Just because there's no database doesn't mean a gun can't be connected to an owner. Manufacturers keep records of which serial numbers go to which distributors. Those distributors keep track of which dealers get which guns. Those dealers are required by law to keep a record of who bought what guns. It's not a database query, but it is a few phone calls. And in California (where this happened), all private sales must go through the DROS system. Getting a gun not connected to you requires breaking the law these days.
NIBIN is a database of shell casing toolmarks that can potentially link shell casings found at different shootings together.
>Just because there's no database doesn't mean a gun can't be connected to an owner. Manufacturers keep records of which serial numbers go to which distributors. Those distributors keep track of which dealers get which guns. Those dealers are required by law to keep a record of who bought what guns. It's not a database query, but it is a few phone calls. And in California (where this happened), all private sales must go through the DROS system.
Not everyone lives in California, and IIRC it's even legal to buy a gun in, say, Nevada, and bring it into California if it is legal to own there.
This varies state by state, and California is notorious as one of the states with stricter gun laws. In many parts of the country, person-to-person gun sales (without a firearms license) are common and police rarely investigate them.
From that article,
"Since 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than have died in all our wars put together. In 2014: 33,599.
Who's doing all the shooting and where are they getting all those guns and how many do they have and can't we get control over this clusterfuck? Wouldn't a national gun registry give us a tool to stop some of the killing?"
Consider that ~ 2/3 of those are suicide when interpreting the numbers and impact a searchable federal registry may have.
>That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners.
I'm not a gun owner but the risk/reward of creating said digital registry is unclear to me. There was a newspaper (in NY I think) who published a list of registered gun owners names and addresses several years ago and it struck me as counter producitve.
Exactly... Do you really trust the government to safeguard such a database? If it existed, it would be hacked and the resulting data used to create target lists for burglaries. It would actually likely increase the number of guns in criminal hands.
Australia has a gun registry that is essentially ignored by the majority of its population. I read once that they believe their registration percentage when they implemented it was around 1-2%.
There are certainly unregistered guns, but only guns rights groups with a barrow to push say unregistered guns make up an order of magnitude less than what you are saying - like, 25 times less.
> It would actually likely increase the number of guns in criminal hands.
This seems like a fairly wild speculation. To pick just one possible counter argument: are you suggesting that criminals, if they could choose, would prefer to rob homes that they know beforehand are heavily armed?
criminals has a loose definition, but I think the more plausible concern is people who are barred from legally possessing a gun by existing regulation (the chance they will use it for offensive violence has been deemed above the acceptable risk threshold) will have information on private residences to burglarize for the purpose of acquiring a gun. But to your question, lots would prefer that when it's unoccupied, some either way.
I would imagine most of them have the basic level of intelligence to know that it's a good idea to target such houses when the owners are not present...
Many of the laws of California, and of certain localities in California, reflect hostility to guns and gun owners more than they reflect any concern with public safety.
For example, in San Francisco it was illegal for many years to own an airsoft gun (replica firearm that fires little 0.2g plastic pellets). This was struck down only when Arnold Schwarzenegger passed a law to the effect that replica firearms were to be regulated at the state level. It is hard to see what a ban on airsoft guns was intended to accomplish, since they are not viable as weapons at all.
More seriously, California laws concerning handgun sales prevent Californians from benefitting from safety improvements in newer firearms (as well as preventing them from benefitting from the coolness of new firearms). Only handguns on a select list are permitted to be sold in California, and Kamala Harris closed the list some years ago. Ostensibly this is because the state of California would (a) like to see newer handguns implement "micro-stamping", where the gun imprints its serial number on each shell and bullet as it is fired and (b) believes this technology to be generally available. It's not that (a) is a bad thing but (b) is completely false; there are virtually no firearms that implement micro-stamping.
Most absurdly, the ban on "assault weapons" is in practice a ban on rifles with a pistol grip, as opposed to those with a classic stock. Rifles are used in a small minority -- 5% -- of shootings, in any event. They are (a) inconvenient to transport and (b) harder to use for a robbery, where the robber would like to have one hand free to grab stuff. The ban on rifles with pistol grips is something that is more a matter of showing the flag than affecting a real positive public benefit.
Travel restrictions on firearms are also more onerous than useful. In California, we can travel with firearms to any place where we may legitimately use firearms or transship them, but woe betide us if we should stop for a coffee on the way there. Thus we may travel to and from a shooting range, but not stop for lunch at any point. Given that we are to lock our unloaded firearms up when we travel with them, it's hard to see what is gained by preventing us from stopping along the way.
I don't think SF's ban on airsoft guns reflected a hostility towards gun owners as much as a worry that they'd be mistaken for real guns and get people killed.
Was SF a jurisdiction uniquely concerned about that? It seems unlikely.
Openly carrying a replica firearm like that can be unwise. In SF, it is still unlawful. It seems like restricting brandishment and not ownership would be the minimal and reasonable legislation.
They are intended to accelerate a small projectile at high speed using combustion gases as the prime mover.
I don't want to turn this into a political flamewar, but please don't assume malicious intent as the primary motivation for a tool's existence. That's like saying lockpicks are only good for burglary, axes for dismemberment, or knives for stabbing.
> It is hard to see what a ban on airsoft guns was intended to accomplish, since they are not viable as weapons at all.
Airsoft guns are effective in robberies / when making threats, as they look pretty real. This allows people to use them like they would use a real gun.
And in California (where this happened), all private sales must go through the DROS system
... and end up in the state DOJ database, searchable by serial number or by owner. During a traffic stop, when an officer calls in your ID, they can instantly know whether you legally own hand it"assault weapons", and how many.
NIBIN is a database of shell casing toolmarks that can potentially link shell casings found at different shootings together.