@nus@mstdn.social ...sure they would. Even us gun owners and 2A advocates recognize that a prohibition on selling guns to those who are addicted to crack is a good law to have.
@LouisIngenthron @nus all that does is make sure no one in America's large gun obsessed demographic never seeks treatment for their substance use problems.
@dragonfrog @nus@mstdn.social Not the way it's currently implemented. You have to self-report on the background check when you buy a gun. If you're actively addicted to a substance, you shouldn't be buying guns. If you own a gun already, then there's nothing preventing you from seeking help.
I mean, ironically the law that does nothing ever to actually reduce addicts' ownership of guns, is probably better than a law that did anything.
@dragonfrog @nus@mstdn.social Right, it basically just provides an enforcement mechanism for after-the-fact, but it's a federal crime, so you still don't want to be charged with it.
So it's useful for needlessly stacking carceral punishment onto the sentence of someone who's already done harm with a gun and who needs addiction treatment not prison, but no use in reducing crime.
Sounds very much like the kind of thing a stereotypical 2A advocate would love, yup.
@dragonfrog @nus@mstdn.social If you harm or murder someone while under the influence of drugs, then you're long past the point of just needing addiction treatment.
Criminal laws are about enforcing punishments for crime after it's been committed, not preventing or reducing crime. There are other programs for that.
The only thing this law achieves, as near as I can tell from your description, is to give prosecutors and judges the ability to punish people more harshly for identical crimes, the more downtrodden they already - i.e. the harder it's going to be for the convicted person to reintegrate and avoid reoffending, the more the system can stack onto the sentence, so those people become even more likely to reoffend.
Which, indeed, is exactly the kind of thing the stereotypical 2A advocate loves - because it's the kind of thing they're confident won't be applied to them, but only to those people.
Which people exactly is that, bubba?
Oh, you know. Those people.
@dragonfrog @nus@mstdn.social If they manage to buy the gun despite being an addict? Yeah. Same as how you'll spend more time in jail if you T-bone another car while drunk than while sober.
I guess it does have some preventative effect though... in that it provides a small barrier at an FFL to allow a dealer to reject a customer with a history of drug abuse or who appears to be actively strung-out. And it also allows relatives of the person to report that they're addicted and own a gun to authorities *before* they cause harm.
Waddaya mean "manage to buy the gun despite being an addict"? Do you think most people with addictions are destitute or something? Do you think you could identify a person with an addiction in the course of a 5 minute conversation over a shop counter? Do you think addiction means the person can't get sober enough to pass, for long enough to run a few errands?
@dragonfrog @nus@mstdn.social If I recall correctly, an FFL has an obligation to reject the purchase if they have probable cause to suspect the customer is not legally permitted to buy the gun. Including, but not limited to, failing their background check. Those guys take those rules seriously, because the ATF isn't afraid to pull their license.
Re drunk driving:
Buying a car while suffering alcoholism is legal. Driving a car while drunk is equally illegal regardless of addiction.
My neighbour was likely alcoholic, and deliberately avoided getting his full driver's license (we have a graduated system here - with a full license the legal limit for driving is .08% BAC, for the intermediate level it's 0%). He did this specifically so he would never be tempted to drive when he "thought he was sober enough."
Anyway, I'd be supportive of that *totally different* approach regarding guns.
Operating a firearm while intoxicted - on legal or illegal substances doesn't matter, whether one has or does not have an addiction doesn't matter - being criminalized.
Drinking a few beers before going to the firing range being a crime. Having an addiction, but keeping the gun locked away except when you're sober - legal.
@LouisIngenthron @nus
I didn't say they "just" need addiction treatment.
I did however mean that at the point they're using a gun either to support their addiction or while they're actively intoxicated, the one thing that very much won't dissuade them is the length of the sentence they're likely to face.
The thing that's still gone entirely undefended AFAICT is, how does the fact they were suffering an addiction at the time they bought it make the subsequent crime itself worse?