Most "black market" guns in America are purchased legally across state lines

[Mister44]

For the pro-gun NRA crowd, this essentially proves that gun regulation doesn’t work; that’s a reason they love to talk about Chicago so much, even though most of the illegal guns there come from Indiana.

It shows crime flows like water - the path of least resistance.

There is a massive epidemic stemming from LEGAL drugs that were highly regulated. Those who wished to abuse them found a way, and if that dried up, many turned to ILLEGAL sources and some to illegal drugs.

Now they have tightened the laws so bad I feel like a fucking junkie every month, but hey, I guess I’m part of the problem.

If you live in California, and have a cousin in Nevada (or even just know a guy who knows a guy), it becomes less of a “black market” trade, and more of a favor. Hell, fireworks were illegal when I was a kid, but you could just drive to New Hampshire and buy them tax-free.

Uh, yep. Just to clarify, you can’t legally live in CA and go to NV and buy a hand gun. If you did go out there and found something you liked, you would have to have it shipped to your FFL at home and do the paper work there.

But here is a question: if your cousin or his friend Jimmy isn’t concerned about breaking the current laws selling you a gun illegally, what new law can one come up with that would prevent them from doing so again (aside from the obvious “ban them all”).

It won’t be 100 percent efficient, of course; nothing is. But if it significantly reduces gun deaths in exchange for a mild inconvenience that only affects a fraction of the population, it would arguably be worth it.

Well by a fraction, you mean about a third of the country. But anyway…
I’ve conceded that a licensing scheme would help reduce some illicit gun sales. I am not sure what other “mild inconvenience” one is suggesting.

But most people who do commit gun violence aren’t deliberately evil mustache-twirling goblin-creatures—they’re just people who have behaved outside of the order of the system, thanks to a combination of internal and external stimuli.

When I look at the more broken down crime stats of larger cities (you can google to find the annual report PDFs out there) it is clear that most homicide committers and victims are in certain areas and have a criminal record. This shows the worst of it is usually localized in one or two troubled areas, and when you look at those areas they are usually the poorest with underfunded schools, lack of public transport, less community resources, and they aren’t the areas with the sprawling shiny corporate campuses, so the economic opportunities are less.

Most of them aren’t criminals because they have access to guns, they are criminals because they feel it is the best opportunity they have. And the War on Drugs has made it very lucrative.

There are other factors of course. I have mentioned that locally I have seen programs focused on conflict resolution for young adults.

[apenzott]

I originally proposed mandating that the rifling of a handgun barrel be cut in such a way that each one was unique and would inscribe the “VIN” (as a barcode) onto each bullet that passes through the barrel.

[DukeTrout]

@Mister44

But here is a question: if your cousin or his friend Jimmy isn’t concerned about breaking the current laws selling you a gun illegally, what new law can one come up with that would prevent them from doing so again (aside from the obvious “ban them all”).

That one’s easy. Require licensing for purchase, and assign the purchased gun’s SN to the licensee. If the licensee illegally sells it to someone who doesn’t have a license or fails to register the sale (like they were a FFL, themselves), then they share culpability for any crime committed with the weapon.

@Mister44

When I look at the more broken down crime stats of larger cities (you can google to find the annual report PDFs out there) it is clear that most homicide committers and victims are in certain areas and have a criminal record. This shows the worst of it is usually localized in one or two troubled areas, and when you look at those areas they are usually the poorest with underfunded schools, lack of public transport, less community resources, and they aren’t the areas with the sprawling shiny corporate campuses, so the economic opportunities are less.

Blaming “the urbans” has been pointed out, time and again, as a racist dogwhistle. Please stop.

[anon75430791]

@anon27007144

In the report, they interview some felons convicted for owning firearms. Several of them say the way to get a gun is to steal it.

If you buy a big magnet on Amazon you can pull them out of a river. There’s youtubers that do this.

I have seen guys pull mortar rounds out of a creek in Indiana. I bought one such a magnet, and my brother who is a cop said if I ever take my nephews out Magnet fishing to call him before we go, as he is pretty sure we are going to end up with a handgun.

[redesigned]

@anon27007144

There was a study in Pennsylvania a few years ago indicating something like 60% of firearms used in crimes there originated with 1% of firearms dealers.

as someone who has studied science, my first instinct is to establish some sort of baseline in order to give that number some/any meaning. i’d ask what percent of firearms in general originate from 1% of dealers? my educated guess would be that approximately 60% of firearms originate from 1% of dealers in general and that this number is absolutely meaningless. Also, i’d figure out the margin of error and methodology. What percentage of weapons used in crimes are even recovered or identified? (not high) What percentage can even have their origins traced at all with the lack of firearm sales records in the USA? (also not high) After looking into those I probably wouldn’t even bother coming back to those original numbers as i’d realize they aren’t really meaningful.

@anon27007144

I strongly suspect we could significantly diminish the supply of firearms to criminals if we focus more on finding out how those criminals obtain those firearms.

i strongly suspect it is more of a sieve of a broken system then a few bad players, and that looking into it as everyone has been, would indicate the need for major overhauls and changes, not a few patches at weakpoints.

@KathyPartdeux

Guns don’t kill people, guns owned by people kill people.

True. Guns ARE used for their intended purpose by their owners sometimes, other times they are just used to practice those skills.

@Grey_Devil

For something that is designed to have a single purpose: To kill, you would think that something that is such a big public risk would be regulated at a federal/national level to have consistency…it might be something worth pursuing because whatever the US is already doing to curb gun violence is just not working.

agreed 100%.

@Mangochin

Here is how most illegal guns end up on the streets.

thanks.

@anon27007144

But you definitely also see individual people walking around with one or two guns to sell. I think the FFLs would be happy for individual sellers to go away. I feel like those straw buyers ought to be fairly easy to target

and the individual sellers aren’t really the problem, they are a convenient scapegoat. the problem is a massively broken system. it is crazy that we don’t track all firearm ownership in a national registry like most sane countries.

@teknocholer

Roughly half* of the traceable handguns seized by police originate from south of the world’s longest vaguely-defended border, so we can relate.

yeah, sighs. alas, it is worse than that. looking at global gun violence, the USA is no small player in the gun selling business. ~40% of all weapons of all types sold worldwide are from the USA. Last few years Saudi Arabia has been a huge buyer. It isn’t really talked about how the USA has basically been the biggest enabler of global violence in the world for over a century. We don’t want to deal with our own problem at home because then we might address our role in global conflicts and how much money we make off of both sides. The USA is not in the business of peace, alas.

[KathyPartdeux]

@Mister44

But here is a question: if your cousin or his friend Jimmy isn’t concerned about breaking the current laws selling you a gun illegally, what new law can one come up with that would prevent them from doing so again (aside from the obvious “ban them all”).

Then why are you having difficulty getting a prescription filled - the laws don’t work.

And should someone who’s on opiods all day have a gun licence at all? Judgement is impaired - you certainly couldn’t fly a plane and shouldn’t drive.

[Mangochin]

@Mister44

When I look at the more broken down crime stats of larger cities (you can google to find the annual report PDFs out there) it is clear that most homicide committers and victims are in certain areas and have a criminal record. This shows the worst of it is usually localized in one or two troubled areas, and when you look at those areas they are usually the poorest with underfunded schools, lack of public transport, less community resources, and they aren’t the areas with the sprawling shiny corporate campuses, so the economic opportunities are less.

Those areas despite rather strict gun control laws, are also being flooded with illegal guns. All thanks to the NRA’s lobbying efforts in hobbling ATF data collection ability.

[KathyPartdeux]

Also - rural areas aren’t so safe either.

In Rural America, Violent Crime Reaches Highest Level in a Decade

Violent Crime in Rural Areas Rises Above U.S. Average | The Crime Report

[Mangochin]

“But the urbans!!!”
Typical NRA spokespeople

[gracchus]

“Ilegal alien gangs” was another favourite for that scumbag organisation. Anything to distract from the Real Americans™ in the Heartland selling the weapons.

[Magdalene]

Chicago’s seemingly intractable problem with gun violence is one of America’s fondest fascinations. It’s also a myth. Chicago has more gun murders than other large cities like New York and Los Angeles, thanks mostly to its long, unsecured border with North Alabamastan (sometimes called Indiana). However, Chicago’s murder rate still lags far behind the nation’s leaders, many of which are in red states with loose gun restrictions.

America’s capital of gun violence is in deep-red Louisiana. New Orleans suffers from four times the rate of gun murders as Chicago. Such terrifying urban hellscapes as Kansas City, Memphis and Atlanta all rack up much higher rates of gun violence than Chicago. Expand the inquiry beyond crime, to include accidental gun deaths and suicide, and Chicago simply recedes from the frame. The obvious conclusion also happens to be an empirical fact: states with high levels of gun ownership have higher levels of gun death.

With its supposedly restrictive gun regulations, why should Chicago even show up on the list? Only through a determination to avoid the obvious can one struggle with this question.

A Chicagoan can walk across a street into Indiana and purchase firearms from an unlicensed seller with no tracking of that transaction. That person can then walk back across the street into Chicago and commit a crime. This is a common practice. Most of the guns used in a crime in Chicago are originally purchased in Indiana or Mississippi. And of course, Indiana’s rate of gun deaths is roughly a third higher than in Illinois.

In a strictly technical sense, most of those untracked transactions are illegal. However, our gun laws have been crafted to make enforcement virtually impossible.

Ten Lies Distort The Gun Control Debate

It is incredible to me that these communities are scapegoated over and over as in service of seperating “bad” gun owners from the “good” ones. Even if the argument were correct, wouldn’t the appropriate response to disadvantged communties suffering high gun violence be empathy and a call to action?

[anon27007144]

@redesigned

and the individual sellers aren’t really the problem, they are a convenient scapegoat. the problem is a massively broken system. it is crazy that we don’t track all firearm ownership in a national registry like most sane countries.

I get where you’re coming from, and I agree with that. But it really feels like my very liberal city is insisting that major structural changes are the only solution. I agree with the major structural changes, but a 17 year old kid was murdered earlier this week when my city had 8 people shot in 24 hours. I believe there are things we could be doing right now with the laws, information, and personnel we already have. It won’t solve the entire problem, but it would be worth it if it saves one life.

When a cop arrests a person with an illegal weapon, why not immediately ask where they got the gun? If we’re going to dismiss charges in half the illegal possession cases anyway, why not at least present it as a quid pro quo to the suspect, where we make the dismissal contingent on revealing how they got the gun? There are levers to pull here that aren’t getting pulled.

[TobinL]

@Magdalene

Chicago’s murder rate still lags far behind the nation’s leaders, many of which are in red states with loose gun restrictions.

As a person originally from St. Louis I can say yep Chicago is a safe zone.

[redesigned]

The big fixes are needed to address the systemic issues, but anything we can do on any level to address this is a positive thing. Why not both!? (instead of arguing one over the other, why not the put the priority on the more important one, while still working on the other as well.)

The big fixes require changes that the nra and gun lobby don’t want, and those changes need to be the primary focus in order to implement any real change. Anything else is a finger in the dike and an intentional distraction.

Even worse, they use these talking points as focal scapegoats to short circuit real change and whitewash the real problem. They are actually harmful to real change.

Stopping a random guy walking around the flee market isn’t stopping anything. Stripping the mental health system while pointing fingers at it doesn’t have anything to do with or help the gun problem either. Their talking points are absolute garbage points for a garbage reasons, meant to enable business as usual. Real actual change is needed on a major level.

@anon27007144

When a copy arrests a person with an illegal weapon, why not immediately ask where they got the gun?

Ummm, they do. You think cops don’t inquire where people got the illegal items on them?
Doesn’t seem to be helping as much as you might have hoped?

[DeclanMcManus]

There’s a great crime story where the rifling turns every bullet into a UPC code that can be scanned …

[moortaktheundea]

@redesigned

as someone who has studied science, my first instinct is to establish some sort of baseline i

Your instinct to establish a baseline is correct. You belief that it would come back similar to share of sales is incorrect. Chicago has actually tracked recovered firearms for about a decade and publishes reports on their findings that in some years address that question. I don’t have the reports on me, but I remember a few years ago several shops in Mississippi making their top ten source shops. The consistent finding is a few of the big box and sporting goods shops in the top ten (consistent with your hypothesis), but a few smaller shops that are yearly contenders. Chuck’s is the obvious one people point to because, despite being a small shop it tops the list almost every year, with something like 5-10% of all recovered guns, but even more notably something like a quarter of all guns that were recovered at a crime scene within a year of initial sale.

[lava]

stuff can also be zero things

[Mangochin]

If its stuff, its not nothing. Conceptually speaking.

[lava]

Go ahead and get lost in metaphors if you wish. The point is - get rid of trump, gain a legislative and executive path to effective gun control. Or piss around with it now trying to convince conscious-less republicans that they really ought to care about this.

[redesigned]

@moortaktheundea

You belief that it would come back similar to share of sales is incorrect.

Damn you for making me look this up to see that nope, it was spot on correct:

Topic: Firearms in the U.S.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, you are focusing on the wrong thing. It doesn’t even matter what percent of dealers/manufactures guns trace back too if you have a sand on a screen door situation. Even if the previous assertion wasn’t correct, it is still essentially meaningless information. The equivalent of thinking that cracking down on one street corner level dealer is going to end a drug epidemic, only useful as a place to misguide focus to maintain business as usual.

@moortaktheundea

I don’t have the reports on me…a few of the big box and sporting goods shops…but a few smaller shops.

convenience and location respectively. no magic trouble area to patch or scapegoat. that is the broken system functioning perfectly. when the next easiest or next closest place is just a hairs breath away, it really doesn’t matter. like i said finger in the dike distraction. nothing meaningful in that data other than the obviously glaring larger problems we need to focus on and fix with gun regulations.

Lots of other countries have paved the way with successful models. We don’t have to remain the outlier out of ignorance forever.