It's Time for That Cliche' Again - Reasonable Gun Laws

Here we are two months into the administration of Jo and the Ho and - whaddya know? - they suddenly have justifications for those gun control moves they talked about for the entire year of the Evil Party primaries.  It's a miracle of miracles!  Suddenly, after many quiet months, we have a group murder of "sex workers" at a "massage parlor" and a group murder in a food store by either a sufferer of Sudden Jihad Syndrome or simply the common Muslim hatred of Jews.  

Since no one on the left seems to be capable of an original thought, it's time for them to trot out the old trope of "reasonable gun laws."  And since I've written about that term and my views of it at least a dozen times, I'll take my privilege of having the pilot's seat and reprint some of the things I've written since 2010. 

Are you as sick as I am of hearing the phrase "reasonable gun laws?"  It's not just in the last few days, it's always there to some degree.  I'm sick of explaining there is no such thing as a gun show loophole; there are no laws that don't apply at gun shows or to internet sales.  I'm tired of explaining that we already have background checks on all new guns, we don't do them on private sales because it's an individual selling their own property and the Federal Government doesn't seem to get involved in private sales of private property.  States do; if I sell a car, boat or whatever, I have to do a bill of sales and the buyer pays sales tax.  I know of no place where the Fed.gov does that.  I'm really sick of the "why does anyone need (fill in the blank)??" nonsense that we hear from an alarming number of people who are nominally on our side.  The ones called Fudds.  Why does anyone need 42 guns?  Why does anyone need 30 round magazines?  I want to ask why does anyone need 42 books? That's also a constitutionally protected right.  Why does anyone need a TV in every room, or a muscle car or you name it.  BFYTW!  It's None of Your F**king Business.

What would constitute real "reasonable gun laws?"  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, (like I've done) why does it have to go through a local FFL's hands?  Why can't anyone order a rifle or shotgun from a gun store in another city, 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 can do the NICS check, so why does another FFL have to get involved?  It used to be that way, until the Gun Control Act 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 the freaking 21st Century, for God's sake.  We have the technology.

In consumer goods, your local camera shop, say, really does have to compete with the big guys in New York. Gun shops don't have that. I can see how local gun shops might really like these laws. They get an easy 35 bucks (or whatever) for filling out the forms and "receiving" the shipment, but I don't see any value added to us or society.  There was certainly no value added to me.

If there's a mandatory 3 or 5 day waiting period for a handgun where you live (Florida waives that for Concealed Carry licensees), why can't you order handguns online?  What's the difference between waiting 3 or 5 days for UPS to deliver it and waiting 3 or 5 days to pick it up at your gun store?  Again, with today's computer security, you could verify age, do a NICS check - anything the local shop can do - online.  I think the waiting periods are all bullsh*t anyway, just another way for government to yank our chains and make it harder than it ought to be.  I've never seen any data that waiting periods have ever done anything except inconvenience legal purchasers.  But, fine, we'll play your infantile waiting game. 

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 never seen data that those waiting periods do anything.  I know they started with the GCA of '68 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.

What possible arguments are there against this?  That we can't guarantee security, we can't guarantee that criminals won't order guns online?  Nobody can guarantee security.  Criminals don't have any problems getting guns now while staying out of the system entirely.  If we use strong security, it's as good as what we have.  One time I posted something like this and a commenter said,  "what if your kids used your ID?"  I wouldn't want my kids buying anything under my ID on my computer.  If you can't control your own kids in your own house, I think that's a bigger problem than just what they're buying.  Maybe you should be making sure they don't know the combination to your safe and don't know where to find matches. 

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.

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 lack of correlation, almost perfect inverse relationship between the number of guns in private hands and murder rate, across the globe.  More guns can NOT equal more murders. 

This is fairly old - the closest I can tell is that it dates from early 2013.