Laws such as this just highlight how asinine gun policy can be. Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners (Completing a 4473 would be a lot easier if they could verify that you are already a responsible gun owner) or make policing gun laws any safer (straw purchases would be easier to track if the records were digitized).
No we (I) do not.
In my state, it is a violation of state law to have a record of gun owners. When the state police force started saving records of every purchase, they were sued, but won on the basis that since they were only storing records of the purchase of new firearms, and not those few types of firearms exempt from a transfer background check, that it wasn't a record of all gun owners and was therefore legal.
In practice, though, unless you are buying a used rifle or shotgun from another person, the state police knows what firearms you own in direct contradiction of state law.
There is no doubt in my mind that agencies like the FBI or NSA would go far beyond this in order to determine what firearms Americans owned if it served their purposes to do so.
And even then, with millions of them in civilian hands, they've been sold to us since the '60s, we're talking needle in a haystack. In general, the search for the perpetrators totally screwed up, right down to when the police finally got the correct car and license plate, they refused to release this to the public, it got out by other means and that directly led to their capture.
Disclaimer?: I was living in Arlington, Virginia at the time. The FBI woman shot while at a Home Depot? That was my Home Depot.
(I lived near Shirlington before it got trendy and expensive.)
Snowden for example succeeded in pinning "illegal surveillance" on the NSA, when the work was contracted out to the American corporate security-cartels, although he is a very rare exception, especially considering he is alive and not jailed.
I'd say anything making the job of the police a little more tedious is worth bonus points. There is so much asymmetry of power against citizens that such measures restore a little bit of balance. You can't have both Freedom and a super effective police force on the other hand. It's always a trade-off.
It's odd to focus on that one conflict of 'cultures', of the almost infinite possibilities. As one tiny example, some things other cultures do would also seem unacceptably individualistic and lawless.
Do you have any examples of this by chance?
And FWIW the UK is arming more of its police, since that is clearly the country you are referring to.
no not really, there are a lot of countries without armed or heavily armed police forces.
>That seems a fairly shortsighted estimation of what balances power between police and the people.
So does the NRA's idea that the second amendment will allow people to overthrow the government if they still own guns.
But at the end of the day, forcing your police force to think deescalation first has some real benefits. Carrying a fatal weapon and being trained that people within 25-30 feet are in your 'danger zone' has had a very poor outcome.
But the "within 25-30 feet" at least has it being the truth in its favor. And none of this has changed, US cops have always been well armed, right?
The problem I see is the switch from their being "peace officers" to warrior cops, or at the very minimum, having as their #1 objective making it home safely when their shift ends. Rather negates the "Thin Blue Line" concept of their being there to protect us, also calls into question their outsized benefit packages.
Not really, they carried a revolver or .38 special, might have had a shotgun between the front seats or in the trunk, Using khaki as the only body armor. Now there are police whose primary weapon is an ar-15 and the backup is a semi-auto .40 mm glock. everyone else has an ar-15 in the trunk and a glock in hand plus varying levels of body armor.
That's a far cry from having a 6 shot revolver on your hip just in case.
And in the long run, I suspect trading their khaki for body armor and the disdain or worse of civilians will be viewed as a mistake.
From what I've read, there is no basis for it.
I've done it myself, timed the speed I could lunge 21 feet, it's true enough. And that's a minimum, allow more feet to realize there's a threat etc.
If I was a law enforcement officer responding to a domestic violence call of a husband battering his wife, I'd want to know if the oldest male in the house purchased an AR-15 derivative and several handguns.
EDIT: Many adults also explicitly show their possession of a lethal weapon every day: their car, which is registered in a statewide database.
EDIT2: I'd further like to be able to query that database as a civilian, so I know which of my neighbors may own an unusual cache of guns, so that I can have better situational awareness if I'm ever in a dispute with one.
EDIT3: To apply a standard of transparency to this data collection, the person whose data about firearm purchases should be able to be notified by some immediate or otherwise automated means that their record was viewed by a LEO or a citizen or another state/federal agency.
And if you get into enough disputes with your neighbors that you feel you need to know what things they've purchased perhaps you should focus more on conflict resolution and less on their shopping habits. Because your definition of "unusual" may be very different from theirs, and whether or not I purchased a handgun, or a rifle, or a shotgun, or a Bowie knife, or a pallet of rifle ammunition is not my neighbor's business.
People outspoken in favor of gun ownership have been routinely swatted by those who disagree with them. Nothing is gained by giving those mentally ill people more information with which to put innocent lives in danger.
But I can understand how that data, in civilian hands, could be used for potentially nefarious purposes. I only suggested the idea as a way to make the information more "transparent", but someone a lot smarter than me would have to discern the risks involved, and I am 100% able to adjust my expectations based on such risks. I'm not committed to the issue one way or another.
2 wrongs do not make a right.
There is FAR FAR FAR too much information accessible to police and even other citizens now. It is clear you believe everything about a person should just be open to everyone.
Do you believe in any privacy at all?
"We the people" have no right to know who own the guns, and if the police infact when armed "to the teeth" door to do looking for any object, gun or not, then any vestiges of a free society will have long been abolished.
I desire liberty above all else, I do not derive this belief in liberty from the Constitution or any other document, I derive my liberty from the Philosophy of liberty which itself is based in the Principle of self ownership. These beliefs transcend the constitution.
It is sad you are willing to give up essential liberty for perceived protection by the government, who will ultimately take your liberty but never provide you with protection.
>>>>Being a registered gun owner does not endanger you in any significant way.
Actually it does, in a large number of ways. However that is also not relevant, even if there was no danger I would still oppose such a registration, as you have no right to require me to submit to such a registry.
Anyone the respects individual liberty, and freedom will agree.
The reasons include but not limited to (and in no particular order)
1. Poor Training in Gun Operations and Saftey
2. No Training in deescalation
3. No Accountability for murdering people
4. Decades of "War on X" public policy that makes the citizens the "enemy" of the police
5. Militarization of police. We have effectively turn the Modern Police force into a Paramilitary organization with less oversight and fewer rules of engagement
My state police force specifically uses the phrase "paramilitary organization" to describe itself. They do not view themselves as civilians charged with protecting other civilians (which is what they are). They view themselves as a higher subset, with different rules and laws.
that is what I have been attempting to dispel. The common misconception that the public has is that the police are in fact a protection force. They are not.
I actually give your State Police credit for being honest with the public. Every other police force lies when they claim to be their for the protection of the people.
there is never been any legal basis for this belief, every single court ruling on the subject in in fact direct contradiction to the statement "the police are for protection"
Police are there to enforce the law. period, end of statement. They have no other purpose.
There are very very very very very few cases where police provide any actual protection. For the most part they are revenue generators, tax collectors. They also provide needed protection and security for the government apparatus of power. they ensure the citizens do as their masters in goverment demand.
this idea that police are simply citizens here to protect other citizens is a myth and we can not have real police reform until people wake up to reality and stop living in that myth
These are mutually exclusive. Pick one.
You are not entitled to know the details of my private property, similar to how a civilian can't access a list of cars you own.
More pragmatically, this can lead to increased crime. Owners of valuable firearms would be targeted by burglars. A robber would easily know which homeowners don't have any guns, and would target them with less risk.
I honesty don't see this as a threat vector, unless I'm missing something. What am I missing? I admit ignorance here, and please don't mistake my responses as an argument. If this is a legitimate concern, I'd like to know. I'd hate to think my opinion was uninformed.
1. Engaged in suspicious behavior that increases the risk of arrest.
2. Spent more in food, fuel, vehicle maintenance, and opportunity costs than the expected value of a stolen big screen TV (which would sell well below its retail price because of its questionable provenance).
Let's say instead, for the sake of argument, that consumers must register their big screen TV purchases with the government. (Some governments, notably the UK, use such registrations to tax consumers in order to pay for public broadcasting.) If such a registry were publicly searchable, your hypothetical robber could conduct their surveillance from the safety and anonymity of the parking lot of the local Starbucks or McDonald's. This significantly lowers the robber's surveillance costs/risks, as they no longer have to spend hours driving fruitlessly through random neighborhoods, only to be ratted out by some nosy busybody itching to call the police whenever the least little thing is out of place on their cul-de-sac. Furthermore, a sufficiently intelligent robber may automate said searches, further lowering their costs/risks.
Now, given the above, let's say some poor sod is off on holiday, washing their cares away with mojitos and all-you-can-eat buffets, when your hypothetical robber steals their big screen TV---only to use it to commit some assault the day our rum-soaked homeowner returns to the good ol' USA (who collapses into bed without noticing the theft). And by "assault" I mean something REALLY heinous, like setting it up in front of a daycare playing Rick Astley on infinite repeat with the volume at 11. Think of the children! When the cops investigate, of course they will search the big screen TV registry and find said homeowner, who in the midst of the DTs discovers he has no alibi.
And so it goes.
What you're missing is that in the US, criminals in almost all the states and cities know there's a good chance their targets have guns in their homes, so they generally choose to burglarize them when unoccupied.
Nothing good will come out of burgling an occupied house.
1. You may be identified - this will quickly shut down your criminal career.
2. You may be physically harmed.
3. You may physically harm the resident, which will turn your crime from a police-don't-really-care burglary into a violent robbery.
If it's currently possible to get a SWAT team to show up and break into someone's house with an anonymous phone call, I sure as hell don't want to give police the idea that it's OK to show up and take someone's guns because they got an anonymous phone call accusing them of hitting their wife.
> I'd further like to be able to query that database as a civilian
You need to consider for a moment how this can be abused. Who do you think is going to be targeted for robbery? You'd be efficiently putting guns directly into the hands of criminals.
How about you stop worrying about the statistically negligible threat that your gun-collecting neighbor is secretly about to go berserk? We don't need to spy on each other all the time.
As it stands now, I believe a law enforcement officer can discern if you have a FOID card in the US, which may set the expectation that you are armed to the teeth, while a purchase database might show that you purchased a non-functional collector piece. I'd think that information would improve their situational awareness and make their approach more context-appropriate.
I.e. more likely to shoot you? Many people have irrational responses to knowing that someone has a gun, police officers included.
>Nor did I say anything about a cop taking anyone's guns.
I assumed you were referring to the number of recent proposals to allow for the "temporary confiscation" of guns from people accused (but not convicted) of domestic violence.
>I'd think that information would improve their situational awareness and make their approach more context-appropriate.
Why would you think that? What would be more context-appropriate?
I am sure violent criminals would love such a database as well, this way when they need an illegal gun they know which homes to rob.
No, you have no right to know what I own, be that Gun, Drones, or TV's. You have no right to compel me to publicly list my assets in a database you can search.
Unlike what you claim to be, I actually am a strong advocate for privacy.
The fact that the government has already violated my privacy in many ways, is not a defense or justification for more intrusion upon my privacy.
A privacy advocate should never use the justification you have
Just because someone has sworn to protect you doesn't mean they'll actually do it. And that doesn't prevent anyone else from using it against you either. In a perfect world, all the police follow the law, all the governments follow the law, and there are no criminals to steal this information.
> at making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult
What job is made easier by providing a list of all gun owners?
> is not only acceptable, but preferred.
It's pretty much the entire foundation of America. You don't trust the person. You trust the system, and hopefully design the system in a way that minimizes abuse. No, it's not perfect and never can be. But one concrete example is the fourth amendment. The ability for an officer to search a home for evidence without permission is just too ripe for abuse, even if it does allow criminals to get away with things.
In this context there is obviously a belief that the police are doing something they should. Whether it's illegal, or immoral, or legal but contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, or whatever the reasoning may be.
They could just as easily have said "anything that makes it more difficult for the NSA to track my interests and whereabouts is bonus points" and I think a majority of people on here would probably agree with that statement.
Just because it's a local cop sworn to protect Americans vs. an NSA analyst or FBI agent doesn't make them any more likely to actually do it.
Perhaps I have a different view of the NSA than you do, but I would have had the same response to that. Like the police, they exist to protect us, and if they're doing something irresponsible/immoral/illegal, they should be made accountable and corrected, rather than just made less efficient at it.
Information is a powerful tool, and can be utilized to protect us in powerful ways. IMO the problem is not collecting the information, but how it's used. I'd much rather see a super-efficient all-knowing and well-intended protector than an inefficient bumbling mess.
You can (barely) control how the current administration uses the information it has.
You have no way of controlling how the administration will use that information in 10 years.
That is a recipe for a Tyrannical Police state.
In no way could a society where I have no privacy be a utopia. Not to me. I value my Freedom and Privacy above all else
What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
You clearly are not a person who studies history. Most of our progress as a nation is a direct result of people breaking the law in various ways. Would there have been a Civil Rights movement at all if an all knowing protector would have stopped Rosa Parks from even getting on the that bus? Or the Woman's Rights movement if an all knowing government was able to eliminate the movement before it got an mass attention.
You want to see a complete conformist society with no ability for any person to exist with out the "approval" of that society. I shutter to think would have happen to LGBT persons if your vision of a "utopia" existed
Today we are locking up people based on what plants they choose to grow, and are raiding home because they happen to throw some loose leaf tea in the garbage after shopping at a gardening store.
How will giving these incompetent morons more power going to make things better, going create a utopia. That is unless North Korea is your view of a "utopia", where the politically connected, the politically correct, and the conformists are rewarded by government and anyone that speaks out, or has an opposing view is simply disappeared.
Any study of history will almost immediately dispel you of this view.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblowers-security-thi...
More data does not make for greater accuracy or efficiency. More intelligence (human effort) does.
Regardless of whatever you think the police are "sworn" to do, we have incontrovertible experimental evidence that they often do not have our best interests at heart.
You know what also makes the jobs of police officers harder? Checks and balances. The right to a lawyer. Miranda rights. The fact that they have to get warrants.
It is hopelessly naïve to assume that anything good can come of giving the police more authority.
I read a story some time back about police getting access to a dna database from a genealogical software company. (http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-...)
With that database they began querying hundreds of thousands of dna samples with cold case samples. Ignoring the false-positive probabilities they started going after those hits. Long story short, they solved none of their cold cases, but investigated and harassed many innocent people; treating them like murderers.
Joe Schmo down at the PD isn't a statistician, or even a 'data scientist'. Giving total data access to the unqualified and over impulsive will harm more our society more than it will protect it.
The police aren't sworn to protect the public. They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution, which is a very different thing, and even there accountability to that oath is pretty weak (and most of the things that people complain about making their life harder just provide some small measure of accountability for them doing what they are, in fact, sworn to do.)
Sorry no.
Federal Law Enforcement, Military, and Elected officials maybe. Probably some other Federal Employees
But there is no requirement, nor do many local police dept, require any oath at all, and I can not think of any off the top of my head that have a oath to the Constitution in their ceremony.
That apples to Elected Officials, Judicial Officers.
Further my state has no such clause in its constitution
Yes, it does. (Well, arguably not to legislative branch officers who are not themselves legislators, though AFAIK both the federal government and all states actually do have such officers make a similar oath or affirmation to the one required by the Oaths Clause.)
> That apples to Elected Officials, Judicial Officers.
No, it applies to:
(1) All federal and state legislators, (2) All executive officers, and (3) All judicial officers.
"Executive officers" is not the same as "elected officials". The oaths clause use of "officers" has similar breadth of that in the Appointments Clause (Art. II, S. 2, cl. 2) except that the Oaths Clause expressly applies to both state and federal officers, and the Appointments Clause only to federal officers.
> Further my state has no such clause in its constitution
The main additional effect of state oaths clauses (whether Constitutional or statutory) is to require an oath to the state constitution in approximately the same class of state officers that are covered by the federal oaths clause. (They often also reiterate the federal requirement.)
Law Enforcement has nothing to do with protection, but rather order and control. Protection can be a side effect of order and control but it is not the primary goal, or reason for the existence of Police.
However, it's still the case that the legislature sure thought it had made such an information transfer illegal (but it's Republican and the Governor and AG are Democrats, not the first time the AG has refused to do anything about state executive wrongdoing).
And the legislature made that even more clear by completely changing the way the physical license is issued, its now through each county's sheriff, with the only renaming common database being MULES (http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chapters/chapText043.html):
"MULES", Missouri uniform law enforcement system, a statewide-computerized communications system provided by the patrol designed to provide services, information, and capabilities to the law enforcement and criminal justice community in the state of Missouri;
Which as I understand has much stricter and long standing protections against the obvious potentials for abuse.
And knz's point stands, nope, we don't trust the Feds on this.
So I think it's completely legitimate and expected that licensure information would be retained for as long as the state's record retention law calls for it to be retained -- potentially an extended or even unlimited period of time. Possession of a license in the past for a license is relevant to future licensing, as is your good or bad conduct with respect to the license.
At the Federal level, my understanding is that with respect to firearms purchases, there isn't a way to correlate a transactional background check to a human.
That's not the case to my knowledge, as a matter of law or procedure, excluding special cases like someone being a bit late to renew and getting grandfathered. Otherwise, getting a license again requires going through the whole process again, although you won't have to take a new qualification class or the like, as long as your retained your record of it.
As for good or bad conduct with respect to the license, the former is inferred from a lack of records of the latter, and those are, indeed, permanent records, aside from various process laden executive or judicial remedies to pardon or otherwise expunge them.
So, no, I see no need to keep forever records of CCW licenses.
BTW, did you know 10 states have no concealed carry license requirement? And Missouri very possibly will join them this week.
To be honest, I don't really care about concealed carry. I personally think that it's a dumb thing to do, but don't have an issue with anyone else doing it.
But if licensing is required, you shouldn't have any special privacy right. If my dog license is available to whenever asks via FOIA, so should your carry permit.
Very few states, and only anti-gun ones like New York---in fact, the only one I know off the top of my head---make the lists public. And I think New York goes further with handgun possession permits, which few states require.
Although that was useful for me to personally count the total number of NYC possession licenses, less than 60K each for long and handguns. A real outlier for the US, heck, it was noted as the Soviet Union fell that they trusted the residents of the capitol of Soviet Georgia more prior to instigating a seizure of them, then again, I've read estimates that the real number is more like 2-3 million for the 8 million total in the city.
Most of the stuff is overblown.
I've worked in public and private sector jobs where my or my family's political affiliation, public displays of support (ie. campaign contributions), current and past salary history and other info were all potentially career impacting, and all trivially available to the public. The reality is, that stuff didn't matter too much at all.
New York's handgun laws are both insane. That's a separate issue.
And you have no sympathy for those for whom it's not overblown? "If it saves just one career...."
It's NYC's gun laws that are particularly insane, and ought to go down to a McDonald based challenge, but the Federal Courts, even before Scalia died, stopped enforcing such except for stun guns, even backtracked on Heller with SF's lock up your safety law.
I believe most of the gun rights people are of the opinion that digital records would enable a large database of the location and type of guns and the identity of their owners. A database which they believe can be used as a tool in the event government policy shifts towards confiscation of certain firearms rather than forward looking sale or manufacturing prohibitions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQNmj2gSq6A
Response time for the police is usually on the order of tens of minutes. A friend lives in the country and called about a suspicious person and had a deputy show up 3.5 hours later. Thieves know this and will be in and out pretty quickly. They know where to look - under the mattress. In the refrigerator/freezer. In the nightstand. On the top shelf of the closet.
Is this different from a thief "casing" your house to determine if you've purchased big ticket items? If their access to the information is logged (which I know isn't always going to be valid) and you're notified that a civilian accessed your gun inventory record, is that more or less problematic than someone who just watches your house every weekend for a few weeks after, say, Christmas, to see what large packaging you throw out without breaking down?
I'm reconsidering my opinion on public access, for certain, and I'm sincerely trying to be as informed on the caveats as best I can.
This sort of database would not be opt-out.
Obviously there is a possibility for a database loss if they tracked all gun sales, but considering the stat that 30% of households have a firearm and the many other possible associated data sets the risk seems minimal.
That percentage goes up and down depending on people's willingness to admit that to a nosy surveyer; RKBA activists attribute this recent increase to the huge numbers of first time owners who haven't yet decided on a policy of discretion. Me, I wonder how many of us longer term owners have adopted a FU attitude in the presidential campaign with the starkest choice ever presented to us, excepting perhaps G. H. W. Bush vs. Dukakis, but Bush the father was much closer to total prohibitionist Dukakis, and in fact we're still living with his import bans....
You are of course right that a list of suspected gun owners could be generated in a whole bunch of ways, although I note that when it comes to online ammo dealers I've never seen a group of vendors who are faster in discarding their records of past sales.
That's the point, and why it benefits gun owners -- the law is intended to prevent policing of gun laws.
Sadly, I know this because there was a shooting spree just a couple of years ago in my hometown.
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2012/05/police-release-det...
The above news blog post has a screen shot of how local cops were able to pull the records on the six legally owned handguns of the (mentally disturbed) murderer. They include serial numbers and purchase dates.
So, no, NRA does not know how to avoid big brother. They know how to perpetuate their power and influence by using concentrated voting blocs in a relatively few key congressional districts in order to invent a wedge issue of dubious relevance. But when it comes to having lists of guns in a computer run by a government, that train has sailed.
(All that said, there is certainly an effectiveness to what NRA has achieved here. But couldn't we acknowledge that effectiveness and then put in place a distributed crypto / key escrow system that would allow the guns themselves to be tracked by serial / model / dates of transfers, and then with the second keyholder's approval to unlock the names of individuals?)
TL;DR - if a gun shop goes out of business and has and sends the ATF an excel spreadsheet or MySQL database with names and serial numbers, the ATF has to change the data so it's not unsearchable by name (often converting it to PDFs). It's asinine.
Second, the value of search is, as i'm sure you know, simply how the data is sorted. A pure paper system could take advantage of modern inventory control systems. Just stick each 4473 in an envelope. put a hash code on the envelope. build indexes of relevant information to hash codes, automate or manually store the envelopes. This is also stupid, but clearly feasible.
Finally, resources do not imply corruption. It's been shown time and time again. You seem to think the Democratic Republic of the Congo would be a lovely place if they just didn't have all those diamonds and cobalt. Really, because the Congo is corrupt, they put diamonds and cobalt to poor use.
I believe you believe it's a good solution. I believe you haven't really thought deeply about the separation of concerns. We ought to have a system that's used ethically and responsibly with whatever safeguards are necessary to keep the system that way. Nobody likes paying taxes, but the IRS seems to do fairly good job of tracking income. You ever have a problem with selective service? Do you think they're secretly trying to draft you specifically as punishment for some imagined slight?
The current system doesn't catch people it should. The current system fails to exonerate people it should. The current system creates a ridiculous regulatory burden on tens of thousands of small businesses. The current system is a perfect example of government waste, because we've forced the government to handle the problem in a completely fucking stupid way.
edit
Just to continue the rant,
At the time of sale, generate a UUID. Register the serial number and UUID with the ATF. Register the Name, address and DOB and UUID with the census bureau. With any given investigation, require a judge to get a warrant to get the ATF to release the UUID for a gun. get another warrant to get the name from the census bureau.
Pepper the census bureau's data with other UUID's, like tax filing, voter registration, getting farm subsidies, whatever other random stuff is handy. it's just a big map of names to stuff. stuff that has no value in isolation. It requires conspirators in 2 agencies to target individuals, it requires stealing 2 databases to reconstruct useful information.
This provides a real separation between guns and people, that can be reconstructed as needed, but requires local authorities to make the connection, and only under judicial review. This not only catches bad guys, it keeps people who did nothing wrong out of jail. The current system ruins innocent people's lives.
More infamously, some states share that info, Florida with Maryland, where travelers have been pulled over and hassled about whether they've got a gun, which due to the FOPA of '86 safe passage protections, probably doesn't even apply when they're just passing through the state (in the case mentioned below, the gun owner has no legal way to possesses it in NJ, so left it behind in his safe).
See e.g. http://www.tbo.com/list/columns-tjackson/jackson-gun-owner-u... which is what a police state looks like.
http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-man...
>> That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name.