More to the point is that a legislative "cure" needs to focus on the source of a problem. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us that about 78% of crime guns come either through theft, or are obtained from family/friends/acquaintances. Tightening controls on licensed gun manufacturers and distributors, or even retailers, fails to address the core problem.
Incidentally, the BJS also reports that about 94% of firearm homicides are gang and drug running related, and those groups have significant overlap. I do find it odd that mayors of large cities, who on the surface appear to have failed in controlling gangs and hence gun violence, are typically the ones campaigning for more gun control. Guy Smith www.GunFacts.info _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Phil Lee Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 10:26 AM To: List Firearms Reg; Joseph E. Olson Cc: Dan Gifford Subject: Re: Good to remember First I'm not in favor these embargo approaches nor opposed to them. But I have problems with ignoring the legal implications of them. As a private citizen I might refuse to sell a firearm to a person I find suspicious. As a manufacturer of firearms my customers are approved federally licensed firearms dealers. Can I refuse to sell to one? If a licensee is supplying firearms illegally to criminals, why hasn't the government taken action to revoke his license? Who am I to take action as judge and jury of this licensee? What is my legal liability for this unilateral action? Of course there are issues of effectiveness -- businesses can easily change their names and the licensees they employ. For that matter the action of one firearms manufacturer might not be duplicated by another. To urge a common boycott of a particular licensee I would think opens the advocates to liability for defamation. I've long been troubled by issues related to being placed on a "list" of bad behaving people -- I have in mind, in particular, the no-fly list, the terrorist-watch list, and now, I suppose, the unapproved-wholesaler-for-guns list. Society has a moral obligation to act against bad behaving people, but the laws allowing society to act should have clear standards of proof required, such as in our courts of law, in order to allow society to act. While I'm sure that an illuminary such as the late Sen. Kennedy can find a way to deal with his name being placed on the no-fly list, I don't like the difficulty some common people find trying to deal with similar problems. How is it consistent with our constitutional rights that a government is unaccountable for its action to impede an innocent private citizen? In any case, I'm not proposing to promote or oppose such boycotting action as given in the article quoted by Olson below. I would like to urge that when such an approach is brought to this list that the legal basis for the approach be outlined in addition to any discussion of the effectiveness of the approach. Phil Lee --- On Sun, 5/22/11, Joseph E. Olson <[email protected]> wrote: From: Joseph E. Olson <[email protected]> Subject: Good to remember To: "List Firearms Reg" <[email protected]> Cc: "Dan Gifford" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, May 22, 2011, 11:25 AM [quote].[Anti-gun a]dvocates argue that gun manufacturers and distributors are aware of these illegal practices and could stop them, if they chose to, by refusing to supply guns to the problematic dealers. This theory has been embraced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and even some scholars. They argue that disrupting trafficking operations can have a substantial impact on rates of criminal gun possession and gun violence. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support this set of interconnected claims. Because the "newness" of crime guns and out-of-state origins are regarded as indicators that the guns were trafficked, trace data provide a misleading picture of the sources of guns used in crimes, exaggerating the share that appears to have been trafficked. As Kevin Wang and I concluded, trafficking levels have no measurable effect on the incidence of gun possession by criminals or the rate of violent crime. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that strategies aimed at reducing gun trafficking are unlikely to have any measurable effect on gun violence in the U.S. or Mexico. Criminals have plenty of other ways to get guns.[quote] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704904604576333443343499926.ht ml?mod=djemLifeStyle_h **************************************************************************** ************* Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236 St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- 612-865-7956 [email protected] http://law.hamline.edu/constitutional_law/joseph_olson.html -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
_______________________________________________ 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 Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
