{"id":66089,"date":"2016-06-01T10:45:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T14:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66089"},"modified":"2016-06-01T10:45:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T14:45:40","slug":"nyt-gun-control-that-actually-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66089","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Gun Control That Actually Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the pages of the New York Times<\/a>, Alan Berlow writes that he has found the perfect gun control legislation – the 1934 National firearms Act. In the days of Bonnie and Clyde and Machinegun Kelly, the Federal government decided that they needed to clamp down on fully automatic weapons, short-barrelled rifles and silencers so they required that owners of those items should be registered with the Feds, that they’re photographed, fingerprinted and pay a tax. Since then, very few guns with those features have been used in crimes. Berlow extrapolates that to ownership of most other firearms.<\/p>\n

N.F.A.-classified weapons do show up at crime scenes. But nearly all of them were unregistered, so the simple act of possession was a crime. According to A.T.F. analysis, among N.F.A. weapon owners there were only 12 felony convictions between 2006 and 2014, and those crimes did not involve an N.F.A. weapon. If that conviction rate were applied to the owners of the other privately owned firearms in the United States, gun crime would virtually disappear.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s unlikely to happen, of course, because a majority of our lawmakers are so cowed by the N.R.A. that gun control advocates rarely even consider registration as part of their agenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First of all, let me remind Mr Berlow that the NRA’s interests are my interests, too. They lobby for me and the other millions of members. So, if lawmakers are cowed by the NRA, I fully support that condition. Secondly, if you were to check the guns used in crimes, guns that aren’t subjected to NFA restrictions, you’d find that those guns, used in crimes, were probably purchased in contradiction to existing laws in back alleys and vacant parking lots. That trade would probably continue if you required that legal gun owners present themselves for photographing and fingerprinting. The Bonnies and Clydes of the 1930s didn’t bother to register their fully automatic firearms. The supply of those guns has just dried up.<\/p>\n

The reason that fully automatic firearms aren’t used in crimes is because no one is selling them to criminals these days. Legal gun owners don’t generally commit crimes, because we like that we can buy firearms – it’s not that we won’t commit crimes because we’re registered with the feds. We don’t commit crimes because we’d really rather not commit crimes. My face, my fingerprints, my DNA are already in some federal database because of my military service, but that doesn’t keep me honest – I’m just not a criminal. I have never been a criminal, it’s my own conscience that keeps me honest, not the threat of being caught because of the federal registration of my guns.<\/p>\n

But, that’s the difference between me and the New York Times – they think that government keeps us all in line, we’re not capable of governing ourselves without the government watching everything we do. I wouldn’t think that the New York Times would be just as eager to photograph and fingerprints of other constitutionally-protected rights – you know like voting registration, or the freedom of the press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the pages of the New York Times, Alan Berlow writes that he has found the … NYT: Gun Control That Actually Works<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gun-grabbing-fascists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}