I am thinking that they would know if you are a legal gun owner based upon accessing databases, however how would that protect anyone from all the illegal or unlicensed guns out there doing harm?
It won't. And that's always been "the elephant in the living room" with the gun control debate. Are there too many guns in the hands of criminals and too many shootings of innocent victims? I think we can all agree that there are. So how do we address that problem?
The solution of the Left has always been gun control. Their reasoning has always been that if you (pick one or all) ban "assault" weapons (usually meaning any gun with a pistol grip, scope, detachable magazine, sinister color, etc.); impose draconian background checks on who can legally buy a weapon; register every last thing in the country from water pistols to potato guns; slap "no-gun zone" signs on all public buildings; impose "red flag" laws on the People so strict that if you once said "I think Eisenhower was wrong" 45 years ago, they will confiscate your weapons as you are obviously a threat; and pass laws that unless you are going to a target range or actually in the woods hunting, that your (single-shot, wooden-stocked. bolt-action) guns are locked up in a bomb shelter 200 feet underground and surrounded by twelve feet of concrete and a massive steel blast door, so the guns won't get out and go off on a shooting spree without your knowledge.
The problem is that all of this sincere but hare-brained scheming won't do a thing to stop gun violence. Why?
Because criminals don't obey laws. A criminal is not going to buy a gun from a licensed firearm dealer, he's going to buy it on the black market, steal it from somewhere, or get it from a Mexican dope mule along with his weekly supply of meth. The weapon thus obtained will be whatever he can get his hands on, "assault" or otherwise. Ban AR-15s and AK-47s all you want, but it won't stop criminals from smuggling them in and using them, even if it's illegal to have them, because
criminals don't obey laws. The criminal with such a weapon won't go through a background check, because he gets the weapon illegally. He won't be subject to a "red flag" ban, because he obtains his weapon illegally; the Mexican dope dealer he gets the gun from doesn't care if the guy is under a "red flag" ban or not. And the gun the criminal uses to shoot up a shopping mall (even though the mall clearly has signs posted that say "No Shooting of Humans In this Area, by Order of Public Ordinance 247-b, Paragraph 9, Subsection 2-L and Following") is not going to be one of those locked up in a gun safe.
The problem is, the Left has always tried to control the gun, rather than the criminal using the gun. And by controlling the gun, it places vast restrictions on the law-abiding populace, who aren't going to use a gun to commit crimes to begin with. Because the State comes down and says, "You can't do this, or this, or this, or this, when it comes to guns," and the law-abiding citizens say, "Well, okay," and they obey the law. The criminal listens to the State say, "You can't do this, or this, or this, or this, when it comes to guns," and the criminal says, "Screw that and screw you, I'll do whatever I want," and blithely goes his way.
So in the end, the only people the Left disarms are the people who don't commit gun crimes to begin with. The criminal population obtains all the guns they want, of any type or style whatever, and commit all the robberies, mass shootings, gang hits, etc., because
criminals don't obey laws.
Is there an answer? I don't know. But what I
*do* know is that whatever answer there might be, gun control ain't it.
