Reply #52: nooo ... [View All]

[iverglas]

Felons are legally exempt from gun registration under US law. The Supreme Court decided in Haynes v. U.S. (1968) that a since possession of a firearm by a felon is itself a crime, the law cannot require the felon to register his weapon, otherwise it violate the Fifth Amendment right agaisnt self incrimination.

My head's just fine, thanks.

That's because none of that has anything to do with me, living as I do where it doesn't apply. I don't have to figure out any of that tortured reasoning. I'll just let you guys play with it.


Under this ruling, a person illegally possessing a firearm, under either federal or state law, could not be punished for failing to register it.

I'm afraid that anybody who tried that hooey in Canada would be laughed out of court and all the way to a penitentiary cell, or at least a prison cell. (We don't imprison people for a lot of other things much, but we take firearms offences rather seriously.)

The privilege against self-crimination applies to testimony regarding an offence in a trial for that offence. In both Canada and the US, an accused may stand mute at his/her trial and is not subject to questioning. Down there, you also get to use the fifth amendment to refuse to give testimony in any proceeding about anything -- up here, we get to use the Canada Evidence Act to protect us from having our testimony in one proceeding used against us in another, but not to refuse to testify.

But to say that requiring compliance with a law by a person already breaking a law violates the privilege? Hooting and jeering, that's what I hear here.

I'm trying to think of some analogous ridiculous situation. Requiring me to stop at a red light when I am driving without a licence ... thus enabling the cop in the next lane to get a look at me and pull me over when s/he recognizes me as a disqualified driver ... nope, can't make me do that. I'd be incriminating myself if I stopped at that red light, gotta let me drive on through.

There are some 250 million firearms out there, according to the ATF. Suppose we require registration. Will the criminals register their weapons? Nope. The only people who comply with gun registration laws are the people not inclined towards violence anyway.

Gosh, I was just admonished not to equate gun owners with criminals. I'm sure you didn't mean to equate "non-criminal" gun owners with "people not inclined toward violence". I just don't know how you'd explain all the "non-criminal" gun owners who, oh, shoot their wives, if you were doing that.

Of course that's a bit of a straw fella anyhow. Violence committed by firearms owners themselves is only PART of the problem that wants solving. Accidental deaths of children who get hold of their firearms, intentional deaths of people shot by children who get hold of their firarms, deaths and injuries of people shot by people who stole their firearms or to whom they voluntarily tranferred their firearms, other crimes committed against people that were facilitated by the firearms stolen by or received from other people ... those are ALL part of the problem. And those parts of the problem very often involve one of those "non-criminal" gun owners, if I'm not mistaken.

I don't tend to fall for sly redefinitions of problems that want solving, you see.

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