It might not be your motivation for owning firearms, and it might not be something you see in your peers, but there’s evidence that @CongenitalOptimist has a point about the general gun-owning public. It’s fear-mongering that sells guns, plain and simple. Every time there’s a disaster, every time the NRA (falsely) claims that some elected official is going to take them away, firearm sales surge. And it’s not hunting weapons or target weapons, it’s always the most anti-personnel weapons available.
That might be the law as it’s written, but the loopholes are big enough to drive your boat through. The perception might be that the “bad guys” get their guns illegally, but most of the time they get them legally either through oversight, private sales, or straw man sales. It would be easy to close those loopholes, but every time someone tries to legislate it, the NRA’s personal politicians and judges block it.
Legally, maybe but practically unrealistic. Telling a person they cant’ privately sell something they legally aquired to someone else has about as much chance of success as telling someone what substances they can and can not consume.
You can make damn sure they know they are responsible for selling it to someone who can’t pass a background check. You can also reasonably make is so that the firearms can only be sold to a licensed dealer who is required to run such a background check.
ETA: And to bring this back towards the original topic, it’s no surprise that it’s the most fanatic gun nuts who are the ones doing these “protests” against mild inconvenience and weighing it as more important than people’s lives. That’s the story of the NRA and pro-gun lobby in the USA. Any mild inconvenience in acquiring firearms is considered to be tyranny, even if it represents a huge step forward in protecting people.
Point being, if you’re going to bother talking about antifa, you might want to actually know something about the subject. Most of the folks in antifa are the “reasonable and responsible” people you claim are being given a bad name.
By law. If we’re going to go with #1, require all private sales of firearms to require proof of passed background check by the buyer, with the burden of confirmation on the seller, and the penalty for failure to do so on the seller is a direct misdemeanor and accessory charges for any crimes committed by said firearm after the sale. Harsh, but it will need teeth to get people to change behavior.
As such, it might be preferable to go with #2, private sales only going through federally-licensed firearm dealers. That way, it’s a whole lot easier to accomplish and enforce. Anyone who makes a private sale outside of that can be dealt with like the illegal arms dealer they are.
Of course there will be objections, but as mentioned upthread, such objections are tantamount to “Wah! I need a haircut and I’m willing to risk other people’s live for my own convenience.”
Do tell. What I’ve seen them do is defend their communities from armed assholes from outside the community who like to beat up kids and old people for shits and giggles.
I find it tremendously oxymoronic that they enter a government facility armed to the teeth, an incredibly dangerous move but exersize trigger safety while doing it!
Wait a minute. I understand this was meant as a threat to the Governor, but waving an “Arbeit macht frei” sign when you are protesting having workplaces shut down is… wow.
Spoiler alert: Arbeit didn’t actually mach frei for most people at Auschwitz, except in the sense that death is a kind of freedom.
Yes, hence expressing anger it took a major bombing for the threat to be taken seriously. (And then, like a dog chasing cars, the FBI shifted the bulk of it’s resources to focusing on Muslim Americans after 9/11)
Americans are the most fearful and frighted society I’ve ever been involved with. Before you tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, most of my family are born and raised in the US and still live there.
See: ‘Donald J. Trump’.
Fear permeates everything that the US does as a nation - well, fear and greed.
IMHO, the FBI & DoJ under Obama fucked-up when they refused to put a collective foot up Cliven Bundy’s ass. Bundy was and remains a Federal & state income tax evader. A man who wantonly disregarded OR & Federal land use laws for his own selfish needs in disregard of the needs, and rights, of his (rancher) neighbors.
I firmly believe that had the Feds smashed Bundy’s racist, anti-government tempertantrum we’d have a much reduced problem with racist, xenophobic, anti-American shitheals today.
