Posted on 01/13/2003 10:19:00 AM PST by HumanaeVitae
A savvy criminal can defeat a tracing system by filing down the serial number
There are now techniques that are able to reveal a serial number even after it's been completely machined off (the stamping of the serial number causes some sort of stress on the underlying metal in the shape of the numbers. This "ghost" image can be brought ought even after physcal defacement of the serial number).
The courts won't let the police stop a person because they "believe" he might be armed. Its called reasonable cause. This dweeb points out the fatal flaw in the gun control argument. Namely that we'll impose sanctions on all law abiding citizens in order to stop the law breakers. The law abiding don't need to be stopped and the law breakers won't be stopped.
How do you know? If you put a hand grip on your rifle, or a folding stock on your semi-auto shotgun you're halfway to creating an 'illegal assault weapon'. I haven't recently checked to see what other modifications meet 'assault weapon' definition, but anyone who hasn't is at risk of possessing 'illegal assault weapons' Is your paperwork in order? What will you do if they show up to check? Will you show them your guns and let them see if they're 'illegal'? Or will you shoot them in the face?
The author is speaking from theory here, not from data. The latest Justice Department figures indicate that less than 2% of crimes are committed by guns purchased from gun shows. Maybe criminals should (in his opinion) get their guns at guns shows, but they don't. One reason is probably that a whole lot of cops hang out at gun shows too.
But this is excellent: What is the problem for which gun control is the solution?
The problem has little to do with guns directly. The problem is that a number of people who depend on government regulation to mold society in ways congenial to their politics feel that they are insufficiently able to regulate this area, or more properly, this demographic. They view gun owners as "unregulated," and hence lawless. Neither is true.
No national gun laws should ever be made, since no national gun law can be applied differently in North Dakota and Washington DC.
According to U.S. Department of Justice · Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics:
most homocides( 51.5%) and most felony murders (59.2%) are committed by blacks, which are only 12% of the population living on 3% of the land area. The murder rate for most of America, 87% of it, is comparable to most other developed countries.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
States like North Dakota, which have a homocide rate of 0.6% does not need more gun control. The state of North Dakota has a lower homocide rate than any other "country" in the world. There are vast areas of America which are realatively crime free, and no one should tamper with changing things.
Any government action to reduce homocides, should be addressed and applied to only those areas where the homocides are: like in Washington DC,
and leave the rest of the country alone.
I thought I had a handle on that last night. But I may have been dreaming.
This author is a liberal but not a real leftist. He is unknowledgeable about and a bit intimidated by firearms but he is not a true gun grabber. He is trying to apply common sense to the gun-control question from a liberal's POV and in so doing he has dug up a lot of factual information but is still laboring under some heavy delusions from anti-gun propaganda.
I wonder what he will think when he finally snaps to the real agenda of gun-control? He is blissfully unaware that it isn't really 'for the chirren'.
LIBERTY! Just ask General Gage, (former) military governor of Boston. Of course, things didn't work out quite as he had planned ....
Gun control isn't about guns, its about control. Thanks to some less than bright anti-gun politicians in NYC, MD and CA, gunowners in this country are aware that registration is a stalking horse for the true anti-gun agenda, one that is the same here as in England and Australia - confiscation.
Canada, a country with no history of violent revolution, is experiencing massive civil disobedience in its attempt to register guns. Even the normally docile Canadians are highly suspicious of their government - and rightly so. I wonder what will happen here when (not if - it will happen) some sort of a registration scheme is implemented? Massive civil disobedience will probably be the least of the problems, IMHO. And that, unlike so much of what has happened in this country for the last couple of generations, would make the Founding Fathers proud.
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