By Rob Morse
Louisiana- (Ammoland.com)- Ireland, and later India, were once under British rule. At one point in their rebellions, they ignored the outside laws they didn’t like. We are doing that again in the United States. It is hard for me to imagine gun owners breaking the law. Once you’ve been around the gun culture for a while you learn that licensed gun owners are the rule-following type. Many gun owners would like to follow the law all the time, but they can’t. Gun owners are not alone. Neither the lawyers nor the judges who work with firearms law every day can keep up with the 23 thousand gun laws. Breaking our gun laws is more than a matter of ignorance. The very prosecutors charged with enforcing our firearms laws routinely ignore them as well. On second consideration, the government lawyers ignore far more firearms laws than do gun owners. Remember that when you hear a politician say we need more firearms restrictions.
I’ll start with gun owners first.
- The city council of Cleveland, Ohio imposed gun transfer registration with the police. Cleveland gun owners ignored those laws.. completely.
- Sunnyvale, California passed a measure outlawing all ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 cartridges. No one turned in their old magazines to the Sunnyvale department of public safety.
- The Los Angeles city council passes a law similar to the one in Sunnyvale. Look for similar results.
- Washington State passed a law requiring universal background checks for every firearms transfer. Neither law enforcement nor gun owners knew how to obey the law at first. Now, both the state police and the honest gun owners of Washington simply ignore the law.
- Oregon passed a similar background check law. Several law enforcement agencies have already said they would not enforce it. Some counties went further and passed resolutions telling their sheriff he must ignore the law.
- Both Connecticut and New York mandated registration of modern rifles. Only a few percent of gun owners complied with these laws. The state looked at its records and realized that only a few percent of law enforcement officers had registered their personally owned rifles as well.
- Knife laws are more widely ignored than firearms laws.
Think about that for a minute. Gun owners are rule-followers. They are a bunch of boy scouts and girl scouts. They want to obey the law. We know licensed gun owners are more law abiding than the police! Gun owners obey the law until the law doesn’t make any sense, until the law punishes honest gun owners rather than punishing criminals.
As a gun owner, I almost felt guilty for a second, but then I realized that prosecutors ignore firearms laws hundreds of times a day.
- The Illinois State Police routinely exceed the 30-day time limit allowed for them to issue a state mandated firearms owners ID card. It is easier to count the few instances when Illinois returned an ID card on time rather than tally the many times they were late.
- Firearms purchase permits are delayed well beyond the 30-day maximum period in New Jersey. New Jersey citizens were murdered while they waited for state permission to buy a gun for self-defense. As the New Jersey Second Amendment Society has shown, any excuse will do when a government official denies a citizen’s request. The government officials are NEVER prosecuted for breaking these laws.
- Concealed carry applications in California routinely exceed the state mandated response time.
- Prosecutors routinely ignore the straw purchases that put guns into the hands of criminals. Even the criminal isn’t usually prosecuted for possession of a stolen firearm. That is the first charge prosecutors bargain away. In the rare case of prosecution, straw purchasers receive minor sentences. In contrast, many gun owners were sentenced to the maximum extent of the law for minor paperwork violations.
- The right to keep and bear arms is written into the constitution of 44 of our 50 states. I can only recall a few instances where a state attorney general or a local prosecutor pursued charges when the state or city abused the law and denied our human right of self-defense. Imagine if you said you were too busy to file your permits on time.. or too busy to pay your taxes. That lawlessness is a sad legacy to leave our children.
Remember that when you hear them call for even more laws.
~_~_
About Rob Morse: Rob writes about gun rights at Ammoland, at Clash Daily and on his SlowFacts blog. He co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast. He is also an NRA pistol instructor and combat handgun competitor.
So let me get this straight….. The author talks about “law abiding” citizens ignoring the law when it comes to certain laws regarding their weapons, Does that not make them criminals and not law abiding?
The FED-GOV can kiss my tailpipe if they ever think I will turn in my guns. Molon Labe!
@S F: The Violence Policy Center (aka The We Will Say Anything to Get All Guns Banned Except Those Belonging to Criminals Center) report is totally distorted. They include kills that were self defense and self inflicted among other flaws. But leave it to a trolling gun grabber like you to extol it’s virtues. And their idea of “lawless behavior” can be as simple as joining the NRA, having a hunting license or them being put on the “secret lists” now being complied by all the communists in power and their comrades. I’m truly sorry about your friend’s sisters. Maybe… Read more »
“The state looked at its records and realized that only a few percent of law enforcement officers had registered their personally owned rifles as well.”
Be careful substantiating this claim. It was widely reposted about a month ago, before people realized that the online source was a social satire site, and the article wasn’t true.
You say
“Once you’ve been around the gun culture for a while you learn that licensed gun owners are the rule-following type. ”
I feel compelled to point out that MOST states require no license. Including yours. (which is a good thing. Licensing is stupid.)
You don’t need a license to buy a gun, except in CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, IA, MA, and NJ
and you only need one for handguns in IN, MD, MN, NE, NY, NC, and RI.
Sean: You may safely and completely disregard ANYTHING published by the Violence Policy Center.
When every act or failure to act is a violation of law, all they have to do is decide what to prosecute when you become inconvenient to the state. “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” -Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of… Read more »
Violence Policy Center???? Have you read their goals on their web site? ISSUES Investigating the Gun Lobby The Impacts of Gun Violence Regulating the Gun Industry Concealed Carry Killers Firearms Laws Self-Defense Gun Use Murder-Suicide Mass Shootings Assault Weapons Gun Trafficking VPC NEWS HIGHLIGHTS New York Times editorial cites VPC’s Concealed Carry Killers project. “The Concealed-Carry Fantasy,” October 26, 2015 The Guardian features the VPC in an in-depth article on the leadership of the NRA. “’The NRA didn’t tolerate dissent well’: how the gun lobby stays on-message,” October 23, 2015 Nowhere do they mention anything about the Constitutional rights of… Read more »
What you really need to understand about the highest levels of the anti-gun movement. They’re operating at a much higher level than we are. Their singular ultimate goal is to remove virtually all firearms from the Civilian population of the United States. They would be glad if this can be achieved sooner, rather than latter, but, they’re willing to me patient, even if it takes more than a hundred years to achieve a total reduction in the available supply of firearms to near zero. They see this effort at the ‘strategic’ Level. They’re working toward their goal through numbers of… Read more »
AMEN!!!!!
In the few states that keep the data required for thorough analysis (Texas is one of them), people with gun carry permits were found to commit violent crimes about 1/6 as often as the general population. They were even found to be more law-abiding than police officers.
Since you need a fairly clean record to get a carry permit in the first place, this should come as no surprise. Law-abiding gun owners are safer to be around than the rest of society.
I wonder when the gun owner will or has been put in prison with the criminal who stole his gun?
Imagine, being put in jail next to the person who robbed you, comparing sentences and finding yours were stacked and his were negotiated to nothing.
What a load of crap! Have you seen Violence Policy Center’s report on CCW killers lately? There are lots of “gun owners” who are anything but law abiding. California alone tracks gun owners who become “prohibited possessors” because of their own lawless behavior to the tune of tens of thousands a year. Two sisters of one of my best friends were shot and killed in Pittsburgh by one of those former “law abiding” gun owners in February 2014. Keep telling people not to follow the law in Washington and Oregon and they will set you straight when they get arrested.
@ Janek, The only one left will be king obama. The rest of us are doomed to just shoot each other. We have about ten decks of cards with the pictures of the most wanted. That covers most of the white house, senate, and the house.
Once they’ve criminalized everyone, then what?