Reducing murder is a worthy cause. Restricting people’s freedom is not. Education changes behavior and demand. Not strong arm tactics. I don’t need to see the issue from more than one POV. Prohibition reduces freedom. Fining people for nonagressive acts which harm no one infringes their freedom. The threat of violence to that person if they do not pay the fine infringes on their freedom. I don’t think that fines in general actually make a big difference on the number of offenses. Do speeding tickets stop people from speeding? Cops sitting on the side of the road do. Sure it will have some repercussions… but to think it will make a notable difference is the ludicrous part. You simply won’t get a measurable change in murders with firearms if you pass these laws. They do not affect the murderer at all. Given the situation which leads to most murders it’s not going to change anything. The gun is just the tool. You may have a reduction in crimes of passion but most murder is planned in some way. The tool makes no difference except for the efficiency. If you somehow made guns disappear they’d just use knives or bats or any number of things. Regardless… someone else’s actions do not justify the infringement on the freedoms of others. You are saying to me that it’s OK for you and the government you support to use guns to force me not to own guns or keep 24/7 surveillance of them so someone else who i’m not responsible for doesn’t use them to kill?

You are using utility as a reason to infringe on my freedoms. Those stats are far from worthless given that. You want to minimize death. More people die because of vehicular accident than murdered. About 3 times more. If I were to a follower of the utility argument I’d go after the cause of the most deaths first and foremost. If you are not going to follow with that logic then why not are you also fighting for banning other tools of murder, suicide, and accidental death? 1,914 were stabbed to death in 2005. Are you suggesting we should make everyone keep track of knives? Isn’t the possibility of decreasing murder by knife a worthy cause?

Why do you think gun prohibition is insane? All law abiding individuals wouldn’t have guns to get stolen and you need not worry about fining them or the gun being used in a murder.

If you want to lower murders… look at the situations in which they occur and why. You’ll never stop the jealous husbands or the serial killers. You can however end prohibition on all drugs and destroy the black market that leads to a lot of the crime and murder though. Prohibition and fines go against demand and behavior and will always fail. By attempting to smooth the curve you simply increase the extremes. Your handing over of liberties to the government in hopes of safety will only feed the monster and accelerate and increase the infringement by that government of your freedom.

then its unfortunate that there are FIDs in the first place. if a criminals firearm is possessed even after they pay the price, they can still get a firearm in alternative ways outside this paperwork/laminated card system we have if they want to. repossessing the firearm just creates a demand in the black-market. the FID serves the same purpose as any other government issued license–its a societal placebo. a drivers license only “proves” you can legally drive a vehicle. you can still physically drive a car without owning the license.

I mean, are you really saying we have the same amount of double-parking violations with parking tickets as we would have without any repercussions whatsoever? That’s just ludicrous. I’m not talking about eliminating murder caused by firearms completely, just possibly decreasing it. That’s certainly a worthy cause.

And of course uses are important. I mean, those statistics are worthless when we account for how many people drive, versus how many people use firearms. Worthless, when we account how many people died in a car crash intentionally caused by the driver, versus how many people were intentionally murdered with a firearm. One tool’s main purpose is to kill/harm, another’s is transportation.

“The fine is not going to be a major motivator to safeguard your gun any more than you already do.” I think any non-intrusive motivator to safeguard guns is better to have than to not. I think I already described how it would work, disregarding the technicalities I mentioned, which might make the law moot to begin with.

I think prohibition would be insane though. “police and the military would end up having them” - ugh. It IS unfortunate that NJ FIDs are good for life - so a person gets to keep his/her gun despite various criminal offenses, as long as he/she pays the price (jailtime,fines) for them? That’s illogical. Is there no probation even?

Yes! exactly. Because you haven’t gotten rid of the means. You aren’t wiping away HOW and WHY the product is being produced, you are only erasing the end result. Out of sight isn’t always out of mind.

“In order to remove the demand, a greater social stigma needs to be placed on using the product.”

i doubt it. the “demons” of society will always be there no matter what you do, as youve answered above.

but what about those that commit these acts not for profit, but for personal gratification and not for mass distribution?

i believe that on the other side of the coin, the social stigma has also served as an excuse for these predators and their actions. teary-eyed when discovered, they agree with the labels and support the claims that they are ill. and society seems content with that. and then life goes on.

perhaps extracting humanity’s need for sexual gratification and profit is the solution. but thats a lot of work, not to mention impossible–quite honestly, i like sex and money.

speaking of sex and money, prostitution. a lot of good prohibition has done in that department.

I maintain that to preserve individual liberties prohibition is sometimes necessary.

Prohibition is the act of infringing on a persons freedom. Do you not see this? Murder is an end. The gun is a means. The creation of child pornography is an end. A camera is the means. If you will argue that a gun should be outlawed to prevent murder than it seems to me you should also outlaw the camera to prevent child pornography. Nether prohibition will stop them as there are other means and the demand will still exist. The cleverness and degree at which people will go to get around prohibitions is an example as to the power of the market.

Why does that matter? Pointing out a safety issue is pointing out a safety issue. The size doesn’t matter.

Because I’m not the one arguing for the collective good. You are the ones sacrificing the individual for the collective. Not I. If you wish to save the most people you aught to be going after the cause of the most deaths first. Otherwise you are failing to raise utility in the most efficient manner.

how do you truly prohibit such a deplorable act such as child pornography? do you regulate video equipment and digital camera by enforcing permits to own these devises? do you make the information these devices record somehow viewable to authorities as you upload them on your equipment?

I thought about this long and hard. I even slept on it. Prohibition in this case is designed to curb profiting from an act that our nation considers deplorable. Within our own borders we also strive to make it difficult to perform the act. Unfortunately child pornography will continue flowing in from outside our borders. This does not mean we should allow it to be freely distributed in the US. By prohibiting the sale or ownership of child pornography you are in essence imposing an economic sanction on the country that is exporting it. The hope is that prohibition can be enforced so well that the nation exporting it will not profit. The problem is the scarcity of the product drives the price way up and the demand is not easily going to go away. In order to remove the demand, a greater social stigma needs to be placed on using the product. That stigma would have to be HUGE as purveyors of child-porn are already looked upon as the scum of the earth.

I maintain that to preserve individual liberties prohibition is sometimes necessary.

Also if we want to talk pornography regulation, a topic I feel very strongly about and am quite knowledgeable on, we could always bump this to the article bile posted about porn.

In 2005; 10,100 people were murdered with a firearm out of 14,860. The same year 43,443 people died in a car crash. 5849 were non-motorists. There appears (numbers are hard to find) to be about the same number of guns as cars in the USA. If you are worrying about people’s safety then shouldn’t you be worried about drivers and cars and not guns and gun owners given that 4 times as many people die as a result?

As far as the “Unsafe at Any Speed” argument:
Why does that matter? Pointing out a safety issue is pointing out a safety issue. The size doesn’t matter.

Opening the market for guns would probably cause little change in crimes where guns are used. It’s not hard for them to get one now… I don’t know that a completely open market would change the true availability. Only the most lazy of criminals wouldn’t be able to get a hold of one. With guns easier to get it could mean non-criminals would have more guns and so less serious crimes may occur simply because the risk is higher. Rape may also drop. Different types of murder may rise or lower but I’m not sure it’d be a large difference.

If you ban guns only criminals, police and the military would end up having them. I think murder is the only crime that may lower but that is only with murder by gun that aren’t planned. Even then crimes of passion could just as easily end in murder with a knife or a baseball bat as with a gun. I’m not sure in those cases the tool has much to do with the outcome of the crime. If you ban manufacturing of guns you push those companies overseas and then just as we have illegal drug trade you will have a big illegal gun trade.

A gun can be used for many things. It fires a projectile. Just like a bow or a sling. The object itself is useless without an individual to load, aim and fire it. The motivation for those actions vary. Many hunt, some for protection (killing the target not necessary), some shoot targets or trick shoot, some murder and some as an intimidation device. The possible uses aren’t important. The actual individual uses are. In 2005; 10,100 people were murdered with a firearm out of 14,860. The same year 43,443 people died in a car crash. 5849 were non-motorists. There appears (numbers are hard to find) to be about the same number of guns as cars in the USA. If you are worrying about people’s safety then shouldn’t you be worried about drivers and cars and not guns and gun owners given that 4 times as many people die as a result?

The fine is not going to be a major motivator to safeguard your gun any more than you already do. Do parking tickets stop people from double parking? Are you then going to jail people to make the offense serious enough to force people to do it? I don’t think that’s going to fly.

The current obligation is unconstitutional, read the 2nd Amendment. NJ FIDs are good for life though you need to have them updated if you move. To buy handguns you need a purchasing permit for each one. I’m pretty sure they can not be denied unless you’ve otherwise would have ‘lost the right’ to have a gun in general.

how do you truly prohibit such a deplorable act such as child pornography? do you regulate video equipment and digital camera by enforcing permits to own these devises? do you make the information these devices record somehow viewable to authorities as you upload them on your equipment?

even if you prohibit the products, do you really feel you are prohibiting the avenues one goes to attain them?

prohibition just makes things illegal and harder to get. it doesnt stop the flow of anything.

prohibition doesnt work because it cant work. all prohibition does manage to do, and do very well, is develop a very organized and controlled black market and increases street value of these “banned” goods.

I agree that prohibition creates a black market and a boatload of problems. That being said, for the greater good, some things need to be prohibited. Quick example, child pornography. The act of creating child pornography so greatly infringes on someones rights that the product needs to be prohibited.