an outlier.

That said, you are largely comparing the US to the third world, which doesn't lend credibility to your argument. Now, had you said that gun crime was declining despite high gun ownership, you would have a better argument.

 

[AlBell]

I know I heard it all before, education and all that.

Turns out I agree. There are hundreds areas in which we can improve as a society that would have a bigger impact on violence than any gun ban ever would.

What I propose is to treat gun ownership as a privilege not a right, not ban it outright. Might just help change people and how they view it and address it with the kind of respect it should have.

And gun owners would like to see you, BenB, etal give the constitution the respect it should have.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It costs money to operate a court and a trial. Perhaps we should start charging folks for putting them on trial. They won't have to pay this fee if they plead guilty.

Sound good?

I'm not sure how this fits into the discussion, but we already do this.

We don't usually waive court costs for a guilty plea, but we do plea bargain (in exchange for a guilty plea prosecutors will sometimes reduce sentences, fines and court costs--on the other hand it's common practice in traffic courts to charge higher fines for a plea bargain to a non-points violation). [ETA: And the point of plea bargaining in many cases is to get the conviction with more efficient use of public resources.]

And of course if you can afford to, you have to pay your own criminal defense costs.

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but guaranteeing a right doesn't mean there is a guarantee that it won't cost you money to exercise that right. The right to free speech doesn't entitle you to taxpayer funded advertising, for example. The right to a free press doesn't mean you're entitled to a "press" (or publishing company) from the government. It also doesn't mean the government can't tax commerce involved in the exercise of a free press or free speech. Again, I'm not at all sure what argument you're trying to make with your not-very-novel court costs idea.

 

[dudalb]

I never said I did. The intent of insurance isn't to make things too expensive. Quite the opposite, actually.

Maybe in general. But the law under discussion seems a blatent attempt to make gun ownership too expensive for most people.
I would have more respect for some of the people here if they would just be honest and say they want to end private gun ownership, rather then try to do it by the back door.

I am not a big fan of the NRA,but a broken clock is right twice a day, and the NRA is right in saying this is a attempt to price guns out of the market.

 

[Ziggurat]

That said, you are largely comparing the US to the third world, which doesn't lend credibility to your argument.

Are you referring to me? It wasn't my comparison. I'm just correcting Joe's radical misconception about gun ownership rates in different countries. That, really, is what I found most interesting: he was so certain about it that he didn't check, even though he was completely wrong about every single country involved in that comparison. What is it that made him so certain? Did he just assume that they must have higher gun ownership rates, because he couldn't explain the results any other way? Or did he actually hear from some source that this was the case?

I'm not trying to suggest that the lower rates of ownership are what led to higher death rates in those other countries (and you're correct that their third-world status is likely a major factor), but clearly he made a serious factual error, and that error deserved to be pointed out.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

You can doubt all you want, but you're actually wrong. Let's go through those 10.

Country        gun death rate      Gun ownership rate     
Jamaica        47.44               8.1
Honduras       46.70               6.2
El Salvador    41.11               5.8
Guatemala      38.52               13.1
Swaziland      37.16               6.4
Brazil         19.02               8.0
South Africa   18.5                12.7
Colombia       11.10               5.9
Mexico         11.07               15.0
Panama         10.92               21.7
United States  10.2                88.8

OK so some of those 10 have "much lower" gun ownership rates than the U.S. but the claim that there are many countries with much lower gun rates and higher firearm death rates is false. And his claim made about crime and homicide was in the context of an observation about safety--not something that should be limited to crime and homicide.

In fact that claim is impossible since, as I've pointed out, there aren't even many countries with higher firearm related death rates. Even if we deem all 10 of these to have "much lower" gun ownership rates than the U.S., it is still false to say that there are "many" such countries. There can be no more than 10.

 

[Courier]

Again your point only holds up if you're talking about crime and murder. You must ignore suicides, which comprise the majority of gun deaths in the U.S.

Few countries rank higher than the U.S. (10, to be precise) in total firearm related death rate. I doubt any of them have a "much lower" gun-ownership rate than the U.S.

Hmm, let's take a look and see how world suicide rates match with world gun ownership rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_rates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

Yup, once again there is NO corrolation between higher gun ownership rates and higher suicide rates.

That's another gun-grabber argument that just got tossed in the trash.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm just correcting Joe's radical misconception about gun ownership rates in different countries.

Cut the crap and review the posts. I was pointing out that Courier is wrong to limit gun deaths to crime and homicides in order to claim that there are "many" countries with higher death rates and lower gun ownership rates.

I'm not trying to suggest that the lower rates of ownership are what led to higher death rates in those other countries (and you're correct that their third-world status is likely a major factor), but clearly he made a serious factual error, and that error deserved to be pointed out.

You're wrong. I was wrong in my guess (which I worded as such) that none of the 10 countries with higher gun death rates than the U.S. would have much lower gun ownership rates. But I was correct in pointing out that Courier was wrong in his claim that there are many countries with higher gun death rates and much lower ownership rates. There are only 10 (at the most).

In fact, looking at the entire list of countries, it does look like there's a correlation between gun ownership rate and gun death rate. I've not done the analysis, but just glancing at the figures, it looks like a pretty strong correlation.

 

[Courier]

Cut the crap and review the posts. I was pointing out that Courier is wrong to limit gun deaths to crime and homicides in order to claim that there are "many" countries with higher death rates and lower gun ownership rates....

There is also NO corrolation between rates of gun ownership and suicide rate.

Sorry, try another argument.

 

[Courier]

...In fact, looking at the entire list of countries, it does look like there's a correlation between gun ownership rate and gun death rate. I've not done the analysis, but just glancing at the figures, it looks like a pretty strong correlation.

I've posted the links. Your argument is false.

There is simply no corrolation, none whatsoever, between higher rates of gun ownership and murder or suicide.