A Primer on Federal Gun Laws

[acroyear]

Built on Facts : A primer on federal gun law:

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of people aren't very familiar with what gun laws actually are in the US. Here I'm going to take you on a tour of what's legal and what isn't in the US. I'll try to do so in a mostly neutral way, but for full disclosure I'd generally want to change the law in two directions - fewer restrictions on use, greater penalties for misuse. When my personal opinion creeps in, I'm going to try to set it apart from the main text. The point of this guide is to focus on is rather than ought, and to serve as a handy reference for when I write about the topic in the future.

Comments

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Important information. Most people who push for bans and restrictions don't know the first thing about guns or gun laws. For example, they think that the assault weapon ban involves machine guns.

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

...fewer restrictions on use, greater penalties for misuse

Great. So violators can spend a few more years in jail after everyone's dead.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

But the article makes the case that the types of folks who violate usage laws are not the same people legally getting guns, and that the various bans and restrictions passed over the years has had no effect on the crime rate. Is this not true? Because if the article is correct, there are no appreciable downsides to easing restrictions on gun ownership. And, if restrictions on ownership do not deter those who obtain guns for criminal intent, the only meaningful course of action left is deterrence: harsh penalties for misusing them.

The only other solution is to round up all guns everywhere in the U.S. and to make them unavailable anymore. Thing is, the odds of that happening in this country are less than getting a month of snowfall in August.

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

What he leaves out speaks volumes (but this is not surprising since at the start of the post, he brags about how many guns he owns).

The reason why most gun laws are enacted at the state level is, as always, because of the NRA, which is a single-issue lobby whose membership spans both parties, and thus the issue is not a Democratic or a Republican one. The NRA has ensured that effective gun laws are never enacted at the federal level. Thus, all tracking of how effective gun laws are is on an apples-to-oranges basis, which can always be disputed. And it's far easier with a lot of money to effect laws at the state level, where state legislatures are far more easily manipulated by lobbying.

...and that the various bans and restrictions passed over the years has had no effect on the crime rate. Is this not true?

This is not true. The main point behind the Brady law was to create a waiting period for firearms purchases to drive down the incentive for crimes of passion, as well as to allow time for federal officials to complete a full and complete background check, which would encompass mental health records (which are rarely computerized), as well as other firearms records (which, due to NRA lobbying, are far behind the times when it comes to computerization due to the 1986 law).

One gun a month laws verifiably decreased illegal gun trafficking, especially along the "Iron Pipeline," the I-95 corridor between northern states with more stringent gun laws and southern states with more lax guns laws.

The fact is, when it appears an effective gun law might pass (which is EXACTLY the case with Brady), the NRA switches its position and signs onto the bill — and then weakens it from within, which is why a sunset provision was added to the waiting period to Brady, despite the fact that the computerization of federal records was nowhere near complete by that time. At that point, the NRA can then claim that "gun laws don't work," since they have already gutted the law from the inside.

And because the NRA has ensured that federal firearms licensees only recieve inspections once a year (announced IN ADVANCE), it makes it far tougher to check on gun stores that care little about straw purchasers, which is where the PREDOMINANT amount of illegal guns come from. Also, the NRA (also in the 1986 law) hamstrung the ATF by pushing through a rule that BY LAW the agency must spend 1/4 of their time and resources investigating violations of explosives use—even though the number of violations of those laws is dwarved by an order of magnitude the violations of gun laws.

So there's a whole lot this gent isn't telling you when it comes to the effectiveness of gun laws. But then again, that's not really surprising, is it?

[klytus.livejournal.com]

No, not surprising in the least. You are quite correct about what goes *unsaid* speaks volumes. Then again, when one lacks comprehensive knowledge of the subject (as will most people reading this article, myself included), what is omitted isn't obvious, which makes the arguments seem stronger... which, I'm sure, is the whole point.

Still, I knew you'd know more about it - which is why I asked :)