How to Keep Guns out of "Bad Guy" Hands?

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If we cant trust an individual with a gun he shouldn’t be free in society
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That is a heck of a statement!

Define "trust".
Who's the arbiter of trust going to be?

"Shouldn't be free...."
Are you talking imprisonment or some other curtailment of freedoms?
If yes, that would be imprisonment without having committed a crime, just because we don't trust someone?
Isn't that the precise argument of anti-gun groups: that the public can't be trusted with guns?
 
I have heard the following statement, more than once.

ONLY A GOOD GUY WITH A GUN, CAN STOP A BAD GUY WITH A GUN!

I believe in this, whether the good guy is a Police Officer, or a Law abiding Citizen, is a mute point.

Yet no one who makes the rules, believes this, do they?
 
Under Rudy Giuliani NYC noticed a dramatic drop in crime when they started arresting known criminals for any minor crime.

Ironically, so did Texas west of the Pecos river under Judge Roy Bean in the late 1800's. Except he hung them. That may be a bit extreme but enforcing existing laws works.
 
Pond, Im only talking about not releasing someone already convicted of violent crimes.

...and I know its complicated and the current system be overhauled wich isnt likely to happen. We need a better system to convict individuals for violent crimes instead of issuing ineffective restraining orders.

yes, its complicated (and Im stuck replying from my phone today to type out long replies....)
 
A couple of folks have mentioned that incarceration is not an effective deterrent. Well, to some extent I agree I suspect most criminals never expect to get caught; so the potential penalty of their crime has no bearing on their decision to commit a crime. However, if the criminal is in a penitentiary somewhere he is very effectively deterred from stealing my car, breaking into my house or assaulting my loved ones. Bottom line there is point where people lose their walking around privileges and need to be in prison for a long time.
 
Sailingonby it is a complex question. While enforcement of existing laws is the simple answer, it ain't that simple.

The United States already has more people locked up than the system can handle. More per capita than any other country, with a total of well over 2,000,000 in the system.

Most of these people are in for drug related offenses, in an attempt to destroy the use of illegal drugs. What we've done in the process is create a system that creates violent offenders. Instead of rehabilitation and treatment we lock nonviolent drug offenders up in over-crowded prisons where they quickly learn violence as a way of life. In the same way prohibition once created a violent gang culture, we've created a violent drug culture that destroys lives and makes violent crime a way of life for many.

Even this is an oversimplification, but it is at the heart of the huge numbers of gun related deaths in every major city in the country. Spending huge amounts of money to incarcerate ever larger numbers of people, many of them kids, instead of addressing the underlying issues is foolish. It is far easier to blame guns, or "character flaws", or race, ethnicity or many popular reasons than change the culture that perpetuates the problem.

Many of the ones who would take our guns are the same people who have the power, but lack the guts to address the real issues. It is not law abiding citizens or guns that are the problem, it is politicians.
 
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In 2010 Georgia State Trooper Chadwick LeCroy pulled over 30 year old Gregory Favors. Mr. Favors had 19 arrest and 10 convictions on his record. Also, he had been arrested three times that year alone for fleeing from Police and each time the Judge released him even though pretrial services advised against it. During this stop Mr. Favors killed Trooper LeCroy.

I’m not sure what the magic number is, but it does seem like ten convictions before your thirtieth birthday qualifies you for long term incarceration. If this had happened this Trooper would be alive and his children would not be growing up without a Father.

While I agree that a kid selling a little weed doesn’t need to be in jail with hardened criminals I also believe there are some people who should never be on the street. These folks are predators and will never be rehabilitated. While debate about the underlying cause is worthwhile that debate is more about preventing them from becoming bad guys, but less about how to deal with them once they become bad guys.
 
BarryLee, your example is exactly what Im talking about and would have a major impact on lowering violent crime if we could ever correct the messed up system we have.
 
A couple of folks have mentioned that incarceration is not an effective deterrent. Well, to some extent I agree I suspect most criminals never expect to get caught; so the potential penalty of their crime has no bearing on their decision to commit a crime. However, if the criminal is in a penitentiary somewhere he is very effectively deterred from stealing my car, breaking into my house or assaulting my loved ones. Bottom line there is point where people lose their walking around privileges and need to be in prison for a long time.
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I think we're at a good point in time as a society/world that we can definitively say that "tough" laws simply make things worse in the long run. Tough on Crime and War on Drugs has produced a corrupt, failed, over populated and overall broken prison system in the US. Stiffer penalties are demonstrably not the answer.

It's sort of like the Dark Side of the Force. Simple, tempting and easy... but in the end really really bad and blows up in your face.
 
Sailingonby it is a complex question. While enforcement of existing laws is the simple answer, it ain't that simple.
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Trust me I know :) It was hard to even form the question in a way that I thought covered at least the important basic points of discussion. It's problematic to the core.
 
has produced a corrupt, failed, over populated and overall broken prison system in the US.
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Not to mention expensive.

A quick look online found that 2011 saw the US spend 74 billion USD on corrections. That is a lot of tax payers' income going down a very deep hole.

Where else could that money go and get better results from a social perspective?
 
Where else could that money go and get better results from a social perspective?
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I'm so glad you asked!

IMO, gun control, gun violence, gun "problems" in general... these would be so drastically reduced -- as well as crime/economy/mostly all of the big issue problems right now -- If they diverted a LOT more money into basic education of our children. Educate them properly like the rest of the civilized world and their opportunities increase, the work force improves, the economy improves and crime decreases, thus, making guns less of a hot topic issue.

Alas... this is not the case and we're forced with working what we've got. Nobody seems to give a damn. At least not the politicians.

TL;DR = better education reduces the issues surrounding guns in society.
 
If they diverted a LOT more money into basic education of our children. Educate them properly like the rest of the civilized world and their opportunities increase, the work force improves, the economy improves and crime decreases, thus, making guns less of a hot topic issue.
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Bingo.

Sadly, as much as I agree with the likely outcome, the public want results now, not 20 years from now.

Huge swathes of the electorate don't seem to realise that changing the way a society functions is no small feat and no quick fix. It takes time and it takes commitment from all involved, including the very electorate I'm referring to.

However, the way things are, politicians are obliged to offer either appeasement or smoke-screens that can roll-out in the coming months i.e. "gun control, but neither can truly address the problem they claim to.

Yet, with words like "control", "ban" and the like, people lap it up. Security and safety are, after all, states of mind as much as states of being.
 
I've been meaning to respond to this thread for several days.
SailingOnBy said:
. . . . I've been following the politics, debates and discussions of guns for a while now and have seen the extreme ends of both sides. IMO with most cases the extreme views are the ones that are holding back good, productive dialogue though. . . . .
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I'm curious, what is this "good, productive dialogue" that's being held back? What makes dialogue "good" and "productive?" And which views are the "extreme" ones that are holding it back?

SailingOnBy said:
My question is:

Trying to keep in mind what is reasonable... what does this community feel are the best (or even workable) policies to ensure 2A rights, while keeping guns out of the hands of "bad guys"? Not taking into consideration illegal gun buying/trading. Are the current laws, in your opinion working? Not effective enough? Too weak or too strong?
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Perhaps you mean well, SailingOnBy, but you've loaded your question. How in the world is anybody supposed to decide whether current laws "are working," wiithout taking illegal gun buying/trading into consideration?!? That would mean that, in order to answer the question, we have to disregard the cases in which something happened in which a convicted felon purchased a gun. Are we allowed to consider cases in which the felon stole the gun?

"Trying to keep in mind what is reasonable" -- Reasonable according to whom? Hillary Clinton thinks the Australian gun "buyback" is a model worth considering for America.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-clinton-australia-gun-ban-worth-looking-u-s/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-gun-buybacks_us_56216331e4b02f6a900c5d67

Surely that means that she thinks mandatory gun "buybacks," using felony-level penalties for failure to surrender one's firearms, is "reasonable." One of my problems here is that "reasonable" has become a watchword of the gun control crowd. "Reasonable laws," "reasonable restrictions." By implication, if you disagree with gun control, you're being unreasonable. Further, since when is "reasonable" as determined by popular vote, the measure by which we determine whether someone can exercise a constitutionally-enumerated right?

Gun owners have been "reasonable," and tried to negotiate with the antigun squad for decades. What have we gotten for our troubles? We've been lied to. We've been lied about. We've been vilified in the press. I, for one, see no reason to be "reasonable" in surrendering any more of my individual, fundamental Constitutional rights than has already been surrendered.

SailingOnBy said:
. . . . IMO, gun control, gun violence, gun "problems" in general... these would be so drastically reduced -- as well as crime/economy/mostly all of the big issue problems right now -- If they diverted a LOT more money into basic education of our children. Educate them properly like the rest of the civilized world and their opportunities increase, the work force improves, the economy improves and crime decreases, thus, making guns less of a hot topic issue.
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This all sounds nice, but:
1) To which parts of "the civilized world" do you refer?
2) Why should we pour more money into a system as broken as public education, as it stands now? I believe that the public educational system is, demonstrably, a failure and needs a complete overhaul.
 
Further, since when is "reasonable" as determined by popular vote, the measure by which we determine whether someone can exercise a constitutionally-enumerated right?
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This distinction is possibly something the pro-gun right advocates want to explore: challenge the buzz-words and ask them to justify/quantify reasonable. In some cultures it is reasonable to kill your own family members if they fall in love with the "wrong" person. I don't see it as reasonable, yet that is the adjective used in that culture.

I say take the word back!
"It is reasonable to assume that people who have obeyed the law and been responsible gun owners will continue to do so, so don't fix what is not broken."
"It is reasonable to ask the federal government to apply the rules they already have (NICS?) before wasting money trying to pass others."
"It is reasonable to say that the government cannot afford police everywhere, all the time and, given crime still happens, it is also reasonable for people to be allowed their own means of effective deterrence and self-protection."


I believe that the public educational system is, demonstrably, a failure and needs a complete overhaul.
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Wouldn't such an overhaul require money to achieve?
 
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Yes, but simply diverting more money to pour into education won't achieve the reforms we need.

ETA: I guess I should have asked why we should pour more money into the public education system as it stands. I'll make that edit to my post now.
 
I would still say then pour money into education but with reform as part of that process. If the education system really is broken, then that is truly national crisis and catastrophe in the making.

I'm constantly astounded by governments who fail to address such issues as educational deficits, given that today's kids are going to be the economic lifeblood of the country in the decades to come...

If they can't compete the country falls.
 
SailingOnBy said:
Stiffer penalties are demonstrably not the answer.
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It depends. If there are problems with enforcement, then, of course, I would tackle that area first. If enforcement is effective though, then I say stiffer penalties are the answer to reducing crime. There will always be a certain level of criminal activity regardless of enforcement/penalties but what we are talking about here is essentially the effect of reward/punishment on the vast majority of people. If you want to argue that reward/punishment has little to no effect on the behavior of people, then have at it but I have doubts as to how many people you will convince...
 
Perhaps if we would quit incarcerating non-violent drug offenders we would have space for violent offenders. Somehow we have attempted to "get tough" on petty crime and ignored violent crimes.

There are a lot of societal issues at play as well. That we who profess to value individual freedom have one of the highest incarceration rates in the first world is alarming. That many of these offenders are incarcerated for crimes where the only direct victims are directly involved in said "crime" is even more alarming.
 
If you want to argue that reward/punishment has little to no effect on the behavior of people, then have at it but I have doubts as to how many people you will convince...
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Convincing people is a bonus, but what people believe or don't believe is a moot point if it is at odds with that which is known to be true.

My point is this: I once read an article that equated (using research findings to do so) the risk assessment and risk averseness of criminals with those of a Formula 1 racing driver. They just don't see risk of capture and risk of imprisonment as a danger and, therefore, deterrent when deciding on committing a crime. It just doesn't come into it in the same way it would with you or I as well-adjusted members of the law-abiding public.
In fact, the main reason you or I don't commit crimes is also less about imprisonment and more about what we've been brought up to see as right and wrong, so even for us it is our moral grounding that acts as a brake on criminal behaviour.

It comes down to this: which is better for society reducing crime by curbing criminal tendencies before they are acted upon, or removing criminals after the crime has already been committed?

I would say society benefits more from the former, yet imprisonment largely does the latter and not very well, given the levels of reoffending.
 
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