You can't expect gun owners to spend $500,000 on a bank-grade safe. A trigger lock or a stout lock box should be sufficient to keep children from accessing it. I don't know what more can be reasonably expected.

Thieves steal cars and kill people with them, but I don't see people excoriating the car owners for their negligence.

I wouldn't let gun owners off the hook too easily, though - leaving a gun in a car is criminally stupid. But it seems to me that the person who stole the gun should be tossed in prison for 10 years or so. Injure or kill someone with it? 25 years to life.

And where the heck are the biometric models? My iPhone 5s can read my fingerprint in a fraction of a second with 100% accuracy. There has to be some technically feasible, affordable and reliable way to ensure that only the registered owner can fire the gun. A Bluetooth ring or watch worn by the owner?

And if they don't immediately report the theft of those firearms, then they are culpable in subsequent crimes committed with those guns.

If gun owners don't know where there guns are at all times, then they're dangerously irresponsible.

And if a woman can't keep her person secure ...

Whether or not we blame the person wronged really says a lot about us. If your house is broken into because, well, the locks weren't sturdy enough and there weren't bars at the windows, it's your fault and some want to blame you for anything your gun is used for. The only "reasonable precautions" are extreme and you were asking to be robbed. If your person is violated because you're drunk and unconscious after having flirted with a guy, well, no matter--even if the guy is also drunk you're completely in the clear and have no responsibility. Yeah, having the perp drunk would make him the automatic victim if he were sexually assaulted moments later (since he has no ability to consent to an act and no responsibility can be assigned) but is immaterial when it comes to responsibility for the act, since he's responsible for both himself and the drunken woman.

Works the same with a lot of other crimes, but what's the point of posting if you can't make your point in an exaggerated way.

We need to blame somebody, a single person, and we've already settled on the guilty and probably the punishment. All that remains is to find grounds for the conviction.

Even if a gun owner reports the gun, the crime will still happen (or not). Hard to find any sort of causal connection between the criminal's acts and the reporting of the theft. So what good, exactly, does reporting do--how's the owner more or less responsible for another person's actions? But at least we know who the guilty person is ... in this case, all we have to do is find not just the crime but also the person committing the crime.

Do you always reduce women to objects, or only when you're rationalizing irresponsible gun ownership?

But your cute picture is still cute.

My my.

For the people that actually want them for PROTECTION, it kinda seems like they'd love to make sure the world knows 'you come here, you'll get shot' ... but then we all know that entire notion is really just a front ... they mostly just want to stroke and lube their big gun ... and fantasize about blowing some 'bad-guy' away, Rambo-style, like the hero they could never be without their precioussssss.

So havin' the world know the gun is there provides no 'advantage' to them .. other than maybe by drawing someone over to try to steal it ... oh wait, that's another advantage! Maybe they'll get to splatter the thief's blood on the wall!?!

I guess I don't 'get' why any gun owner wouldn't want a publicly accessible registry.

I would think the police would be all over this, since most cops are shot with their own pistols.

If you have something on your finger, like dirt or sweat, it can cause the reader not to accept the input. I just got a new LG G5, and the fingerprint scanner works far more frequently than it doesn't, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's flawless.

I don't blame cops for not wanting to be guinea pigs in a trial run of fingerprint scanners. It might work far more often than not, but it only takes that one "not" to potentially result in a wounded or dead officer. Would you want to sign up for that kind of test run? I wouldn't.

What would be ideal would be something like the smartgun system from an old pen-and-paper RPG game called Shadowrun. The game takes place with lots of future tech, but with our current tech, I think it would be possible to embed a microchip in the officer's palm which, linked to the weapon with RFID, prevents the weapon from discharging if it's not being held by the hand containing the specific chip to which it is paired.

Thus, if the officer drops the weapon, it can't discharge. If a suspect wrestles it away from the officer, it can't discharge. If the concept made it into general usage, only the registered owner of a weapon can fire it. Of course, no system is foolproof, and someone savvy and determined enough could override it, but it would, I think, be beneficial overall.

car works very well, too. It can always tell if I'm inside or outside of the vehicle. Even if you put the key fob inside the door storage pocket, it won't let you lock the car from the outside, but move it just a few inches away and it knows you're no longer in the car.

I don't think the technology has to be 100% perfect. If there are 3 or 4 failures per million tries, it could take a hundred years for a failure to occur, given the rate at which police actually fire their guns.

But like any technology that will be used in a fashion where death or injury can result, we should do everything we can to make it as reliable and safe as possible.

Kinda surprised no gun manufacturer has pursued the idea I mentioned. Like I said, it's not new. Shadowrun first came out in the early 90s. With current RFID tech, I can't imagine it'd be difficult to construct.

Then claim stolen.

The whole thing is a monumental joke. Every illicit weapon in America began as a legal gun. There are no illegal gun factories of any significance.

Lots of crooked gun owners out there.

is when despicable coward gunner trash pretend to care about science when they know full well that the coward NRA prevents all scientific studies. nevertheless, let's all pretend that all illegal guns are made in a mythical illegal gun factory, instead of sold mostly by racist gunner trash. Tra la.

Who is "despicable coward gunner trash"?

purchased and then illegally sold vs stolen.

I know literally hundreds of gun owners (I was the secretary of the local gun club for almost 10 years). I don't know of a single person who would risk actual jail time for selling a gun just to make a few hundred bucks profit. These are people with jobs, families, ties to the community. It just sounds insane to me.

I'm sure that there are professional 'straw man' purchasers who buy in bulk and sell to anyone out of the trunk of their car, and that needs to be made illegal in any states where it is currently not. But your suggestion that average people are buying legally and selling illegally seems ridiculous on the face of it. Such an outrageous claim requires proof.

I think it's the case, as it so often is, that 1% of the people are causing 99% of the problem. Straw man sales could be slowed or halted be imposing limits on how many guns can be purchased at one time.

white, racist gunner trash.

i wonder what the L&S rate of shiny new AR-15s is, compared to, say, 30 year old revolvers.

If you can't afford a safe place to keep your guns you should not have any guns.

everyone should rush out and get a gun to protect themselves.

"Harris is the highest level law enforcement officer in California, and the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ). DOJ is responsible for maintaining criminal records, mental illness records, records of those who have become ineligible to possess firearms, and all of the databases used to perform background checks on gun buyers, to register firearms, and to take firearms away from people who are prohibited from possessing them but who still have firearms registered in their name.

Those records, and the related databases, are a hot mess."


http://213ajq29v6vk19b76q3534cx.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Special-Feature-K-Harris.pdf

not reported it stolen, you get jail time.

Small quick access bio-metric safes for pistols for home or car. Large steel gun safes for home. Usually sold for less then half of what a single gun costs. They are not fool proof and won't stop a determined thief, but they have to plan and work for it.

Proper storage of your firearms does reduce the chances of theft and accidental harm.

No wonder so many Americans are in the gun business

Safer than selling meth and crack

The chances of being investigated let alone charged and convicted are practically nil

You don't even have to unload the truck. Just input the invoice numbers into your shop computer and call the insurance company

a simple detective analysis based on motive, opportunity and profitability

One of the most common and most profitable rackets for the mafia was skimming.

Take over a business, skim profits by keeping two sets of books and sell inventory out the back door
until the operation goes broke. Then torch the place and bilk the insurance company

This is why I don't consider Scorcese movies, gangster films They are sociological descriptions about how America works and has worked since the post civil war period

Consider Scorcese's Casino The restaurant skim and torch job could have been a gun shop and would have been a lot more profitable than selling steaks out the back door

operandi for small scale gun running by private individuals. Also it would be interesting to have statistics about how many multiple thefts are reported by the same individuals and how many insurance claims are associated with them

Having said that, I have seen a number of cases where dealers have claimed numerous break ins involving substantial numbers of guns

Here is a classic example

http://bearingarms.com/jenn-j/2016/05/03/100s-guns-stolen-california-gun-store-burglary/

One hundred firearms many valued at $1000 each stolen in five minutes

All the weapons in glass cabinets, not secured in vaults as one might expect with such valuable inventory

That is a massive moral liability, using an insurance industry term

Was it a smash and grab or an inside job to get a quick buck from a large inventory and hit the insurance company for a double dip?

There is so much money in illegal arms sales and so many gun shops competing for the same customers that one might be forgiven for believing that legitimate gun dealers would be sorely tempted to leave their businesses vulnerable to break in

they don't secure their guns