Gun Control

Sorry about that. I just have a lot of trouble with the semantics of the discussion. It should be “Violence Control” as far as I am concerned. Anyway I thought I would attempt to discuss a couple of the current proposed laws and why they won’t work in the way most of the “Gun Control” advocates think they will.

Two different approaches that are often misunderstood and interchanged with faulty information. The first is the laser etching of the bullet casing at the factory to identify the lot number, etc. of the ammunition.

The second is the etching of the firing pin to individualize the shell casing for each weapon. Two different things. The first adds expense to the cost of ammunition manufacture and provides dubious value. Knowing the identity of the ammunition manufacturer isn’t likely to be of much assistance in finding the criminal.

Let us now consider the use of identifiers on the firing pin. This will add costs to the purchase of the firearm and provide little assistance when the firing pin can be readily altered or exchanged. And, again, it identifies the gun —— not the criminal.

I have a crude analogy that sounds ridiculous but no less ridiculous than this proposed legislation. Please consider that vehicles are the cause of many deaths and often times the driver of the offending vehicle will leave the scene. So let us consider bolting a placard to the front (and the back if you want) which identifies the vehicle and the owner of the vehicle and this will imprint this information on the victim or the victim’s car.

Now let us suppose a person was planning to intentionally use the vehicle to hurt someone or damage their car. Wouldn’t the smart criminal simply remove this identifying technology from the vehicle? Or simply steal a different car and use that? Should the owner of a car be held accountable for the crimes of someone else who stole his vehicle and used it to kill someone with?

What about the laws that already require the imprinting of serial numbers on firearms. Isn’t it quite easy to simply file the serial number off? Wouldn’t it be just as easy to file the information off the firing pin?

We also require the registration of who bought what gun. None of this concerns the criminal who uses a firearm in a crime. The bottom line is the vast majority of laws only punish those who abide by the law —— people contemplating the use of a firearm in a crime are already way beyond the lawlessness of this discussion. It is illegal to assault someone with a firearm in the commission of a crime —— how can we make it any more illegal and expect this added illegality to be a deterrent?