CookeMonster
Member
I have been debating for weeks on another forum that is not gun or politics related. I have been able to gain some ground with guys that have been pro-Feinstein and gun ban and magazine restrictions and database registration. Along with a few others, after 1000s of posts back and forth, we have gotten them to come around to the idea that banning guns for cosmetic reasons is asinine, and have proven that semi-auto vs revolver is a non-issue and right along side that magazine restrictions are also a non issue. The issue that has been the most elusive is illegal private sales. We have come up with some ideas, and wanted your take on it.
Copied and pasted from other forum: (I'm in red)
Copied and pasted from other forum: (I'm in red)
I'm on board with this as well.I'll take a stab at the private sale problem and everyone can poke holes in it and point out where I'm misinformed. I think the solution is to require a background check for private sales by having any sale go through an FFL. This won't stop anyone from obtaining a gun illegally, just like any law won't stop someone from breaking the law. But it does allow a private citizen to obtain a background check on a purchaser and I'd think most would gladly follow the law, if only for the comfort of knowing their gun wasn't bought for criminal use. Just like with new gun purchases, you wouldn't stop the flow of illegal gun sales, but you would reduce them and make it harder for the wrong person to obtain a gun.
The way I understand it to be now, any new gun sales must go through an FFL and receive a background check. In addition, at least here in VA, I believe the FFLs are required to keep a record of the sale for 2 years. By having any private sales go through an FFL, the buyer, seller, and FFL would all have records of the sale. This seems like it would provide a system where you could trace an illegally used gun without having a national (or state) database. There isn't any reason why you couldn't push the record keeping requirement for all parties to 10 years. I think the number of background checks last year was around 17 million, which would include some private sales. Even if you push that to 30 million to account for the additional sales, that's only about 500 per FFL.
So, while you will never eliminate all instances of criminals acquiring guns, you would at least likely make it harder and more expensive to obtain them illegally. With national registration, you won't get the criminals and many of the non-criminals to comply. With this type of law, you would at least get the majority of non-criminals to comply.I don't know that it could be possible without a registration database. Without a database of gun owners, how do you get back to original owners to follow the trail? I can guarantee that a huge number of gun owners will be unwilling to be listed in a database for fear of the potential for future confiscation.
Agreed. I wasn't necessarily talking about a central database, but all-inclusive records kept. Preferably by manufacturer because that would keep it broken into many separate parts and more difficult to assemble. Also, gun manufacturers would be more likely to respect/support privacy and gun rights, seeing that their target demographic is gun buyers/owners that would quickly and easily take their business elsewhere if those rights to privacy were violated without proper procedure. I'm liking this a lot.There would be no central database. The manufacturer would have a record to which FFL the gun was sold. The FFL would keep the record to whom they sold the gun to and also any transfer records between individuals. Any access to those records would require a subpoena. It would be no different than your health records. Your FFL won't give up your info any easier than your doctor would.
There is also no way to prevent somebody from selling a gun to anybody they want without going through an FFL. The only way to accomplish this idea of limiting private gun sales without background checks I can see is requiring total registration, and that is completely off the table for me and for about 80 million guns in the hands of about 10 million gun owners in my estimation. Those 10 million probably donate quite a bit of money to the NRA-ILA for legal defense of their rights and political voice. Gonna be tough.Agree. Even with registration, you would need total compliance, even from the criminals. That's not going to happen but it shouldn't stop us from trying to prevent some of the guns from getting there. Non-criminals would likely comply with going through an FFL and that would make it harder for the criminal.
Every private seller could keep a reciept/B.O.S. approved by an FFL for a period of time as a trail to follow if a gun was found to be possessed illegally. It would incur a cost of about $25 per transaction, and many will squawk about that, but I would be happy to "purchase" insurance of each sale of my guns for $25 in the case that it ended up in the hands of a felon or used in a crime. A FFL transaction record to say, "I don't have it anymore. I sold it to John Doe. See, here is the record." I would prefer it be in the $10-15 range to keep it affordable, but I don't know the cost for the FFLs to process the background check. Here in California it's $25.
I think we agree here.
But again, how do you get back to the original owner in order to follow the trail without registration? If there were a way to keep track of the original owner that was forever off-limits for the authorities/politicians/military to get ahold of blanket list, but only single inquiries on a gun's serial # in possession of police for the investigation of a crime, I might be OK with it. Maybe the gun manufacturer keeps the record of original sale or something? I wouldn't know where to start with this policy for the 300 million + guns already in circulation. You could start by the registration already on file with individual states being turned over to manufacturers, I guess. The important part of establishing any kind of registration is to keep the master list out of the government's hands. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is protection of our free states from government (foreign or domestic). You don't hand a potential enemy the blueprints to you vault, or the programming to your network security. Until you can trust all of the people in power, and you just can't because they are almost all from legal/lawyer backgrounds - insert lawyer joke here-, you can't trust those people with your defense of freedoms.
Yes, I think. The police would have to start with the manufacturer. That would lead to the original FFL, which would lead to the 1st owner, and so on. Each request would be separate. There is no way to take care of the 300 million already out there, but nothing being suggested takes care of that, not even registration (because nobody will comply). This at least takes care of any transfers going forward.
Many states already have a database (California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois of the top of my head - I may be wrong on those). Turn those over to gun manufacturers, and you would take care of probably 50-100 million guns right there. From that point, go with every new sale and every private sale that was willing to comply with the registration. It would probably take some time, but would eventually get to the point of at least 1/2 to 2/3rds of the guns in the U.S. being accounted for. Time would take care of 90% of the rest and of course there would still be imported illegal arms and Alex Jones burying his in PVC packed with preservative somewhere in the woods, but this could make a huge difference in limiting private illegal sales.
I think we have acceptance from both you and Tim.
We can put my name on the bill.
Seems very reasonable that should make both sides happy