Build Your own Gun Laws : What would YOU do ?

[Byte Stryke]

how about we start with rebuilding criminal punishments.
Prison is a joke to most criminals, a fricking vacation.
Make time fit the crime.
Abolish parole boards
Impose "Danger to society" Sentence extensions for persons fitting.

Mental health. There should never be a bed unavailable if the person is deemed a danger to him/herself or others.
better tracking/registration and care for persons with mental health issues.

and if you are deemed a danger to society that you are isolated from it.

[eadgbe194]

I would make a law stating that infringing on the right of an individual to keep and bear arms is illegal.

Oh, wait...

Exactly! Shall not be infringed. Period.

[james_bond_007]

... I have tried to prosecute a felon who lied on the federal form 4473 in order to obtain a firearm and was denied...

I'd like to offer my thanks for at least TRYING to do the right thing.

I'm sorry the authorities were not more cooperative.


To another point, any chance this guy would TRY to buy a firearm FTF after being denied by an FFL? (add sarcasm here)

In FTF transactions it is hard to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys", even if you WANT to do the right thing.
After all, there is not a big "FELON" tag marked on a DL, or rotated DL like the "Under 21" licenses, to make it easy to identify them.
There is not, to my knowledge, even a more discrete way, to determine felons, like a publicly accessible online DB, as there is for sex offenders.
(The THOUGHT of something like that probably violates a former felon's "rights" in someway, right ?)

And in OneGuy67's case, when he COULD tell it was a "bad" guy, no one would HELP him do the right thing.

[james_bond_007]

I would make a law stating that infringing on the right of an individual to keep and bear arms is illegal. Oh, wait...

You get a RIMSHOT for that one

[buffalobo]

how about we start with rebuilding criminal punishments.
Prison is a joke to most criminals, a fricking vacation.
Make time fit the crime.
Abolish parole boards
Impose "Danger to society" Sentence extensions for persons fitting.

Mental health. There should never be a bed unavailable if the person is deemed a danger to him/herself or others.
better tracking/registration and care for persons with mental health issues.

and if you are deemed a danger to society that you are isolated from it.

This^

If a person is deemed to not be safe possesing a weapon, either due to criminal activity or mental issues, they should not be out in public to begin with.

[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?

[OneGuy67]

Thanks for the thoughts, James_3Bond, but I am a cop and I was trying to get a known felon charged and could not. It happens more often than you would think with prosecutions.

[Ronin13]

I have a great law... if your name is Diane Feinstein, you are to be deported ASAP.

[Mountain Man]

Here is my thought on it. Colorado doesn't need any more or really different gun laws.

We like many places have absolute crap for mental health care. We have one state mental health facility for those that are dangerous. It takes an act of god to get them there. Mental health care here absolutely sucks. I would change that.

The other thing is we need to hammer violent criminals. When they are convicted make them do their time. Along the front range its a joke. I have seen many get convicted of a serious felony get probation commit another felony and get another conviction and get probation again. really it didn't work the first time. I'm sure he is really sorry now. This continues and the same ahole that should have been in prison is still out and doing his thing until he is inconvenienced by getting caught again and it starts all over again.

I had no problem with project exile. I know RMGO hated it. I can tell you for a fact it worked. Drug dealers and bangers knew if they used a gun committing the crime they would get time and serve it. If you just committed the crime and didn't use a gun you would be back on the street. It actually made an impact on criminals and didn't affect law abiding citizen that I ever heard of or witnessed. I'm guessing that if you were law abiding you wouldn't be a felon in possession of a weapon and you probably weren't committing crimes, banging selling drugs etc.

[Danimal]

To answer all of your questions you need to look inside the mind of a human being and understand the decision making process. While you go about your daily life, you make literally hundreds of choices. The thought develops in your conscious mind, triggers an impulse and then you perform an action. The process can get interrupted though, and most people have control of their actions. Think about that feeling when you are standing at the top of a cliff and you can feel that sinking feeling in your stomach as it feels like it is pulling you over, like you are going to jump. Your mind has developed a thought and you feel the impulse to jump but your control over your action stops you because there is a consequence to the action that is a secondary effect to the impulse that you are feeling. Now to apply this to a criminal mind there are two scenarios:

1) The criminal does not fear the consequences of the actions they are about to take.
2) The criminal has no control of their mind and thereby no way to interrupt the impulse action stage.

Response to #1: From here it is clear to see that there is a problem much deeper than a simple modification of rules. This is why bans of any sort will not work. Where there is a will there is a way. I know that you have all heard that phrase, but think about it for a second. It should be clear that there are two operatives here to disrupt an action. You can kill the will, or control the means (way) to accomplish a task. It should be apparent to everyone on here that attacking the methods or means does little because there will always be another way to accomplish their will. So that means that the only solution for the rational criminal is to make the consequences outweigh the perceived benefits of their actions. Make them fear or respect the consequences of their actions and they will not commit the crime. It is that simple.

Response to #2: Obviously in this situation a person that has no control over their actions should not own a firearm for any reason. There are deep seeded psychological issues that are present that preclude any rational thought and for that there is little that we can do to change the way that people are. But how do you distinguish this person from another? The simple answer is that you can't. There is a grey area here that you really do not want to get into, because the tables can turn and people that should own guns could otherwise be deemed unfit, or it could be used as a metric to control who has firearms based on an outside influence. That is a dangerous road to walk. So then what this comes down to is we all need to do our part. Lock up your guns when you cannot protect them. Do not leave them in your car unattended. Do not go through with a private sale if you do not feel comfortable. Get a CCW and training so that if by chance you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, or right place at the right time (depending on how you look at it) you can take action and be the solution to an unsolvable problem where it surfaces. We as responsible gun owners need to 24/7 live the part to the best of our abilities. That is the only solution that I can think of.

You cannot legislate against the acts of a mad man, and you cannot protect people from their own devices by way of law. We need to grow up as a society and take responsibility for our actions and responsibility for our safety and livelihood. We only get one chance at a life worth living regardless of occupation, pay grade, religion or any other thread that makes us human. This is what our founding fathers meant when they created the constitution. But there are two sides; we need to live up to the constitution if we expect to enjoy its protections. Our society is crumbling and the lack of personal responsibility is the common thread. Enforce standing laws, and make the punishment severe enough to deter all but those inescapable of rational thought, then base our society off of the longstanding moral principals that should accompany all men that are created equal.