Guns and crime

[Pointedstick]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/41 ... -c-w-cooke

Over at the Adam Smith Institute, Kate Andrews offers up a provocative post. “Make Britain safer,”? she cries. ”?Bring back handguns.”? In proposing this course, Andrews is relying heavily on a study that purports to show that the introduction of firearms into the civilized world over the past eight hundred years has been instrumental in reducing violent crime. The bottom line:

The paper, “Firearms and the Decline of Violence in Europe: 1200-2010”?, finds that the sudden historical drops in crime are consistent with the “invention and proliferation of compact, concealable, ready-to-use firearms”? which “caused potential assailants to recalculate the probability of a successful assault and seek alternatives to violence.”? And unlike the civilizing process theory, Moody’s firearms theory remains consistent with the evidence and breaks in violence. As concealed weapons became more available historically, crime rate dropped radically.

[...]

Nevertheless, beyond noting that a country with lots of guns will have more gun crime than one with no guns at all, the manner in which the raw number of guns interacts with the murder rate is far more complex than it often seems. It is not the case, for example, that a lightly regulated and heavily armed populace is always violent. Vermont, which has a high gun ownership rate and almost no laws governing firearms, is extraordinarily peaceful.

[...]

As Kate Andrews correctly notes, “there is no explicit correlation between gun control laws and murder rates between countries.”? Switzerland and Israel, she adds, “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.”? Perhaps culture matters after all? Whatever problems one might have with Moody’s work — and however one regards his proposed explanation — one thing is undeniable: to wit, that as the world has gradually filled with firearms, the murder rate has declined.

[...]

Again: This is not to say that “more guns equals less crime.”? But it is to refute once again the nonsensical suggestion that there is a hard link between the number of a firearms in a given country and the instances of criminal abuse. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded in 2013, “the U.S. homicide rate declined by nearly half (49%), from 9.3 homicides per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011, falling to the lowest level since 1963.”? In roughly that time, it is estimated that the number of privately owned firearms in the United States has gone from 192 million (in 1994) to 310 million (in 2012), and that the laws governing their use have been loosened in almost every state. Did they increase cause the decline in crime? I honestly have no idea. But it certainly didn’t bring about an increase, either. Perhaps, ’twas ever thus.

[Benko]

PS,

I think there are certain topics, guns being one of them, which elicit perhaps a primal or deeply rooted reaction [e.g. in those who are against] that the facts on the topic don't matter.

[Pointedstick]

PS,

I think there are certain topics, guns being one of them, which elicit perhaps a primal or deeply rooted reaction [e.g. in those who are against] that the facts on the topic don't matter.

I have deep and recent personal experience with what you describe on this very subject, and can confirm that you're absolutely right.

Nevertheless, I think most people out there aren't traumatized about guns and are capable of thinking rationally about the subject.

[I Shrugged]

Since private handguns are banned in the UK, now they've had to start regulating knives.  I wonder why?

[moda0306]

PS,

I think there are certain topics, guns being one of them, which elicit perhaps a primal or deeply rooted reaction [e.g. in those who are against] that the facts on the topic don't matter.

I have deep and recent personal experience with what you describe on this very subject, and can confirm that you're absolutely right.

Nevertheless, I think most people out there aren't traumatized about guns and are capable of thinking rationally about the subject.

I agree.  However, I've noticed that conservatives are just a likely to have very vitriolic, bad arguments around gun control (as well as some aspects of whether/how guns should be used by an individual).  Whether it's focusing on the European countries PS's article mentions as evidence that gun control doesn't work (I've heard these arguments), fomenting revolution on the topic while ignoring other civil libertarian topics, not being willing to articulate where the line should be drawn on weapons that are allowed on a free  market basis (such as heavy military weaponry) without insulting the comparison as preposterous, making claims about the uselessness of extended clips (to a mass-murderer) while simultaneously stressing their usefulness (when defending ourselves from a tyrannical government).

There's lots of bad arguments out there by lots of different people.  In fact, for most political topics, it's the exception, not the rule, to have really firmly laid-out arguments on public policy.  The whole "look at those peaceful Euro countries" was obviously BS to me back when I was in 6th grade when my dad and his conservative friend were BOTH trying to use it to prove that wide-spread gun ownership either contributed to or reduced gun crime.

I'd consider plenty of right-wingers "traumatized about guns," but in a very different way from liberals.

[Pointedstick]

[...]
There's lots of bad arguments out there by lots of different people.
[...]

Which I don't think the article makes. Do you?

[moda0306]

I only reviewed your quotes, but it seemed that the article was concluding this...

But it is to refute once again the nonsensical suggestion that there is a hard link between the number of a firearms in a given country and the instances of criminal abuse.

That claim is nonsensical, IMO (the claim that there is a hard link between the number of firearms in a country and criminal abuse).  I've thought so since I was a teenager. However, it's not very useful to simply point out nonsensical arguments of one side or the other.  It doesn't get us anywhere, as both sides of most issues quite often will have a bunch of ridiculous arguments flying around their circles.

It actually seems like a pretty reasonable article.  But it doesn't really help me conclude anything other than, "some liberals have bad arguments around gun control."  It didn't help me form much new knowledge on the topic.

[Pointedstick]

It actually seems like a pretty reasonable article.  But it doesn't really help me conclude anything other than, "some liberals have bad arguments around gun control."  It didn't help me form much new knowledge on the topic.

This issue is interesting because, IMHO, unlike most issues, there are really no good arguments to be made on the anti-gun side. They are all nonsensical, self-contradictory, offensive, racist, based in ignorance or fear unsupported by the data, unsupported by history, you name it. If you take them all away, they have nothing, so all you really can do is chip away at the bad arguments.

[moda0306]

PS,

Using that premise, and accepting the premise that every weapon has a slightly-more-deadly option that one could choose, are you stating that any weapon of any kind (including mini-guns, grenades, bombs, nukes, tanks, warships... all the way to nuclear bombs) should be freely traded on the open market?

If there is absolutely NO reasonable argument for gun control, that implies that the entire premise of there being a balance between security and liberty when it comes to any weaponry at all is fatally flawed (at least, that's the way I interpret such a statement).

If that's not how I should interpret, where and how should the line of general "weapon control" be drawn?  How do you pick that line?  Upon what basis do you limit people's freedoms to own any sort of weapon that they deem appropriate?

[Pointedstick]

PS,

Using that premise, and accepting the premise that every weapon has a slightly-more-deadly option that one could choose, are you stating that any weapon of any kind (including mini-guns, grenades, bombs, nukes, tanks, warships... all the way to nuclear bombs) should be freely traded on the open market?

If there is absolutely NO reasonable argument for gun control, that implies that the entire premise of there being a balance between security and liberty when it comes to any weaponry at all is fatally flawed (at least, that's the way I interpret such a statement).

Correct, because the very idea of such a trade-off implies a universal causative relationship between private weapons ownership and violence. If that relationship does not exist--as a bazillion sources confirm--or even that the causation is negative (i.e. that private weapons ownership may actually even reduce violence), then the referenced trade-off does not exist and no compromise needs to be made.

For most of civilizational history--including well into the 20th century in most first world countries--widespread private ownership of every conceivable weapon ever invented was common. During the time the second amendment was written, there was private ownership of warships and artillery, for example.

But I'm not sure how we got to warships and nuclear weapons because we're talking about guns, not  naval vessels or explosives.

[MachineGhost]

This issue is interesting because, IMHO, unlike most issues, there are really no good arguments to be made on the anti-gun side. They are all nonsensical, self-contradictory, offensive, racist, based in ignorance or fear unsupported by the data, unsupported by history, you name it. If you take them all away, they have nothing, so all you really can do is chip away at the bad arguments.

I think you mean there are really no good solutions, because there's plenty of good arguments.  They just don't work in reality.  Surely, you wouldn't deny that society would be a lot more peaceful without weapons to do damage to each other.

[Pointedstick]

This issue is interesting because, IMHO, unlike most issues, there are really no good arguments to be made on the anti-gun side. They are all nonsensical, self-contradictory, offensive, racist, based in ignorance or fear unsupported by the data, unsupported by history, you name it. If you take them all away, they have nothing, so all you really can do is chip away at the bad arguments.

I think you mean there are really no good solutions, because there's plenty of good arguments.  They just don't work in reality.  Surely, you wouldn't deny that society would be a lot more peaceful without weapons to do damage to each other.

I do deny that. People don't need weapons to do damage to one another. Without weapons, violence is simply monopolized by the physically powerful--the young males, who can physically dominate women, the elderly, and middle-aged males. They become the de facto rulers or the brute squads of the rulers. That's no peaceful society.

For more on this subject, see https://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/ ... ilization/

Pertinent sections:

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society.

[...]

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

[moda0306]

This issue is interesting because, IMHO, unlike most issues, there are really no good arguments to be made on the anti-gun side. They are all nonsensical, self-contradictory, offensive, racist, based in ignorance or fear unsupported by the data, unsupported by history, you name it. If you take them all away, they have nothing, so all you really can do is chip away at the bad arguments.

I think you mean there are really no good solutions, because there's plenty of good arguments.  They just don't work in reality.  Surely, you wouldn't deny that society would be a lot more peaceful without weapons to do damage to each other.

A policy prescription argument that "doesn't work in reality" is, on its face, a "bad argument," IMO.  We need to flesh out every policy prescription argument for how it will actually work before we assess its quality.

[moda0306]

PS,

Using that premise, and accepting the premise that every weapon has a slightly-more-deadly option that one could choose, are you stating that any weapon of any kind (including mini-guns, grenades, bombs, nukes, tanks, warships... all the way to nuclear bombs) should be freely traded on the open market?

If there is absolutely NO reasonable argument for gun control, that implies that the entire premise of there being a balance between security and liberty when it comes to any weaponry at all is fatally flawed (at least, that's the way I interpret such a statement).

Correct, because the very idea of such a trade-off implies a universal causative relationship between private weapons ownership and violence. If that relationship does not exist--as a bazillion sources confirm--or even that the causation is negative (i.e. that private weapons ownership may actually even reduce violence), then the referenced trade-off does not exist and no compromise needs to be made.

For most of civilizational history--including well into the 20th century in most first world countries--widespread private ownership of every conceivable weapon ever invented was common. During the time the second amendment was written, there was private ownership of warships and artillery, for example.

But I'm not sure how we got to warships and nuclear weapons because we're talking about guns, not  naval vessels or explosives.

To the first bolded item, there was some absolutely deviating weaponry during WWI that there was absolutely not very widespread ownership of.  I don't know if that counts as "well-into" the 21st century.

And I'm talking about ALL weapons because it fits into the context of the discussion. You're saying that there is absolutely NO "balance" on the topic of guns between security and freedom.  Well guns are a weapon... and it's their ability to EASILY kill people (the very purpose of a weapon) that leaves them as potentially undesirable in the first place.  But guns are only ONE kind of weapon.  Nukes and other bombs are another kind of weapon.

Unless one advocates for absolutely NO economic/regulatory control on any weapon of any kind, there must be some level of balance one wishes to strike on weapons in general.  For some people, that line doesn't cross guns at all.  For others, it crosses fully-automatic guns.

I really am not a gun-control nut.  Actually, after contemplating more and more the role of government, I am much more concerned about systemic risks to the country rather than focusing on gun crime.  I just want to understand in full the arguments involved and weed out the bad ones, or the ones that don't allow for any principle besides freedom or security as their objective.

But I really don't think the bad ones are getting weeded out.  You've got rednecks talking about the revolution-justifying sanctity of the 2nd amendment and "rights" that they don't apply consistently, and you've got loony liberals building ridiculous regulatory frameworks.

Personally, I don't find the fact that there is a line that is somewhere short of explosive weapons to be ridiculous.  Mostly on instinct (as I find most of the "research" on this stuff one-sided). 

[Pointedstick]

I won't get pulled into an argument about the private ownership of nuclear weapons and battleships. Gun control is about guns. If you'll agree that all personally wieldable projectile weapons should be legal, then I'll agree to broaden the discussion to explosives, military vehicles, and warships--and narrow it to knives, clubs, and the like.. I still have yet to encounter an argument against the individual ownership of such personal weapons that was not based on ignorance of the law, history, the mechanics of firearms, etc. If you don't have one available, then I'll assume you're with me that all guns should be legal.

[Pointedstick]

After Sandy Hook, I got into a big argument with a friend of mine about whether teachers should be allowed to carry guns.  He said that a shootout in the classroom would endanger the children.  At that point, I figured out I needed to find some new friends. 

I agree with Pointedstick, I haven't heard a good argument against legal gun ownership.  And I THINK I am open to such an argument, if one exists.  I just have never heard one.

Absolutely. I have been hearing arguments against guns for decades. I grew up hearing them and believing them. But they are all terrible. If anyone out there can fetch a halfway decent argument against the legality personal firearms ownership that is not insulting to one's intelligence or sexuality (because there sure are a lot of those...), I want to hear it! Please! I'm begging anyone, present me with a decent argument against legal gun ownership! It gets so boring hearing nothing but the same awful arguments over and over again by people who are grossly ignorant and will never change their position because they are emotionally unstable or ideologically blinded, or both.

[moda0306]

After Sandy Hook, I got into a big argument with a friend of mine about whether teachers should be allowed to carry guns.  He said that a shootout in the classroom would endanger the children.  At that point, I figured out I needed to find some new friends. 

I agree with Pointedstick, I haven't heard a good argument against legal gun ownership.  And I THINK I am open to such an argument, if one exists.  I just have never heard one. 

To the bolded point above, are you saying that you see NO good arguments against the following?

- Full legalization of fully automatic guns, and guns of all types and sizes (assuming, for a sec, we're leaving out the conversation of explosives).
- ANYBODY, regardless of criminal history or mental illness, has a right to purchase, own and carry a gun in all public places, with no background checks of any sort.

I'm not trying to put judgment on these opinions.  I'm just trying to get an idea of what line in the sand we're actually having a debate on.

Discussing generally the "legality of personal firearms" is making me wonder whether we're on the same page of what you actually want to hear argued.

[WiseOne]

I've been trying to stay away from these types of debates, because the don't usually contain considered arguments.  The two sides believe staunchly in their respective opinions, and each will cite whatever facts they can find in support.

The referenced article is a good example.  I took a look at it out of curiousity, and found it to be mind-blowingly naive.  It seems the authors have forgotten about a few other things that might affect overall crime rates...like the Renaissance.  Comparing society from 800 years ago to now and pointing to one tiny difference (the presence of gun control) and ignoring the MASSIVE differences in social/political structure, religion, culture, immigration, poverty, life expectancy, etc...I don't even know where to start.  There's also the issue of crime reporting...I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that the recording rate for homicides has not exactly remained constant over the past 800 years.

If you are looking for an article about the effects of gun control on homicides, here's one that considered the issue more carefully:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3185622

Perhaps not surprisingly, it came to the opposite conclusion.

[Pointedstick]

To the bolded point above, are you saying that you see NO good arguments against the following?

- Full legalization of fully automatic guns, and guns of all types and sizes (assuming, for a sec, we're leaving out the conversation of explosives).

Correct. I have never seen a GOOD argument against this. Lots of bad ones based on ignorance of the actual utility of full auto or misconceptions stemming from excessive exposure to movies and video games.

- ANYBODY, regardless of criminal history or mental illness, has a right to purchase, own and carry a gun in all public places, with no background checks of any sort.

Correct. However, here we get into a slightly more sophisticated frame of mind; such laws sound great on paper, but in practice have been revealed to basically have no effect in their lenient form, and in their stricter forms, they necessarily infringe on the rights of normal people.



Frankly, the best argument I can think of for a certain amount of gun control is to improve the mental health of traumatized extremist liberals who regard guns as evil talismans and cannot even bear to look at them.

[moda0306]

To the bolded point above, are you saying that you see NO good arguments against the following?

- Full legalization of fully automatic guns, and guns of all types and sizes (assuming, for a sec, we're leaving out the conversation of explosives).

Correct. I have never seen a GOOD argument against this. Lots of bad ones based on ignorance of the actual utility of full auto or misconceptions stemming from excessive exposure to movies and video games.

- ANYBODY, regardless of criminal history or mental illness, has a right to purchase, own and carry a gun in all public places, with no background checks of any sort.

Correct. However, here we get into a slightly more sophisticated frame of mind; such laws sound great on paper, but in practice have been revealed to basically have no effect in their lenient form, and in their stricter forms, they necessarily infringe on the rights of normal people.



Frankly, the best argument I can think of for a certain amount of gun control is to improve the mental health of traumatized extremist liberals who regard guns as evil talismans and cannot even bear to look at them.

To your bolded point, they might "necessarily infringe on the rights of normal people," but would they work to make it any more difficult for criminals/crazies to get guns, or would they increase the cost of guns on the black market to crazies and criminals?

Because we can always come back to "rights"... but for now I think it would be useful to have a utilitarian conversation on crime & mass shootings.

[moda0306]

Another question... hypothetically...if the U.S.A. would have outlawed the production of new guns in, say, 1970, but made NO changes to personal gun laws.

According to one source, we had about 185 million guns in the U.S. in 1994.  If we take that back to 1970 perhaps there were 100 million guns at most.

Just a guess.

A couple questions:

1) What would that do to the gun price market today?  Do you think that would have an affect on the willingness/ability of criminals to get/afford guns.

2) Would that affect the crime rate?



I'd think you could make the argument that if we focus ONLY on crime/mass-murders, and with the knowledge that police forces and responsible people usually have more resources to buy guns than criminals/crazies living on the fringes, that it WOULD result in lower crime in 2015.

I'm not arguing that we should have done that, but it says something about the economics of the scenarios we're talking about.

[Pointedstick]

To your bolded point, they might "necessarily infringe on the rights of normal people," but would they work to make it any more difficult for criminals/crazies to get guns, or would they increase the cost of guns on the black market to crazies and criminals?

No slash only marginally. There are 310 million guns in this country. That's an absurd amount. It's too late to close the barn doors on this.

Furthermore, focusing only on criminal uses of guns is a mistake. We need to look at defensive uses of guns, too. The most conservative estimate I've seen came estimated about 55,000 a year IIRC.  The FBI estimated 100,000. The average number throughout many studies was about 1 million a year IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

If you want to talk about utilitarianism, that's a minimum of 55,000 people (and possibly a whole lot more) who were saved from assault, robbery, rape, or murder through their use of personally-owned firearms. Making it harder for these people--people like you and me--to buy guns, or own guns, or carry guns, or train with guns, or buy ammo for guns, makes that number fall and results in more victimization.



To WiseOne's point… you're right: dueling studies never convince anyone. I think about it this way:

I'm a pretty fit 27 year-old.  But I only weigh 130 pounds and I have no physical fighting skills. Anyone serious who wants to hurt me or the people who depend on me for protection can do it, and they can do it with their bare hands, with a knife, with a baseball bat, or with a gun. I won't kid myself and try to imagine that I could use my bare hands or improvised weapons to seriously fight off someone who actually wanted to inflict violence on my or my family.

But with a gun in my hands, everything changes. I can resist attack with a gun. I'm not dead meat. And the overwhelming capacity for violence that my gun represents can actually stop an attack before it starts. A dude who's about to attack me sees my gun and thinks to himself, "if he shoots me, I'm dead. I'm gonna run away instead!" And just like that, I can repel the attack without even needing to actually use violence--I just threaten it and demonstrate my capacity to inflict it if I need to.

If this hypothetical scary felonious assaulter has a gun too, then we're more or less on equal footing--which is a hell of a lot better for me than the alternatives of neither of us having guns or only him having a gun.

[moda0306]

Desert,

It sounds like you're saying there is a balance, and either extreme is not ideal.

I agree.

It doesn't sound like you're saying what PS is saying, that there are NO good arguments for any gun laws.  I really don't know what the right balance is, though I think it's to the left of full, unfettered gun legalization.

[moda0306]

To your bolded point, they might "necessarily infringe on the rights of normal people," but would they work to make it any more difficult for criminals/crazies to get guns, or would they increase the cost of guns on the black market to crazies and criminals?

No slash only marginally. There are 310 million guns in this country. That's an absurd amount. It's too late to close the barn doors on this.

Furthermore, focusing only on criminal uses of guns is a mistake. We need to look at defensive uses of guns, too. The most conservative estimate I've seen came estimated about 55,000 a year IIRC.  The FBI estimated 100,000. The average number throughout many studies was about 1 million a year IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

If you want to talk about utilitarianism, that's a minimum of 55,000 people (and possibly a whole lot more) who were saved from assault, robbery, rape, or murder through their use of personally-owned firearms. Making it harder for these people--people like you and me--to buy guns, or own guns, or carry guns, or train with guns, or buy ammo for guns, makes that number fall and results in more victimization.



To WiseOne's point… you're right: dueling studies never convince anyone. I think about it this way:

I'm a pretty fit 27 year-old.  But I only weigh 130 pounds and I have no physical fighting skills. Anyone serious who wants to hurt me or the people who depend on me for protection can do it, and they can do it with their bare hands, with a knife, with a baseball bat, or with a gun. I won't kid myself and try to imagine that I could use my bare hands or improvised weapons to seriously fight off someone who actually wanted to inflict violence on my or my family.

But with a gun in my hands, everything changes. I can resist attack with a gun. I'm not dead meat. And the overwhelming capacity for violence that my gun represents can actually stop an attack before it starts. A dude who's about to attack me sees my gun and thinks to himself, "if he shoots me, I'm dead. I'm gonna run away instead!" And just like that, I can repel the attack without even needing to actually use violence--I just threaten it and demonstrate my capacity to inflict it if I need to.

If this hypothetical scary felonious assaulter has a gun too, then we're more or less on equal footing--which is a hell of a lot better for me than the alternatives of neither of us having guns or only him having a gun.

PS,

"Gun free zones" and that kind of garbage we are going to agree on.

However, I don't think asking a gun owner to verify that the person they're selling their gun to is licensed really inhibits that first person's ability to defend themselves... and if you solidify the "black market" that criminals have to play in, you decrease their motivation of owning/using a gun, while simultaneously do not make it ANY more difficult for a responsible gun owner to carry guns.

[Pointedstick]

PS,

"Gun free zones" and that kind of garbage we are going to agree on.

However, I don't think asking a gun owner to verify that the person they're selling their gun to is licensed really inhibits that first person's ability to defend themselves... and if you solidify the "black market" that criminals have to play in, you decrease their motivation of owning/using a gun, while simultaneously do not make it ANY more difficult for a responsible gun owner to carry guns.

The devil is in the details. We are in utilitarianism mode here. A background check requirement with the burden on the seller has the effect of making many sellers into unwitting criminals. When I lived in California, I saw this happen all the time. People sold or gave guns to their friends, unaware that there was this requirement even 20 years after the law was passed. They'd get arrested and their lives would be ruined. I am not willing to say that this is a danger I consider it appropriate to foist on normal people.

Colorado and Washington just passed variants of "all transfers require a background check" and are running into endless problems. What's a transfer? How long can a loan last? What counts as a sale? Who can do a background check? How accessible is the system? How about people who live 100 miles from a gun store? Where's the enforceability? How are un-background-checked transfers actually prevented?

You have to define all these things and inevitably, someone ends up getting caught up in a bullshit mistake and getting their life ruined. And as a general principle, I take the position that no honest person should ever be in danger of having their life ruined for a malum prohibitum crime, which is exactly what "transferring a firearm without a background check" amounts to.

It's also unenforceable. Back when I was living in California, if I wanted to give or sell a gun to a friend and we both kept out mouths shut about it, how was the government supposed to prevent that simply by making the act illegal? Simply banning a private (in all senses of the word) act doesn't make it go away...


If you want me to tell you some very interesting things, I will give you my honest and brutally utilitarian assessment of what a legal and effective firearms regime in a government-controlled society would look like, but it wouldn't involve any of this useless "universal background check" bullshit. It's just feel-good nonsense. Like building an anti-flood berm on only two sides.