@lasma : People should have liability for crimes committed with guns they own.
An excellent point, which I would think would appeal to the “personal responsibility” crowd.
What would be accomplished with having liability insurance for crimes committed with a gun I own. If the gun is lost or stolen, the insurance would not pay out (much like an automobile). And if I commit a crime like we are discussing here, I think liability insurance would be the furthest thing in my to do list.
Maybe you would be more careful to lock it up if you had some culpability for how it was used.
If a kid drowns in my pool because I didn’t adequately secure it, I’m liable. I should be equally liable if a kid dies because I didn’t adequately secure my gun.
If I lose my gun, or it gets stolen, then I should be required to report the loss/theft to the police, and then my liability ceases. And if I don’t, the gun should be deemed to still be mine, and I should have liability for its use.
On that subject, I remember an incident in high school were some kid brought a gun to school, his mom noticed it was missing and she called the school. It was in the middle of the day and he hadn’t done anything, so I’d guess he wasn’t planning on doing anything, but I wonder how you would all handle it? Would you all call the school and tell them your kid had a gun? Would you drive to the school to pick your kid up? Would you call your kid at school first?
Not sure where you are getting your info, but in my state private transfers do not require any background check or filing a transfer report.
I would handle it by making sure that under no circumstances could a minor child get his hands on it in the first place.
Also, if the background check takes longer than 3 days, the dealer gets to sell the gun anyway.
First, given that everyone has cellphones, I would call my kid and ask if he had the gun. I assume most parents could tell if their kid is lying if the answer is no; I know I would. It may turn out that the gun was taken by someone else or another parent unbeknownst to this parent. It would suck to be wrong and give my kid such a black eye on an assumption only.
Second, if I deduce it is a likelihood he had the gun, I would call the school and tell them to secure his locker etc. because at that point my kid has already proved he blew a gasket because of that act alone.
Third, just going pick him up still does not address the issue that he has a gun at school for reasons unknown and telling him I am going to pick him may be the impetus to set him off and use it ASAP. Again, I assume my kid blew a gasket if he even just took any of the guns out the house, so time to set all safeguards in motion.
Fourth, if he did have the gun, lots of the therapy to follow.
Another shooting at a uni in Texas. What is really bizarre is its the second shooting this week on that campus!
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-respond-shooting-near-texas-southern-university-n441826
As to the what if, I would immediately call the school and have them do what they can to keep everyone safe and have them call the police. ( I assume they would these things without me telling them. )
Why would I call my kid or pick him up from school? My first obligation would be to make sure the people in his school were safe from harm,
A 13 year old boy shot a 12 year old girl to death in Joplin, MIssouri last night.
I’m still waiting for an answer. How many deaths will be necessary before the pro-gun people acknowledge that we need to do something?
At least some of them do. Why do you keep saying the same false thing over and over.
We should do something. I think everyone on here agrees. But we should do something that makes sense. Handgun ban and buyback program doesn’t make any sense.
Neither does arming everyone.
" I’m still waiting for an answer. How many deaths will be necessary before the pro-gun people acknowledge that we need to do something?"
There will never be too many.
“What would be accomplished with having liability insurance for crimes committed with a gun I own. If the gun is lost or stolen, the insurance would not pay out (much like an automobile). And if I commit a crime like we are discussing here, I think liability insurance would be the furthest thing in my to do list.”
People weren’t necessarily talking about insurance, though with a car, if you are using it and it hits someone or damages something, you are required to have insurance, would seem logical to have insurance on a gun because if the gun is used improperly, if some idiot lends his gun to a friend who kills someone, there is consequences and those hurt can actually get some compensation. One of the reason the NRA fights requiring insurance is that it ‘hurts poor people who want guns’, and in reality if someone is poor, owns a gun, lends it to a buddy and the buddy kills someone, they face no consequences.
The consequences Cardinal Fang was talking about were legal. In many states, those with the most lax gun laws, there are little to no legal consequences if your gun is used in a crime. Guns for example are routinely traced back to legal gun purchases in states like Virginia, Georgia, Florida and Alabama when used for crimes in cities, yet those states protect the person who bought those guns…if anyone can even get to them (in some states, those purchases may be protected via confidentiality laws, though I have seen a direct reference to that), guy can shrug and say “oh, I must have lost it” or “it must have been stolen”. Likewise, if he sold in it craigslist, he has no responsiblity for reporting it. Try that with a car and see what happens, if your car is stolen or you sell it without turning in the tags, watch what happens.
When someone said the law doesn’t prevent illegal gun purchases, the answer to that is very simple, it could but doesn’t. For one thing, if we closed the private gun ownership loophole, which accounts for 40% of all sales, if they forced a background check on those purchasing privately, it would filter out a source of supply to criminals. More importantly, if private transactions had reporting responsibility, the way it does with cars, it would really put a damper on a major source of guns to criminals. Up to 70% of the guns pulled off the streets in crimes in cities and such were purchased legally at some point, do you think all those guns were stolen from the original purchasers? If we had the same laws we had for cars and property, you would see a major reduction in guns on the street, I am certain of that. Criminals would not be able to go on craiglist and buy guns, and the owner would not be able to sell them, without a background check and also there be reporting of the sale. This would stop both someone inadvertently selling a gun to a criminal (where the person simply wanted to sell it), and more importantly, will stop what is known as the route 95 gun corrridor, where self styles ‘gun dealers’ who live in one of the lax states, fill up their trunk with guns and ammo, pass the background check, and drive to the nearest big cities and sell them in the black market…and if it is traced back to them, pull a sargeant Schultze and say “I know nothing”, and get away with it.
I have nothing against people legitimately owning guns, but I also think responsibilities come with that right, that they should be responsible for what they have and face consequences if they abuse it. The only argument I get when I talk about that guns should be registered so ownership can be traced, is the idea that the second amendment somehow is unbounded (it isn’t) or that if guns are reported and registered, they will be ‘taken away’ (when? Do these clowns really think they are going to fight the government? ). It is one of life’s ironies that those who most fervently claim unlimited right to gun ownership, where basically you should be able to buy any kind you want, in any numbers, with no registration or reporting, are the same people who claim to support individual responsibility and accountability…if you want responsibility and accountability, then gun owners should be held to the same standards we do with other things, like cars or boats or houses, and have them registered/reported to make sure they don’t get into the hands of bad guys, make sure loons don’t get them, and make sure if you are irresponsible or worse, you face real consequences, which right now in many states you don’t (in NJ you do, if a gun is used in a crime and you don’t report it as stolen or lost, or if you sell it and it doesn’t go through the official process, you are going to be held liable).
As far as comparing it to servers with tips, please. Tips are supposed to be reported, but whether they are or not is not a matter of life and death and is a strawman argument at best. Not to mention that these days most people leave the tip on the credit card, and those are reported.
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Of course not. If nice neighbor sells his gun to another nice neighbor, who never uses it for anything but home protection and sport shooting…no one is going to know and no one is going to be prosecuted.
But if Joe Numbskull sells a gun privately to someone in the gun show parking lot who goes out and commits a crime, if the gun can be traced back to JN, then he can be prosecuted. It would have a chilling effect on selling guns privately to people you don’t know well, really well, like maybe you’d ask for references first and check them before handing over that semi-automatic.
awc: You say you would support tightening laws on background checks. Why can’t gun owners like yourself get that message through to the NRA and the legislators that it has cowed into submission? A background check law with more teeth — uniform in every state ---- would have made it harder for Dylan Roof to buy a gun. Why don’t responsible gun owners get behind that and push hard for it?
What do you think the therapy would do? I ask because I actually have a son on the autism spectrum. We don’t have guns, so he is not at risk for getting a gun from us and using it, but what do you expect me to have done if I did have guns in the house? I’d love to cure my kid, and I’d spend any amount of money for a cure, but there isn’t one, and therapy doesn’t do a lot. I’m in favor of therapy, but in a lot of cases it doesn’t work.
What do you expect other parents with kids with rage issues, or impulse issues, to do? Bear in mind that “kids with impulse issues” describes virtually every young boy. Boys who have gone through gun safety training will still usually pick up a gun and try to play with it, if one is available to them.
@cardinal Fang:
I am shocked that no one has brought up (in response to the Arizona university shooting, that seemed to have been the outcome of a dispute between boys) that the guy who was the hero in that French terrorist incident on the train was stabbed outside a nightclub in Sacramento after an altercation with two guys, as proof that guns aren’t so bad (meanwhile, the soldier was wounded but is going to make it, no one else was hurt, whereas the moron in Arizona killed one and wounded several others, something that would have been a lot harder with a knife). The parents of that kid in Arizona should be so proud, maybe the parents of the victims should sue the crap out of the parents, try and bankrupt them, for being that stupid. One of the things that makes guns on a different plane is that when impulses hit, like suicidal thoughts, or getting angry or in a rage, they are one of the easiest ways to inflict serious damage if not death, other forms are a lot more difficult to do.
aw,
most schools do not allow students to answer calls/texts during school hours.
From your previous posts, you’ve described your kids as well versed in gun safety, as very academically advanced, having not needed to “waste time” (or words to that effect, can’t recall specifically) studying for the SAT, and having application success at top schools. While its easy to say all the right things here, that you would assume your child had suddenly, for some unknown reason, gone from some responsible kid you thought you knew to someone who suddenly, at the very least, made an egregious, severe lapse in judgement, knowing the high probability that if your s was found to have a gun at HS (even if its explainable- an example will be provided below) in most zero tolerance districts, he’d be expelled and wreck his college chances/future, your/his name would be all over the news, etc, would you really for sure immediately call the school without even for a moment thinking about other options? Of course you wouldn’t want to face the risk/consequences if he were to use that weapon, and its easy to say the “right” thing here, but as a parent who thought they knew their kid a good kid with no history of emotional or behavioral problems, its hard to accept that you wouldn’t possibly at least momentarily ponder several options. Sure you want to provide for the safety of your s and others, but if you look honestly deep into your soul, its likely you’d consider more than one option as to what to do/how to respond. Calling him (even if he was allowed to answer his phone) would likely alarm him. You could call the school and tell them to tell him there was a family emergency, and to bring him to the office (immediately- no stopping at the locker) and that you were on your way to pick him up and would explain to him when you arrived, so please don’t alarm him. You can secure him without securing the gun, if its (hopefully, and yes we don’t know this, so this is of course conjecture) not on him, in his backpack or immediately accessible to him. Now of course if we had some smart guns that had electronics like cellphones where you could remotely render it inoperable, that would be great. But we are not there yet.
All I am suggesting is that if your kids are the model citizens you have described, and you don’t have the information as to what might explain the location of the gun (maybe he was taking it, empty/no ammo, and with the safety on, to have it engraved as a surprise gift for your birthday,his mom knew and gave him permission, but he’d planned to do it over the weekend but ran out of time and forgot that he left it in the car). But honestly, would you absolutely, for sure, with no hesitation, knowingly risk ruining his future and your reputation, especially if there is a chance the gun was moved by someone else? I know you say with absolute certainty you would, and that you have to assume the worst. But parents are human.
Has anyone here played a key role in organizing a gun buyback program?