Anyone who "loses" a gun that is subsequently used in a crime should be required to forfeit all weapons and have their right to purchase arms revoked. There needs to be sufficient registration and tracking of weapons to make this possible.
What
exactly are you proposing? Like so-called "assault" weapon bans, the devil's in the details.
And the people who write gun control laws never, ever get the details right, either as a result of simple ignorance (we gotta ban barrel shrouds!) or deliberate malfeasance. As exhibit A, I again refer you to the absolute goatrope that the California laws are:
CA flow chart to determine whether or not a rifle is an "assault" weapon. These laws are so complex that individuals with perfectly legal guns have been wrongfully arrested for possession of "assault" weapons by police who don't know the law - multiple times. See
Richards v Harris.
You wrote that you favor changing the laws to make no distinction between how a person whose gun is legitimately stolen, and a willful straw purchaser? You didn't use those words, but you clearly stated you want to make the victim of a crime of theft a prohibited person. You want them to permanently surrender one of their most basic civil rights, #2 in our nation's Bill of Rights, because they were the victim of a crime? Really?
We could start with actually prosecuting people for being straw purchasers, which is rarely done. I'm not totally sure why - I assume because it's hard to prove deliberate intent there, since the primary witness to the crime is also a crimnal.
Of course, if you take a step closer towards reasonable, backpedal a bit, and revise your proposed law to only punish people who
negligently lose guns that are later used in crimes, the burden and difficulty of proof is exponentially higher.
Remember, one of the claims at the center of the ATF's ridiculous defense to the Fast & Furious absurdity, was that they
didn't have enough evidence to actually
convict the straw purchasers they were tracking! But suddenly it's going to be feasible to convict people accused of accidentally-on-purpose "losing" guns?
Or we could back up further and look at states that
already have laws to punish individuals who negligently store guns which are subsequently stolen, or who fail to report a stolen gun promptly:
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0335.htm
It doesn't appear that these laws are really being enforced either, or that anyone is keeping track of the actual impact of either those guns or the laws to promote better storage habits. And of course, as is always the case when it comes to gun laws, there isn't actually any documented reduction in violent crime.
What's the point of accepting infringments on liberty if there isn't even a tangible benefit?
As for registration -
The core of resistance to registration is that history teaches us that there's a high probability that eventually it will lead to or facilitate additional restrictions or outright confiscation. If you think confiscation is impossible or unlikely, I simply refer you to the deliberate and systematic confiscation of firearms from law-abiding people that occurred after Katrina. It took about
two whole days for a simple natural disaster, one that was predicted a week+ in advance, to so strain civilization that the authorities felt the need to seize weapons.
I'm not the strawman yappy fabricated a couple posts back; I'm not really that worried about the police or ATF going door-to-door collecting guns in the near future. But I'm also not naive enough to pretend to know what the United States will be like in 50 or 100 years. In 1934 a bunch of racists, classists, and well-meaning easily manipulated idiots colluded to produce the National Firearms Act - here we are, 80 years later, still putting up with that law and its effects on lawful gun owners.
I'm not willing to tolerate another incremental gun control law, that my descendants in 2112 will look back on and with the same level of disgust that rational people today view the NFA ... or worse, that my descendants will find themselves geuniunely in need of their civil rights to armed self defense, armed community defense, or armed defense from tyranny ... and find themselves disarmed, except for hunting and target guns.
150 years ago we had a civil war. 70 years ago we had a world war. I find it disturbing that so many people are so complacant and confident that there won't be another existential threat to our nation 70 or 150 years from now. So complacent and confident that they're willing to incrementally disarm the public, because 12 murders made them afraid.
That wasn't even the biggest criminal
body count in this country that weekend!
Attempts to create new registration requirements are not acceptable.
