I've been thinking about gun laws quite a bit lately. The thing is, even if you set aside the illegal use of a firearm (discount that whole pesky murder thing for a second), most of the illegal uses I've read about in the last decade or more involve violation of various Federal gun laws aside from the actual use of the firearm (straw purchase, felon in posession, unregistered automatic weapon, etc.).
The case of someone who legally has a firearm and uses it for illegal purposes seems to be pretty unusual. We just keep layering more laws, as if we can somehow make it MORE illegal or make it illegal ENOUGH that people who ignore the law will suddenly start obeying firearms laws. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I just don't understand how making possession of something that they are already in violation of the law by having will help stop people from possessing that item. It hasn't worked with alcohol (prohibition), with drugs (witness our current troubles along our southern border), or firearms (criminals still get guns - imagine that! A criminal that commits crimes!).
We're hearing increasing calls from the current administration for the banning of assault weapons based on the unverified (and unverifiable - they won't let us have SNs for most of these weapons) claim that the violence along the borders is a result of smuggling of weapons out of the USA. There have certainly been some cases of illegal weapons smuggling, but the claims that the automatic weapons are coming from the USA, when they are almost completely unavailable to legitimate purchasers seems like a bit of a fairy tale designed to work some political magic.
I would encourage anyone reading this to contact their Federal Representative and Senators to demand that they consider no legislation to re-enact the assault weapons ban or any other law regarding making firearms illegal.
Until we can get serial numbers that will uphold the claim that drug smugglers are buying guns illegally in this country and taking them across the border, it seems much more likely to me that we will only make our own citrizens more vulnerable to the drug gang violence (as the people of Mexico are) by taking steps to address a problem that can't be substantiated to actually exist. Furthermore, the purchases and smuggling are already acknowledged to be illegal, so why don't we try enforcing our existing laws (and maybe close our border to illegal traffic in both directions at the same time!).
