----- Original Message ----- From: "Guy Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 9:53 AM Subject: [inbox] RE: School research project on firearms regulation
> Curing the disease prevents the patient from returning to the doctor (which > I cynically suspect is the foundation of psychiatry as practiced today). > > Enforcement has no political power. People tend to ignore politicians who > actually make things better (peace, prosperity, civil order - that drives > nobody to the polls on election day). But conflict does, and so politicians > may well ignore the effectiveness of enforcement while chasing the next > divisive issue. This is the actual problem, not the cynical suggestion in your previous paragraph. A lot of what drives politician interest in gun control laws is the perceptiont that "we're doing something." This makes it a campaign issue. The nuts and bolts of actual enforcement is a more complex problem, both because politicians don't have much to do with this, and because law enforcement agencies in a place like Los Angeles or Oakland, however much they may believe in pursuing these unlawful transfers, have rather more pressing crimes to solve, like murder. Where I live here in Idaho, the police have plenty of time to enforce all sorts of laws. If we had gun control laws like California, I have no question that the police would have plenty of time to enforce them, because we have very little violent crime (especially murder). There being no real problem here, there is similarly no interest in passing such laws. > My question is, since the numbers were citied in 1993 . . . was there ever > any crackdown on these 200+ individuals? I have seen nothing about such efforts before I escaped California in 2001. I have seen complaints from lawyers that the California Dept. of Justice has made NO effort to enforce the firearms transfer law--presumably they are upset because vigorous enforcement of the law would mean tens of thousands of potential defendants a month requiring counsel. Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof
