Guns: Some questions/thoughts from a view that is not rabid

thank you for a very thoughtful post. 


a couple responses to specific parts of posts previous to mine:

1)  Only Walmarts that ARE licensed gun dealers sell guns and ammunition; I found that out very easily with one question to Google.  I don't understand the issue with having guns available at a Walmart versus any other store that sells guns, such as Cabelas or Bass Pro Shops, or a shop that only sells guns. 

(One more bit of information from that same Google search (from this article):  "Walmart's own background check policies have surpassed federal requirements since 2002, when the company decided it would no longer sell guns to customers without a completed approval from NICS.  The company refuses to sell a gun without a concrete all-clear from the federal system." 

Knowing the above makes me further mystified at the Walmart comment.

1a)  only pawn shops that are federally registered firearms dealers can accept a gun or sell one.  this article, from Google search #2.  State gun laws may require the dealer conduct a background check before returning the gun to its owner if pawned; there may be other local agreements between law enforcement and pawn shops.  If a pawn shop is a licensed gun dealer, they are held to the same requirements as any other licensed dealer for sales and purchases.  So, again, I am mystified at the issue some people have with the 'where' of gun sales and purchases.


2)  "If I go buy more than one ton of fertilizer and I am not a farmer you might wonder if my fertilizer poses a threat to public safety (and OKC might have been avoided). If I go buy a gun that shoots hundreds of rounds per minute you SHOULD wonder if it poses a threat to public safety."

^^^ to me, the above comment actually proves MsKnit 's point about people's attitudes about guns vs. the person wielding the weapon being the cause. 

Why 'should' someone wonder about the purchase of a gun SOLELY based on its rate of fire any more than they 'should' or 'should not' wonder about someone buying fertilizer or any other chemical??  You have no idea what the purpose was behind purchasing that gun, only that it was purchased.   The fact that you've made this connection leads me to believe that you think guns with that rate of fire are only purchased with evil intentions.  Or, conversely, why 'shouldn't' someone wonder why in the world someone who is not a farmer is purchasing a ton of fertilizer??  Past history shows what that material could be used to commit a crime JUST as much as the gun could be used for a crime. 

In any case, without additional information, in both cases those purchasers ARE 'innocent until proven guilty' of a crime-- are they not??  Otherwise, it seems more and more like the 'future crime' society from the movie Minority Report, where people were arrested and locked up just for thinking something, whether it would ever have been acted upon or not.

and 3)  Like MsKnit , I would also like to know when or why the shift came about from blaming the criminal for a crime to blaming their weapon.  And, why does it only seem to happen with guns?? 

(And PLEASE, no one give me the standard response about 'a gun's sole purpose is to kill' because that's not what I mean by asking this question; I'm pretty sure that's not why she asked the question, either.)

4)  I am NOT in favor of eroding more and more of our personal freedoms 'for the common good.'  I believe they've already done too much of that with the Patriot Act, which only causes the illusion of safety at an airport when Grandma is asked to take off her shoes and 8-yr olds can get put onto the No Fly List by accident (??) and can't get taken off of it again... because you don't get a chance to KNOW you're on it, or WHY you're on it, and aren't told the process by which you can get OFF of it.  There's a good chance that someone here is on that list, and you'd never know it till you tried to fly.  You'd never be told WHY you're on it (it's a secret) or what to do to rectify it.  Is that really the society in which we want to live??  I don't.

4a)  "one law just passed in CA is that family members can report mentally unstable people to the police and those persons are not allowed to buy a gun for a year (or something like that). also, I also see no reason for lack of background checks for every purchase and putting money towards making the lists more robust..ie people with current serious mental illness being put on no buy list."

^^^ without knowing the details, doesn't this mean that Aunt Marge can report you to the police if she's PO'ed at you??  What are the safeguards of a process like this; who can do the reporting, and what makes them qualified??  And like MsKnit, what 'mental illness' is serious 'enough' to put you on that list, and what isn't??  I take an anti-depressant-- my depression is well-controlled.  Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to purchase a gun??  Why??  What makes someone with any already-diagnosed mental illness more 'dangerous' than your average Joe who might go off the deep end and go postal at some point??  Depression IS classified as a mental illness, IIRC.  (perhaps I shouldn't have written that out, at that...)  Again, this sounds like 'future crime' and the possibility that someone MIGHT commit a crime, rather than probable cause.