Posted on 05/23/2008 11:34:39 AM PDT by neverdem
The state's largest gun control group, CeaseFirePA, is getting a $350,000 grant to strengthen its advocacy efforts statewide.
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation is granting the organization the money over two years to aid its bid to build a statewide, grass-roots response to gun violence, CeaseFirePA's executive director Joe Grace said...
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
IIRC, the Joyce Foundation funded Bill AYres.
"A notable recent member of the Joyce Foundation's Board of Directors was Barack Obama, who ran successfully as the Democratic candidate for an Illinois Senate seat in 2004."
Why would legal gun owners be opposed to a bill requiring the reporting of a stolen gun within 72 hours after the gun was stolen? If ant of my guns were to be stolen I’d be reporting that asap.
"In 1999 Ayers joined the Woods Fund of Chicago, where he served as a director alongside Barack Obama until the latter left the Woods board in December 2002. Ayers went on to become Woods' Chairman of the Board."
source: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org
Make unknowing burglary victims into criminals. The GOP will take all the help it can get.
Me too. Kinda makes you wonder why they need a law like that. You don't have laws requiring reporting a stolen TV within 72 hours. Or a cow. Or a hundred dollar bill. Maybe they are trying to say that guns are to be treated differently. Then again, maybe it's that camel's nose under the tent/slippery slope thing.
What if I’m on vacation for a week and a gun is stolen out of my house on the first day of the vacation, used in a crime the next day, and I’m not back to even discover that it’s even missing until the week is over? According to this bill, I broke the law for being robbed while on vacation. It’s just another way for lawmakers to hold law abiding citizens accountable for the actions of criminals.
Because those laws make the original owner liable for damages caused by the thief if he uses the gun in a crime. They also can entrap you with language that includes the words “should have known”, which means that if the gun were stored out of sight, (as it should be in today’s world), and you didn’t KNOW that it was stolen until months later when the cops show up, you are still liable, (I guess on the theory that every time you came home you should have checked to see if your gun was still there.
It’s never as simple as these neo-communist lawyers present it to the public.
I do wonder how much money the Joyce Foundation gets from Soros. By looking at “Discover the Network”, you do find that there really IS a vast LEFT wing conspiracy.
A $350,000 grant from Gun Control Central to promote a “grass roots” response?
I do not think that term means what they think it means.
That assumes you know within 72 hours.
That also assumes the circumstance does not involve other issues that take priority.
Why is this requirement so important that you’d punish the victim for not reporting it within 3 days? What is the gov’t going to do that is so timely and effective that delay on the victim’s part must be reprimanded?
First off, that’s a crap law. Secondly, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, where is this “grant” coming from? The GOVERNMENT??????? THAT’s BIGGER crap.
From this article I understood that the reporting would be required within 72 hours of the owner finding out that their firearm was stolen. You can’t report something until you know about it.
What if you don't know you were robbed for any of a variety of reasons? What if the requirements of being "legal gun owners" are un-Constitutional in the first place, e.g. registration and licensing?
Well, just to be clear, I’m not opposed to the need of gun owners to report to police if their firearm(s) have been stolen. I would definately be opposed to any law which would then make the legal owner of the firearm(s) liable for any crime committed with that stolen firearm. I would also be opposed to making legal firearm owners liable for failure to report if they were unaware that their firearm(s) had been stolen. Any/all laws should make sense, and laws which criminalize otherwise law abiding citizens do not make sense.
Please read my post #15
Because if for any reason you didn’t report the gun lost or stolen in the time that some prosecutor thought you should, you would be charged as an accessory for any crimes committed with the gun up to, and including, 1st degree homicide.
In addition to criminal penalties, it could form the basis for civil suits against you even if you reported the gun lost or stolen within 72 hours of when YOU thought it was lost or stolen.
I would oppose any bill/law that would criminalize law abiding citizens in this way.
It seems that, whenever the Joyce Foundation comes up, George Soros also is involved. If you follow the tentacles to the source, you’ll find the head of the octopus.
So when they come to confiscate your guns you won’t be able to say “they were stolen” to explain why you can’t turn them over. That’s the reason for this proposed law. It’s surely not so the cops can return your stolen weapon to you when its recovered. They keep it as “evidence” until it mysteriously disappears. I know people this has happened to.
Suppose you didn't know they had been stolen. It "does" happen, y'know. And, of course, this is just an attempt to pass anti-gun legislation---ANY anti-gun legislation, not a legitimate safety issue.
Precisely what good is reporting the theft going to accomplish as far as "keeping guns out of the hands of criminals"---they're already IN "the hands of the criminal".
I agree. Next time there’s a hurrican Katrina incident, the cops won’t be turned away just by saying “I forgot to report it stolen.”
Then we’re on the same page. ;)
OK, say I’m down at Myrtle Beach for a week. The first night I’m gone some little creep breaks into my house and steals one, or more of my guns (not likely to happen since they are all locked in a safe if I am gone) then goes out and kills someone with it that night. I don’t find out about it until a week later when I return to find the back door broken in. Why am I being held responsible for not reporting the theft within 72hrs?
“They keep it as “evidence” until it mysteriously disappears. “
The speed with which a police recovered weapon ‘mysteriously disappears from the evidence vault is directly related to the square of the value of the weapon. The $50 Saturday nite spl.” stays until the Twelth of Never, while early Colts in mint condition are lost immediately.
I know when I was in the Marine Corps, the armorers were inventorying their weapons everyday. I don’t inventory my firearms everyday. In fact, there are weeks where I don’t look at them. With this law, you would have to be doing a daily inventory on your guns. What about people who have cabins up in the woods somewhere. Are they supposed to go to their cabins on a daily basis and inventory their firearms there?
As someone else pointed out here, this is just another way of attempting to criminalize law abiding citizens. Even if they know your gun is stolen what are they going to do with that information anyways? Do you think that they will be able to stop a crime from being committed now that they know your gun is stolen? Hardly. The only use it has is for your homeowners insurance purposes.
Actually everyone, this is a good thing. This is 350,000 they are wasting. Pennsylvania has the second highest per capita gun ownership next to Texas. The gun ninnys have been trying to pass gun control ever since big Ed Rendell has gotten into office. None of it has gone anywhere and it never will in this state. Go ahead, spend all the money you want here. It might boost our economy and you’re not going to get what you want anyways.
1) To make it harder for criminals to obtain guns by stealing the gun from law abiding citizens? or...
2) Because they believe it is safer when the citizens are unarmed?
Between you and me... studies and books have proven over and over again when the citizens are allowed to carry CW permits or allowed to keep them in the home... the crime rate goes down. Dramatically.
Also, if these gun nuts don't think we are capable of keeping guns because it might be used against us... keep this in mind... you can kill anyone with anything found in the house. Bats, knives, candle holders among others.
Why not ban everything and require that everyone must live in padded homes?
“Why would legal gun owners be opposed to a bill requiring the reporting of a stolen gun within 72 hours after the gun was stolen? If ant of my guns were to be stolen I’d be reporting that asap.”
Its a back-end play. Its a 3 piece set combined with (1) registration and (2)confiscation
When they finally get their way with confiscation, and guns are required to be “turned in”, they’ll have 2 threats against owners.
Either 1) A charge for possession of a once legal firearm, or 2) A charge for not reporting it lost or stolen when the owner replies that it was lost/stolen.
I don't check on my guns once every 72 hours, do you?
The reason they say they need this law is because people will say that guns were stolen when police trace guns used in crimes to people. It allows some people to get around telling the police who they might have given or sold the gun to, or gives the police a reason to arrest a person they think might have committed the crime with the gun, but is saying that it was stolen.
The problems is that their story can change from the gun was stolen, "I didn't even know it was missing, it must have been stolen".
Either the law is useless, or it punishes people for the crimes of others if they really didn't know the gun was stolen.
The law isn't going to significantly help law enforcement prevent crimes. Instead it becomes yet another possible trap that law abiding gun owners can get caught in, and makes more people nervous about legally owning a gun.
Our government should have to show a law will be reasonably effective if passed before signing it into law.
Our gun control laws simply aren't effective. All they do is create burdens on law abiding gun owners.
Of course most of these gun control groups know this, they are trying to reduce gun ownership little by little with the hope of eventually banning gun ownership. Therefore they continue to lobby for more and more useless laws, while arguing that they are reasonable.
As you said it doesn't sound unreasonable to have to report your gun stolen, and the burden placed on gun owners seems reasonably small when considering each proposed law individually.
The bill was a “straw man” put up by Philly lib gun-grabbers trying to make owning a firearm so onerous that all of us in the Commonwealth would give them up. If passed (it didn’t), it would have made anyone who had had a firearm stolen and then either not known about it, or delayed in reporting it stolen, an instant felon.
If I stole your snow shovel in July......when would you know it was missing? Why should a VICTIM of a crime be liable, hmmm?
Because a victim should not go to jail for not reporting a crime perpetrated against them. Must there be a law for everything?
“Why would legal gun owners be opposed to a bill requiring the reporting of a stolen gun within 72 hours after the gun was stolen? If ant of my guns were to be stolen I’d be reporting that asap.”
Why? Because this is yet another example of Congress attacking law abiding gun owners and infringing on the Constitutional right to bear arms.
Is there a law requiring the theft of a knife to be reported? Why not?
20,000 gun laws aren’t enough eh. perhaps we can make murder illegal and all the crime will stop.
As Soldier Dad said in a previous post, see his comments at message # 15.
‘I would also be opposed to making legal firearm owners liable for failure to report if they were unaware that their firearm(s) had been stolen. Any/all laws should make sense, and laws which criminalize otherwise law abiding citizens do not make sense.”
Do they have to prove they were unaware? If so then its unconstitutional, if not then its a worthless law.
Oh yes, and that criminal who had his gun stolen will report it ASAP. Geesh,
just another way to make honest law-biding people into the criminals because they can go after them and not the real criminal.
I just renewed my husband’s NRA and I’m also joining this time. I hope all you owners out there will do the same.
We got to fight every minute of the day for every bread crumb of decency and fairness.
I’d report mine also. There is a stolen gun database. However, if you didn’t you would be a criminal. You can’t trust these clowns.
The purpose of the law, IMHO, is to insure that the government can control who legally obtains guns. To do this they must insure that only those they allow to have guns can legally obtain them. If they make more and more guns illegal, require registration of guns, and gradually remove guns from society, as they did in England, they win.
This makes sure that when they come to confiscate your gun(s), you cannot say “they were stolen some time ago” because to do so would be admitting of a crime, and you could go to jail.
It is clearly just another step on the slippery slope to gun confiscation.
The idea that you can reduce crime by limiting who can legally obtain guns, rather than limiting who can possess guns, is a stupid and failed idea.
The enemy
What if you were on a week-long vacation, one or more of your firearms was stolen, and you had no idea about it?
It’s a stupid idea that would incriminate too many people.
I just typed that to him, hours after you did.
Guess I should get into the habit of reading the whole thread first.
It’s a Vast Left-wing Communist Conspiracy.
So when they send their goons to confiscate your guns, you can't just lie and say they were "lost" or "stolen." You can't just say, "Sorry Comrade Gestapo man, I must have misplaced my gun the last time I moved or perhaps someone stole it." They will throw you in prison for not reporting that your gun was stolen. Whatever you do, you have incriminated yourself. Those totalitarian idealogues think of everything.
Any law, regardless of the intention of that law, should never be written with such vague language. I would be opposed to this or any other law with such language.
As previously stated, I would be opposed to any law which involves vague language or would criminalize law abiding citizens.
I can't speak for others, but I would never leave my firearms in an unattended cabin - not even if I had a safe to lock them up in. But, then, that is just me. As for this law, I would be against any law that is written with vague ambiguous language or that criminalized law abiding citizens.
I completely agree to this statement.
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