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0 pointsuntog9y ago0 comments

It's a triumph of rhetoric over facts, something the UK has shown itself to also be adept at lately.

At this point I don't see how it can ever be solved. Even if the US banned gun sales tomorrow there would still be so many firearms out there. Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc.

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GVIrish9y ago· 2 in thread

> closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc.

It's not that buying a gun at a gun show magically means you don't need a background check. It's that buying a gun from a private individual rather than a dealer doesn't require a background check. Any dealer selling firearms at a gun show has to perform background checks.

I do think at the least the law can be changed so the police require background checks for all transactions at gun shows. But the bigger problem is person to person gun sales and transfers outside of the easy view of the law. How do you require a background check if someone buys a gun from a guy they know or a relative gifts a gun?

skybrian9y ago

A first step would be to make it easy for private sellers to verify that a background check has been done. It should be as easy as getting a credit report.

GVIrish9y ago

Yeah I think if you gave private sellers a way to do that, many would do it voluntarily. I just don't know how you require it. Maybe you could hold someone legally responsible if they commit a crime with a firearm you sold them if you didn't perform the check. But to do that you'd need a national registry of firearms which many vehemently oppose.

AnthonyMouse9y ago

> Best case, they can try to limit the sales of assault weapons (though there is no definition of that) and closing the insane loopholes that mean no-one needs a background check if they buy a gun at at a gun show, etc.

The problem with both of these proposals is that they're ridiculous.

Around 95% of shootings in the US are with handguns. Prohibiting some rifles based on cosmetic characteristics is not useful. (But still very irritating since they're quite popular with non-murderers.)

The "gun show loophole" has nothing to do with gun shows. Anyone in the business of selling firearms is required to do a background check. What it's referring to is that a private person can e.g. sell a rifle to a hunting buddy without a background check. Which keeps coming up because the statistics make it easy to mislead people.

A significant percentage of firearm transfers end up not requiring a background check because they're private, but it's because there are so many transfers between friends and family, not because there are so many criminals buying firearms at gun shows.

The problem is fundamentally this. Most of the people who commit the mass shootings that make the news would actually pass the background check. The people who don't pass are the drug dealers but the drug dealers get their guns the same way they get their drugs.

Canada has a lot of guns but very few homicides. Mexico has strict gun restrictions and twice the firearm-related homicides per capita as the US. The solution isn't gun laws.

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