Build Your own Gun Laws : What would YOU do ?

[BigDee]

No "Good time" for people sentenced for
Committing crimes involving a gun. If you commit any crime and a firearm is involved you must serve the entire length of your sentence.


Security requirements. Owners of firearms must keep them secured at all times. This would be difficult to enforce however one way to enforce it would be to also pass a law making a firearms owner responsible for any crime committed with their weapon in the event that the firearm owner can not provide proof that the firearm was properly secured. This law may very well have prevented the Newtown shooting, it would have also prevented the Oregon mall shooting.

I would not oppose a training requirement for firearm ownership. The days of parents taking their kids out and teaching them to use a weapon are long gone. While some parents do still teach their kids many dont and many people end up buying guns they have no idea how to operate. My parents are anti gun and I was one of those people at one time.

I also support the idea of having a firearms safety/hunter safety course be made a part of high school curriculum. There are many people who hate guns and will not teach their children about guns as a result. There are also a lot
Of irresponsible gun owners who allow their kids to have free reign of their fire arms. In the event that a child goes into a home where there are unrestricted firearms that child should know how to act responsibly around those guns. This class would also be sufficient to meet the training requirement for firearm ownership once the child reaches legal age to purchase a firearm.

[Ronin13]

Security requirements. Owners of firearms must keep them secured at all times. This would be difficult to enforce however one way to enforce it would be to also pass a law making a firearms owner responsible for any crime committed with their weapon in the event that the firearm owner can not provide proof that the firearm was properly secured. This law may very well have prevented the Newtown shooting, it would have also prevented the Oregon mall shooting.

I'll only address this point... Define "Properly secured" for us please? I don't have a safe, but my house is locked. Is that properly secured? Or would it require us gun owners to all go out and get a gun safe? Would we no longer be allowed to have the pistol on the bedside table? What about the bedside 12GA? I doubt I'd be able to swiftly pop open the latest and greatest of gun safes in a timely manner at 2AM when someone crashes through my window intent on nefarious things and I need my gun the most... I see this as a bit of a slippery slope... and I'm opposed to wreave's idea on F2F sales requiring a BGC- especially now... 10 day wait!? GFY panic buyers!

[XC700116]

Security requirements. Owners of firearms must keep them secured at all times. This would be difficult to enforce however one way to enforce it would be to also pass a law making a firearms owner responsible for any crime committed with their weapon in the event that the firearm owner can not provide proof that the firearm was properly secured. This law may very well have prevented the Newtown shooting, it would have also prevented the Oregon mall shooting.

Define secured.

Here's my point, I live alone, no wife, SO, or kids. I have a gun safe that most of my guns live in at all times when not in use. This excludes the one in my night stand, and my EDC gun which is on my dresser when not on me. If I'm going someplace I can't carry it, it lives in the center console of my truck and the truck is locked. If someone is getting a hold of my guns, they are breaking and entering to do it, both the truck and the house have security systems. Yet under many state and local laws (other states and locales) I'd be in violation because they aren't in a safe 24/7, which defeats the purpose of having them, and I'd be held liable for a crime committed with one of my weapons if they were stolen (the night stand, dresser, or console of the truck). This is the glaring problem with this "keep them secured or else" type of law. There's only so much you can do and if someone is willing to break into my home or truck to steal my guns, then they are the ones committing the crime and I should in no way be able to be held liable for it.

Not to mention they would have to completely blow 4th amendment rights out of the water to proactively enforce it. And it wouldn't have prevented either shooting, it would have just made the gun owner go to jail after the fact. Just because there's a law that says you have to do this or that with your weapon, doesn't mean people are going to do it. That literally is the exact same flaw of reasoning that they are using saying that a gun free zone will prevent these incidents, if the perpetrator of such a crime is willing to break about a dozen laws in the process, another one isn't going to stop anything.

[Storm]

No "Good time" for people sentenced for
Committing crimes involving a gun. If you commit any crime and a firearm is involved you must serve the entire length of your sentence.


Security requirements. Owners of firearms must keep them secured at all times. This would be difficult to enforce however one way to enforce it would be to also pass a law making a firearms owner responsible for any crime committed with their weapon in the event that the firearm owner can not provide proof that the firearm was properly secured. This law may very well have prevented the Newtown shooting, it would have also prevented the Oregon mall shooting.

I would not oppose a training requirement for firearm ownership. The days of parents taking their kids out and teaching them to use a weapon are long gone. While some parents do still teach their kids many dont and many people end up buying guns they have no idea how to operate. My parents are anti gun and I was one of those people at one time.

I also support the idea of having a firearms safety/hunter safety course be made a part of high school curriculum. There are many people who hate guns and will not teach their children about guns as a result. There are also a lot of irresponsible gun owners who allow their kids to have free reign of their fire arms. In the event that a child goes into a home where there are unrestricted firearms that child should know how to act responsibly around those guns. This class would also be sufficient to meet the training requirement for firearm ownership once the child reaches legal age to purchase a firearm.

I'm all for your sentencing requirement.

I am totally against any law mandating securing of firearms. Yes, I believe gun owners should secure their firearms from theft and small children. However, there are a number of reasons why I'm against a law mandating this.

1) It's impractical. Many gun owners own one or two pistols for home protection and many of them probably can't afford a decent enough safe to secure it. Lock boxes will not keep a burglar out. Most of the low end safes are crap and we all know it.

2) There been many a documented case of kids home alone when a home invader broke in and was stopped with a firearm in the kids hands. If you have a gun in the house, smaller kids need to be taught to respect firearms and not to touch them, responsible older ones if they are taught to handle and shoot a gun safely, should know where the house gun is. An anecdote, my father always had loaded guns around the house for HD. Both my brother and I knew where they were and not to touch them. If we wanted to see them, we asked. My dad would then make the gun safe and hand it to us action open. When we were done, he would reload it and put it back. BTW, my father never took either of us shooting when we were kids.

Now I'll add this, the mother of the CT shooter should have had those guns in a safe (maybe she did, nothings come out about this). She definitely had the means (Alimony of $250K/year, IIRC) to purchase a decent one.

I am against a training requirement. For one it doesn't really address the issue at hand, violence. If this were a safety discussion or one about innocent bystanders getting shot, sure. I'll give you a last reason why I'm against it. Many people find themselves under threat (think obsessed ex, angry acquaintance, crazy stalker, crime victim) and go out and buy a gun to protect themselves. Should those people have to wait and risk being harmed or killed, in order to satisfy some useless requirement. Do I think that people should get some sort of training and safety, yes. Should the Govt require you to do so before exercising your right, hell no.

I'm not totally for or against a firearms safety course in high school. I have conflicting thoughts about this and I don't see how this could be a full semester course in HS. How long does it take to teach a safety course, 4-16 hrs?