In Honor of Bozo's "Reasonable Gun Laws"

A repost of my version of reasonable gun laws.  I've written on this topic before and part of this will come from two posts: here and here, along with some new thoughts.

Let's start here: any adult with normal rights can walk into a sporting goods store in most places and walk out with a shotgun or a rifle with no waiting period.  But if they wanted to buy an AR-15 or a Mossberg 500 from the factory or from a store in another city, why does it have to go through a local FFL's hands? Why can't anyone order a rifle or shotgun from an online gun store, their favorite Big Outdoor Store, or even an Amazon.com kind of "online superstore", and have the gun shipped to their house?  It was sold by an FFL that did the NICS check, so why does another one have to get involved?  It used to be that way, until the GCA of '68.  What advantage is there to society from shipping it to an FFL?  It's not like the second FFL prevents someone from stealing it in transit - that's on the shipping company.  It does nothing but give money to local FFL holders. All they can do is look at the buyer's ID - which can be done digitally with encryption when the purchase is made. 

We all know there's no such thing as a "gun show" loophole, and that you can't just order something online from a gun store. I say, "why the hell not?"  It's freaking 2016, for God's sake.  We have the technology.

This is the opposite of the current drive to make every sale of every used firearm go through an FFL, like Obama is pushing for in today's EOs.  I think the whole FFL system is obsolete, a remnant of the way things worked in the 1930s, and does nothing that couldn't be achieved in other ways.  All it does is keep FFLs and Fed.gov worker drones employed - which seems to be the point.  I want our side to push back on the whole system.  If FFLs and these gun laws mattered, they'd prosecute people for violating them! 

We should push for, at the Federal level, complete concealed carry reciprocity across the country.  Those places that still deny the human right to self defense need to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the modern age. I'd prefer reciprocity for both open and concealed carry, although you know that would be a hard sell to every Evil Party senator and representative.  Heck, we have a hard enough time getting it passed in Florida with the treacherous Stupid party politicos, who are nominally on our side. 

There's also a silly hodgepodge of waiting periods for a handgun.  In some places it's 3 days, in others, 5 days.  Here in Florida it's state law to eliminate the wait if you hold a concealed carry permit.  If there's a waiting period, why can't you order a pistol from Bud's (for example) and wait 3 or 4 days for UPS to deliver it? Again, you'd fill out the background check with the FFL who's shipping it, why does it need to go to another FFL?  With today's computer security, you could verify age, do a NICS check - anything the local shop can do - online. The whole idea of a wait was a "cooling off" period, so that a hothead doesn't go buy a gun in a moment of anger and then go kill someone, but I personally have a hard time believing there were large numbers of that sort of crime anyway.  It's an extension of the ban on Saturday Night Specials, which (as far as I can tell) only had the effect of removing cheap, reasonably functional guns from people who couldn't afford better ones, and caused some smaller arms companies to either fold or change their product line.  Another government penalty on the poor.  But, fine, we'll play your infantile waiting game -- now how does waiting 3 days to pick up a gun in your city differ from waiting 3 days to get it delivered by UPS or FedEx?

Why are silencers - glorified mufflers - regulated as if they were machine guns?  Why are we required to have a muffler on a car, motorcycle or lawn mower, but we're required to not have one on a gun?  This was originally to keep people from shooting the King's deer (poaching game), but I think the problem today is Hollywood.  They created this illusion that a silencer reduces the 155 to 160 dB of a gun shot down to a barely audible, and it just isn't so.  Silencers should be completely deregulated - not even the $5 "any other weapon" class - just over the counter at your local store.  Did you know that there's nothing like an 80% lower in the construction of a silencer; no stage that's legal?  If I have a lathe (like I do) and they find pieces that someone thinks could someday become a silencer, I've broken the law.  The ban is total. 

This one actually is for the children.  And for anyone who moves next door to gun ranges or clubs and gets disturbed by the sounds. 

We should eliminate postal restrictions against mailing of firearms. We can ship them via UPS, or FedEx, why not USPS?  Don't they need every penny of revenue they can get?

Get rid of the stupid “sporting purpose” tests for firearms. The Heller decision makes it very clear that the Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting. This particularly affects imports.  No restrictions.  

Get rid of the stupid laws on short barreled rifles and shotguns.  The idea that a shotgun barrel 18.05" long is fine, but one that's 17.95" is some sort of killer monster weapon is just silly.  It's there simply to create law violators.  It's also one of their most enforced laws - probably because it's really easy to measure barrel length.

The last time I did some looking at John Lott's data, his studies had been peer reviewed 30 times and never refuted.  There was one author who said Lott couldn't prove "More Guns Equals Less Crime"; but neither could he (the reviewer) disprove it.  Lump this one under the rule for reading medical studies: correlation does not equal causation.  However, and this is important, there can't be causation without correlation.  When you look at global rates of gun ownership vs homicides, there's almost a perfect inverse relationship between the number of guns in private hands and murder rate, across the globe. 

While cross-cultural studies have their troubles, and some countries are only classed as countries in the loosest sense of the word, in most cases the countries with the most gun ownership had the least homicide.