[RD] Florida School Shooting

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Your point? Gun sales at gun shows are still subject to the same laws and regulations that gun sales from a conventional store are subject to. The seller still has to have an FFL and the buyer still needs to get an "instant" background check from the FBI (which can take several days despite being called "instant"). This whole "you can purchase a gun at a gun show, no questions asked" thing is just a baseless myth perpetuated by the gun control crowd.

Please: if you are going to argue for gun control, fine. All I ask is that you at least know what you are talking about before perpetuating falsehoods and misconceptions that just make you look foolish.

Looks like Federal laws gun show loophole exisit, but nine states have universal background checks that close this loophole and a few other states have a mismash of laws.

Gun show loophole

sales of firearms by private sellers, including those done at gun shows, dubbed the "secondary market".[1] The term refers to the concept that a loophole in federal law exists, under which "any person may sell a firearm to an unlicensed resident of the state where they reside, as long as they do not know or have reasonable cause to believe the person is prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms".[2][3][4] Under federal law, private-party sellers are not required to perform background checks on buyers, whether at a gun show or other venue. They also are not required to record the sale, or ask for identification

As of November 2016, 19 states and Washington D.C. have background check requirements beyond federal law. Nine states require universal background checks at the point of sale for all transfers, including purchases from unlicensed sellers. Maryland and Pennsylvania laws in this regard are limited to handguns. Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey require any firearm purchaser to obtain a permit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole
 
Not renewing the 1994 assault weapons ban was a failure of epic proportion. I guess congress was too distracted with the ACA at the time.

As a point of information, the 1994 assault weapons ban expired in 2004. ACA was passed into law 2010.

Multiple efforts to renew the AWB after 2004 (including during the Obama Administration) failed.
 
I heard a ring of smugglers in Colorado were busted by the Feds so I know they're trying to stem the flow. We dont see many machine guns being smuggled about so that ban has been successful, true?

Amazing Feds managed to steem the flow of dangerous drugs thats been killing Americans by the tens of thousands, Problem SOLVED !
Iam sure they will have great success tackling gun running and straw buying as well.
 
Drugs and guns aren't at all comparable, and the effort to keep drugs from entering the US is minimal and mostly for show. The real action in the war on drugs is against street dealers. If you can't put another generation of black men in prison there really isn't any point to it.
 
Looks like Federal laws gun show loophole exisit

That only applies for sales that are considered "time to time" sales, meaning the seller is not specifically in the business of gun sales, but is just selling to get rid of unwanted property. For example: Someone dies, and whoever is in charge of their estate decides to sell their gun collection. They are allowed to rent a table at a gun show and sell off the collection without having to conduct background checks on the buyers or obtaining an FFL to legally sell the firearms.

Those types of sellers are pretty rare at gun shows though (mostly due to the cost of renting space at a gun show), and even sites like Armslist (pretty much Craigslist for guns) have very few private sellers and are mostly populated with FFL dealers just looking to expand their market beyond their local area.

If the seller is "in the business" of selling guns though, they must obtain an FFL to be able to sell and they must conduct an FBI background check on each and every buyer before selling to them, even at a gun show.

Personally, I don't see a problem with that. Using the car example that was brought up earlier by Marla, this means guns are treated more or less exactly like cars. There are all kinds of legal hoops your local Ford dealer has to jump through to sell a car to someone that Joe Blow down the block doesn't have to go through to sell their old car to their neighbor.

But okay yes, you got me. Technically the "gun show loophole" exists, but it's hardly the massive issue gun control advocates make it out to be. The overwhelming majority of firearms sales in the US are conducted by FFL dealers who are conducting FBI background checks on their buyers.

EDIT: I also must comment that technically, the federal government has no right to regulate gun shows since they take place entirely within the boundaries of the state in which a particular gun show is being held. That means the federal government's interstate commerce powers don't apply to them and only state laws should be applicable.

However, allowing the federal government this little overstep of authority is okay with me since I do support the idea of background checks for firearm purchases.
 
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Amazing Feds managed to steem the flow of dangerous drugs thats been killing Americans by the tens of thousands, Problem SOLVED !
Iam sure they will have great success tackling gun running and straw buying as well.

we were talking about pot crossing state lines?

they tackled machine guns successfully, spare me the constant sarcasm.
 
I find it very interesting that when we had a society with huge numbers of veterans and lots of households with guns we had a more democratic outcome, and now, with household ownership of guns reaching new lows, and the number of trained killers among masses reaching also new lows, we have an untouchable ruling elite unchallenged by the electoral process.

This doesn't track. You single out Reconstruction from Birdjaguar's post but the reality is that lasted a short ten years or so and was followed by a vicious reaction that makes what's been happening since the 1970s look downright democratic by comparison. The amount of guns in society certainly doesn't track with democratic moves in the political system. The amount of trained soldiers, otoh, might actually be more relevant, though the actual proportions of men who went through the armed services compared to the whole population is fairly small.

I would argue that the main driver of the democratic expansion in the postwar period was actually the pressures of the war forcing the ruling classes to bring in people who had historically been excluded from the mainstream of society. I just don't think guns are really driving these processes.
 
But okay yes, you got me. Technically the "gun show loophole" exists, but it's hardly the massive issue gun control advocates make it out to be. The overwhelming majority of firearms sales in the US are conducted by FFL dealers who are conducting FBI background checks on their buyers.
I guess the interesting question would be what proportion of guns that kill people are bought through the "gun show loophole"? One may expect that those who would fail a background check would be more likely to patronise the secondary market than a responsible user, so there may be some enrichment.

From wiki, it does not seem to me that the majority is that overwhelming:

The January 1999 report said that more than 4,000 gun shows are held in the U.S. annually.[39]:1 Also, between 50 and 75 percent of gun show vendors hold a Federal Firearms License

So that means that 25% - 50% of gun show vendors did NOT have a FFL.
 
The overwhelming majority of firearms sales in the US are conducted by FFL dealers who are conducting FBI background checks on their buyers.

I'm going to challenge this, just using simple mathematics.

If an individual gun is resold then the number of sales for that gun equals two, and they are evenly split between dealer sale and non-dealer sales. Every resale beyond that shifts towards a non-dealer majority. The only guns that hold a dealer sale majority are guns that have a single owner forever. For your "overwhelming majority" to hold true there would have to be enough single owner guns to counter ll other guns...and guns outlive their owners so in the long run single owner guns don't really exist.

That aside, if you go back and examine what the "notorious" fast and furious operation was really about you will find that in states with high availability gun regulations there is a cottage industry of buying guns for resale. When you purchase a gun from a dealer you sign a form that the gun is "for your own use." If you sell the gun a week, a day, or an hour later you haven't committed a prosecutable crime. The fact that you sold the gun cannot legally be used to challenge your testimony as to your state of mind when you purchased the gun. People change their minds all the time, and you didn't sign anything saying that you wouldn't.

Every licensed gun dealer can show you records of "wishy-washy" buyers who buy guns every weekend; frequently the same kinds of guns. College students, gardeners, housewives; people from all walks of life who walk in off the street with big blocks of cash and buy assortments of weapons 'for their own use' and then come back later and buy a bunch more after having 'changed their minds' and sold the last bunch.

In order to prosecute these people you have to demonstrate a pattern of behavior that indicates they are knowingly employed by a shadow purchaser. That's a monster hill to climb. Which is why such people can be found at every gun show. A significant fraction of firearms sold at gun shows are resold before they clear the parking lot.
 
The easiest solution to the gun problem is to allow all the guns we do now, but require every gun be registered to an owner. Then by law make every owner responsible for any crime or accident committed with one of their guns. You loan a gun to a friend and he kills someone, you both are equally responsible. Your kid takes one of your guns and shoots up a school, you are held equally responsible. This would make every gun owner legally responsible for any act involving their guns. If a gun is stolen, you better report it to the police and get your name off as current owner. If you have stupid, crazy kids, you better keep those guns locked up. If you give a gun to someone, you better legally transfer ownership. As a gun owner you become legally responsible for your guns. Guns without owners get destroyed. It won't solve all the problems, but it will send a wake up call to gun owners that they need to do a better job of controlling the guns they own. It would be a great state referendum to get it started or even a federal law. Negligence with your firearms becomes seriously criminal.

I would like to say we can give this some teeth by implementing some simple mandatory safety features, and also requiring unique identifiers of the individual parts of the gun so that they can be traced to the original owner even if it is taken apart and sold part by part.

The only reason that we have not implemented something like this is that it would increase the costs to gun manufacturers as well as discouraging some people from buying guns. Just like the car companies whined to no end about the advent of mandatory safety features and stuff in cars. They lost that fight because they have nowhere near the propaganda apparatus and reach of the gun industry. Gun marketing has been incredibly effective at identifying guns with freedom/self-reliance and in tying any regulation of guns that would reduce gun industry revenues or increase its costs to creeping tyranny.
 
Someone I know is currently dealing with a "threat of violence" against the school their brother is in. North Carolina seems to be handling it well, but it does highlight just how much authorities dropped the ball with the Florida shooting.
 
Someone I know is currently dealing with a "threat of violence" against the school their brother is in. North Carolina seems to be handling it well, but it does highlight just how much authorities dropped the ball with the Florida shooting.

Dropped the ball? Maybe. The question is, just how many threats do you think the authorities are confronted with on any given day? How much manpower, per threat, is available to assess the credibility of each one?

I submit that there has probably not been a single mass shooting, ever, that a diligent review wouldn't come up with 'yeah, the signs were there.' But is it possible to make that diligent review every time, ahead of time? Doubtful.
 
Dropped the ball? Maybe. The question is, just how many threats do you think the authorities are confronted with on any given day? How much manpower, per threat, is available to assess the credibility of each one?

I submit that there has probably not been a single mass shooting, ever, that a diligent review wouldn't come up with 'yeah, the signs were there.' But is it possible to make that diligent review every time, ahead of time? Doubtful.

That's true, although it's my understanding that the FBI was provided direct evidence of this guy going postal. Has that changed? I admit that I haven't been keeping up with the specifics as much as I could. Most of my info is coming second-hand from teachers or students I know from down in the US.
 
The 'direct evidence' in question was, IIRC, a Youtube comment. The right-wing media has been portraying this as the "FBI dropping the ball", in order to pretend that the problem isn't the guns, but I have no idea to what extent this is true. I would consider evidence that the FBI's own procedures in such cases were not followed to be evidence of 'dropping the ball' but I've seen no actual explanation of this, just headlines and "trending" topics.
 
The 'direct evidence' in question was, IIRC, a Youtube comment. The right-wing media has been portraying this as the "FBI dropping the ball", in order to pretend that the problem isn't the guns, but I have no idea to what extent this is true. I would consider evidence that the FBI's own procedures in such cases were not followed to be evidence of 'dropping the ball' but I've seen no actual explanation of this, just headlines and "trending" topics.

Ahhh, so it's just conjecture. Gotcha. I rescind my judgement of the authorities then. No point in laying blame in something that may not have actually erred.
 
That's true, although it's my understanding that the FBI was provided direct evidence of this guy going postal. Has that changed? I admit that I haven't been keeping up with the specifics as much as I could. Most of my info is coming second-hand from teachers or students I know from down in the US.

They were provided with "this guy posted online that he wants to be a school shooter." Again, how many people have weird and potentially "dangerous" crap posted on line? Heck, there are probably people on this site that would consider reporting me, among others. You can't skim through comments on Breitbart for a full minute without seeing at least one death threat...how many of those get reported?
 
Didn't I just see where someone that threatened Trump online is taking therapy.

God, if that's all it takes, 3/4 of the country should be in therapy. :D
 
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