if we assume that one side is complete prohibition and the other side is zero regulation, having a little regulation is fairly "moderate" in that it's fairly well in the middle of those two extremes. That's all I mean by moderate.
ahh, gotcha gotcha
Yeah, I would agree.
The issue gun owners have with that, is it always starts with "reasonable, common sense" and then goes very quickly by degrees into "yeah, owning this kind of rifle across that state line gets you a decade in prison".
These people need to spend more time in places like California and New York, then, where moving to such a system as I casually propose here would be a substantial and meaningful decrease in regulations.
I mean, as someone who grew up in rural Pennsylvania and is currently typing to you from the East Village in Manhattan, and knows there are many, many spheres of human knowledge in which I'm not an expert, I feel absolutely no shame in saying right now I'm pretty damn well acquainted with firearms law and history, and the reality is that firearms laws in New York State and New York City are simply the result of many, many incremental laws which turned a whole state incredibly hostile (legally, if not culturally in Upstate NY) to firearms and firearms owners, in a way that becomes absurdist, especially given the proximity of Pennsylvania.
I grew up right on the border of PA and NY - - as I mentioned, I walked sometimes from Bradford County, PA to Chemung County NY to go to highschool - - - it's night and day in terms of the extent of second amendment protection.
And it's very much not obvious to people on either side of that line why it has to be that way.
Ideally, the concept is to prevent the minority of incapable persons from owning firearms, without having to deal with the majority. The issue is that in most places (particularly the urban coasts), it is a minority of people who own firearms to begin with
That's not true.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx
For what it's worth, I've gotten some of those calls, and simply said I don't own firearms (which is true for when I'm in NY/NYC).
It is very not true back 'home'.
Depending on how you qualify it, the portion of the population who owns firearms is on are on a similar oder of magnitude to those who are incapable of safely owning firearms.
There are by various surveys and estimates, about 90-100 million individual gun owners in the United States; about 1/3 of all people (varies hugely by State), and about 50% of all households in the nation.
To say that the number of Americans who are or ought be prohibited from owning firearms is anywhere close to that for reasons of, say, mental instability, is a bit much for me to accept without learning some very, very startling facts about how many people need to be detained by the police and put into protective custody in a mental health facility pronto.
Unfortunately, since we don't have anything like complete healthcare coverage, let alone complete and uniform psychological coverage, we can't easily blacklist people for psychological risk factors. If we had universal healthcare with unified records and standardized evaluation frequencies and practices, we would have some hope of automatically picking up on psychologically unstable people who should not be allowed to own firearms.
By whose standards?
By whose say-so?
What about purchasing alcohol or kitchen knives?
Or living near schools?
Or being able to travel on airplanes?
At what point is the registration, screening, surveillance, categorization and indefinite record keeping and monitoring of the private lives of all Americans by powerful Federal bodies acting "in their stead, in their best interests" no longer acceptable to the American public?
Given the state of affairs over the NSA and TSA, I'm hesistant to think it's far foward from where we are at present.
So our best effective alternative is to implement a fairly transparent whitelist, aka a simple and straightforward licensing process.
You seem like a smart person, so I'm bolding this in case you don't have time to read much else, and so it's eye-catching. Please, please look up the firearms laws in Vermont, particularly the laws regarding the concealed carry of a loaded handgun in public
I'm simply not convinced we have such need for laws, and that the problems of violence in the US which happen to involve firearms have firearms as a cause or the removal of routes of legal access to firearms as a solution.
I think there are two big factors at play: criminality (specifically tied to poverty and the drug war), and mental instability (whose actual impact on the stats is, and perhaps this sounds callous, negligible)
As I said, I would generally reserve concealed carry, automatic and automatic-convertible, and extremely high caliber rifle ownership to the second tier, which following with the increased potential for harm I would place slightly greater restrictions on.
Why is there an increased potential for harm?
There patently isn't any empirical evidence for increased harm.
Concealed carriers have some of the lowest rates of all criminal offense (as you might expect, given that they know they are hugely, hugely legally and pragmatically liable in a way other people are not for things like traffic stops and social disruption of other kinds)
Automatic weapons?
There is not a single case of a legally owned machinegun in the United States being used to commit a crime from 1934 when the NFA was enacted, to 1986 when civilian legal machineguns were banned from new manufacture.
Since then, there have been all of two - - - and one circumstance was literally a police officer killing an informant. The other was a physician who murdered another doctor over an affair. Neither had prior criminal records, both legally owned their weapons, no background check would've tipped us off to anything.
And there are still tens of thousands of machineguns in circulation in the US population, all of which see lots and lots of trade and use (and have to, because they're a restricted/fun commodity)
High calibers?
"extremely" high calibers?
What's an extremely high caliber? Why is it high? What constitutes a "normal", plain and 'acceptable' caliber?
There would be no restrictions beyond a second level of training to cover the legal specifics of concealed carry and handling of other firearms, and confirmation from a licensed healthcare provider that the individual is psychologically capable of safely owning and operating potentially more harmful firearms.
Do they have to pay for this?
Do they have to find a physician who agrees with the second amendment? With concealed carry?
Do they have to find one in their State? Do they have to take off work to go to an appointment?
Does this get covered by insurance? Or do they pay out of pocket?
Is it part of the minimum insurance coverage all insurers have to provide because it's interacting with a Constitutionally protected right?
Particularly, I'm interested in reducing accidental firearms injury and death from children accessing parents' firearms
How about cleaning supplies, and unguarded pools and power-tools? or plastic baggies getting left in cribs and people driving without the right kind of car seats?
Those kill many, many more children every single year.
Perhaps a better restriction would be in muzzle-feet/minute (muzzle velocity x rate of fire)
But it wouldn't be; the second amendment, as the Supreme Court has pointed out, specifically protects the right of individual Americans to own firearms in common use for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self defense.
Semi automatic handguns, for instance, cannot be banned because they are an entire class of weapons overwhelmingly owned by Americans for lawful self defense in the home.
Box magazine fed rifles which fire rifle caliber rounds?
Given that ar-15s alone among 'military style' 'assault weapons' have been sold with 20/30 round magazines, firing NATO caliber/pressure bullets since the 1960s by the millions to generations of Americans, dominating the domestic market, are just one type of those kinds of firearms commonly owned by Americans for traditionally lawful purposes, I don't really see where 'good' or even Constitutionally adequate restrictions could be motivated by attempting to restrict the martial efficacy of prolifically owned firearms.
I just don't.