Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevsh
A piece of paper means nothing, but if you implement gun control it depends on how far the law goes. If, for example, the law goes to the wall and says that no one can purchase a gun, then there are no more gun stores, and no legal place to buy guns.
So yes, the black market goes nuts and illegal guns will get on the streets. But less so than if you can just walk into the local Joe's Rifle Shop and buy a small arsenal.
The second part is the misconception that only criminals actually use guns. What about Columbine and countless other times when so-called regular, law-abiding citizens kill? They did not go to some gun dealer, most often it was in the home or they bought the gun on their own with no malicious intent.
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1. Just because you get rid of gun stores doesn't mean you get rid of guns. As you pointed out a black market, which already exists for criminals, will grow for the rest of us. You can't walk into any story and purchase illicit drugs, but any 14 year old can get all they want quite easily.
2. Joe's Rifle Shop does background checks and licenses the firearms with the purchaser's identity and address so the authorities not only know where the gun is, but can also prevent a potentially dangerous or mentally ill person from buying one. Admittedly it's not perfect and people do slip through on occasion, but it's a control. Black market guns don't have an address registered to them.
3. The guy that typically buys at Joe's isn't going out and committing crimes. There's a waiting period for handgun purchases and in some states for all firearms. So not only are you giving anyone with an issue a cool-off period, but the gun they get at Joe's is completely traceable.
The Colombine and Va Tech massacres happened because the system failed. Those guns were not purchased legally in one case and in the other the kid was known to suffer from mental illness and should have been flagged to prevent him from buying. Not sure if the fault rested with the state for not keeping proper records or the store from selling to him. I can't remember.
The point is that for every failure the system has we go apeshit, what we don't acknowledge is how many times it actually works, which we can't accurately know.