Thursday, July 21, 2011

How Do You Regulate a Black Market?

Sebastian wrote a typically sarcastic post, to which his usual fanboys all fluttered around with agreement and applause. It contained the mandatory "An illegal market in Chicago? How could that happen?" Don't these guys get tired of the same old nonsense?

In a fit of sappy sacrasm, he asked, "How do you regulate a black market?"

Here's my comment:

You really want to know how to regulate a black market? You turn off the tap. You require all guns bought by anyone anywhere to require a background check first. Then you license gun owners and register guns. Then you require gun owners to store their guns safely at home.

Those measures would stop the gun flow. Over about ten years you'd see dramatic improvement, not in regulating the black market and you sarcastically said, but in controlling the source.

And what is that source, it's you Sebastian and all your friends. It's the gun manufacturers and the FFL guys and all you civilian gun owners who let your guns so easily slip into that black market. Take responsibility for your part in keeping things the way they are, or actually making them worse.

You're responsible.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

17 comments:

  1. Somehow the FACT That most illegal firearms start out as legal items seems to get lost in the debate. Yes, they start out legal and whether through straw-purchase, theft, loss, direct sale (e.g., V-Tech and Tucson), or whatever end up in the hands of criminals.

    That's why they don't want firearm trace data released to the general public since it looks bad to see all those legally bought handguns ending up in the hands of criminals.

    And if they were REALLY stolen, then why the reticence about having laws requiring the reporting of the theft? WOuldn't a legit gun owner report the theft anyway?

    The problem is that if registration were legally required, it would cut down on the amount of guns sold.

    Got that, gunloons?

    It cuts the gun manufacturers' bottom line to cut off the flow of arms to criminals.

    There is somethign called willful blindness (which is sometimes called ignorance of law, willful ignorance or contrived ignorance or Nelsonian knowledge) that is a term used in law to when an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable.

    The problem is that the facts are rather glaring and obvious, yet these people would prefer to not admit, or publicise, their existance

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  2. Ah, Laci, articulate as always.

    I'm so glad you brought up the part about willful blindness.

    While watching the streaming live coverage of the Rupert Murdoch hearings in th UK (which mentioned that concept of willfull blindness more than once), I didn't switch off from the network that carried the coverage, which happened to be Current TV, the cable network Al Gore started up. Immediately afterwards there was a documentary following, about guns god and gangs, where an interviewer inquired of gang members about how they acquired their guns, including assault weapons. One answer was they were bought from corrupt police. I thought that was an interesting path for illegal weapons.

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  3. "One answer was they were bought from corrupt police. I thought that was an interesting path for illegal weapons."

    Works for Mexican criminals.

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  4. Laci: “And if they were REALLY stolen, then why the reticence about having laws requiring the reporting of the theft? WOuldn't a legit gun owner report the theft anyway?”

    Exactly, so why the need to create a law to punish the victim of a crime when the legitimate theft victims are reporting it anyway?

    Mike, you have always blamed DC and Chicago’s failures on the lack of a magical barrier, so how could expanding those regulations to an even larger area (read: harder to control) possibly work?

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  5. The laws would have to be enforced on a national level, even though that means you'd have to deal with your complicated feelings about the federal government.

    "Willful blindness," that's what you guys are suffering from.

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  6. We all know how well turning off the tap of legal cocaine worked.

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  7. Bloggers that are purposefully ignoring the whole Fast and Furious fiasco lecturing others on "Willful Blindness". That's rich.

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  8. "You really want to know how to regulate a black market? You turn off the tap. "

    "Those measures would stop the gun flow. Over about ten years you'd see dramatic improvement, not in regulating the black market and you sarcastically said, but in controlling the source."

    It's pretty bad when you have no logic and blatantly contradict yourself in the post MikeB. Sad really how inane your position is.

    First you claim we should do "thing X" to regulate the black market and in the next sentence you state that doing "thing x" will do nothing to regulate the black market.

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  9. Laci - if anyone would know about ignorance of law it'd be you. Your blatant ignorance of law is astounding.

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  10. You wanna bet that this guy....July 22, 2011 at 11:30 PM

    ....got his guns legally?

    The Norwegian broadcaster is saying that 20-30 kids may have been killed at the youth camp outside Oslo. Just horrifying.

    http://twitter.com/#!/NickKristof/status/94474805092425730

    I think that we should ban gun ownership based on religion.... it is the common sense thing to do....

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  11. State Department involvementJuly 23, 2011 at 2:21 AM

    Somehow the FACT That most illegal firearms start out as legal items seems to get lost in the debate. Yes, they start out legal and whether through straw-purchase, theft, loss, direct sale (e.g., V-Tech and Tucson), or whatever end up in the hands of criminals.

    "The military task force became concerned that its information about arms smuggling was being compromised," Plumlee said. "From the intel, it appears that a company was set up in Mexico to purchase weapons through the U.S. Direct Commercial Sales program, and that the company may have had a direct link to the Zetas."

    http://www.elpasotimes.com/communities/ci_18465182

    The state department is involved in Gunwalker too..... oh let the good times roll..... and so much for Hillary's chances in 2012...

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  12. AztecRed is pointing out that the legal pharmaceutical cocaine that gets diverted into the black market can be compared to the legally manufactured guns that do.

    Face it gun owners, you are responsible for ALL the guns.

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  13. AztecRed is pointing out that the legal pharmaceutical cocaine

    Just as context, pharmaceutical cocaine is used therapeutically as a topical or local anesthetic, usually by ear, nose and throat doctors.

    But it is not manufactured in anything like the quantities of firearms, which makes it not a very good comparison. Nor is cocaine available to anything remotely like as many people as firearms.

    And the restrictions on appropriate use and training, secure storage, and rigorous reporting, and rigorous oversight of scheduled pharmaceuticals is totally dissimilar to the regulations on firearms.

    Although maybe that should change; maybe that WOULD be a better guideline. We would be safer if we regulated firearms to the few qualified practitioners for very strictly specified use, under similar oversight and restriction to pharmaceutical cocaine.

    While there were legends for years about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones using pharm cocaine recreationally, I'm not aware that there is a significant black market in it, compared to the street stuff from non-commercial sources.

    But correct me if I'm wrong on that; I only did a very superficial look at it.

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  14. Anon, when you criticize Laci, on what basis other than pure pique do you do so?

    What are YOUR legal credentials?

    Because you see, I know that Laci has a JD, and additional post grad law degrees, from pretty prestigious law schools.

    Do you? Are you a practicing attorney?

    As to willful blindness - Laci just wrote something on it, after a conversation we had where I was exploring the legal concept with him, for something I'm writing. It was a term used, among other recent sources, in the Parliamentary hearings of Rupert Murdoch, in connection to his hacking scandal. It fits very well here as MikeB just used it.

    Maybe you should look it up. I believe wikipedia has a nice training-wheels level piece that should suit you perfectly.

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  15. "Nor is cocaine available to anything remotely like as many people as firearms."

    Bull. Black market cocaine is just as common as black market firearms. In fact, the two markets operate side-by-side.

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  16. C'mon AztecRed. Give us a little Venn-diagram explanation of the "side-by-side" action. I'd imagine it's not side-by-side at all, there's a good overlap between the "gun owners" and the "cocaine users."

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