In the context of this particular crime, I agree that there was already a law in place and the lack of enforcement of that law (i.e., the Air Force's failure to provide the information to fill the data base) is the issue.
But the larger issue, as you and roamer have cited, is ease at which bad guys can illegally obtain guns. I've heard the response that no new laws are needed because criminals can "always" get the guns they need. In a nation where the number of guns far outstrips the number of people, illegal transfers of firearms are simply a fact of life, and the carnage caused by illegal guns is the price we pay for living in this country.
Nope, you still missed the point. No new laws will do one damned thing to stop those criminals from obtaining guns.
If they can't steal or buy them, they will build them. If they can import cocaine, run sex slaves internationally, penetrate international borders, obtain or manufacture explosives and weapons of war, what makes you think the dribbling of ink on a piece of paper is going to stop them?
As if a paper that said says "You can't invade" stopped Attila the Hun or the sack of Rome.
The law will not stop people who are determined to to not follow the law.
Another law, by weight of the law books, by preponderance of regulation, will not make one whit of difference. Especially when
all the existing laws against a felon (or military equivalent), domestic abuser, and mental patient with a history of violence having a firearm didn't work: he was not stopped by the law. I can't agree with that. That is why I continue to advocate a similar regime as we require for motor vehicle ownership - registration and insurance. Own as many guns as you want, so long as they are registered and insured.
The insurance I'd propose is similar to PIP insurance that most states require of car owners. Simple no-fault insurance that will pay the medical bills and restore lost income to the victims of injury caused by an insured gun. The way I'd work it is to require insurance up until the time when a gun is legally sold, transferred or reported lost to the police. That will provide a monetary incentive to report sales, transfers and losses, and to keep guns safely stored so as to prevent losses. It would help address the abuse where sellers don't have your sense of moral obligation not to conduct a private sale when the buyer is "sketchy". Conduct a private sale or swap, but only upon such conditions that permit your obligation to continue to insure that gun to be lifted.
We live with such requirements routinely with our cars - useful but potentially deadly implements just as guns are. The burden of insurance causes us to make sure unauthorized use is monitored, and that transactions take place with proper transfer of title and registration.
Oh no. No effing way. I currently carry insurance on six vehicles, and whether I am driving them all at the same time or not, I am still required to carry that insurance. My state is NOT a no-fault state, and for that reason I can afford that, because my premiums are based on my conduct as a driver, and my record of doing so safely, not on the behaviour of every idiot who just moved here from out of state who thinks they know how to drive on snow and ice.
Because my premiums don't include paying for the actions of others (a socialist concept) and instead hinge on MY actions, I can afford those vehicles as an operational expense. That insurance costs me less for the fleet than one bad driver pays for one vehicle, and I should not have to pick up the tab for that bad driver.
But carrying insurance on a firearm which might sit in the cabinet and not see the light of day for months, sometimes a year or more, is ridiculous and could only be an onerous regulation designed to make it entirely too expensive to keep a large number of firearms.
Equally ridiculous is the concept that having a large number (whatever you consider a "large" number to be) of firearms is more dangerous than only having one or two. In fact, that one man with 100 firearms is just going to have to make quite a few trips to carry them all. As a practical matter (and despite all that two-fisted special effects trick shooting on tee vee) you only shoot one at a time--it is that
one which makes a difference, not the dozen(s) in the gun safe.
Those I have known with only that one rifle are
VERY good with it, they know every quirk about it, the ballistics, the holdover at distance, (bullet drop) whether it shoots a little to the right or left of the factory sights, and can generally pick a gnat off a fly's ass at 100 yards without ruffling the wings of the fly using that one rifle. The guy who owns a hundred rifles can't just pull one out at random generally, and be nearly so accurate (he might hit the fly, too).
So, without affecting the ability of a person to be accurate, put rounds down range, to hit a target, the law you propose would just assail a collector with another layer of ongoing expense. Just NO.
And then there is the very real risk of those lists of firearms being hacked to provide targets for criminals to come and steal the firearms.
De-milling (rendering them a pretty piece of non-functional junk) is not an option, either, because that is just the destruction of guns, not allowing some collector to collect guns without the burden of registration and your insurance scheme. Within a couple years of the 1968 GCA, a fellow named Kenyon Ballew was gunned down during a BATF raid based on a hot tip that he had grenades sitting on his mantel. They were not live grenades, but inert practice grenades. That didn't stop the depredations he and his wife were subjected to, nor keep him from being shot in the head by the agents there to seize explosive devices that did not exist. For that reason I will never have anything in my home which only 'looks like' something. It will be legal and functional or it won't be there.
In fact, that insurance/gun registration law would only guarantee another crop of criminals produced not on the 'mean streets', but in the legislature as some bunch of nitwits pass yet another law that makes the thing you were doing (or not doing) legally yesterday illegal tomorrow.
You see, to use your example, we have laws requiring people to carry liability insurance on motor vehicles.
They get ignored, in spite of there being a law, and so often do they get ignored, that part of my auto insurance coverage is for "uninsured motorists" who might run into me.
With millions of firearms out there, a significant number of which have never been recorded on a Form 4473 (that started in 1968), what makes you think that people would run in to register their guns by insuring them individually?
All that law would do is make those firearms without paperwork on them that much more valuable in the real market of cash or trade.
And, back to the original problem, it would do nothing to keep violent people with mental health problems from hurting others. It will, at most force a slight change in tactics. Maybe he would have used a couple of machetes instead?
