I think fear of prosecution is the basic answer. Without laws or some other form of social norms how or why would a society punish (or even identify) deviance?
You and Ricter are really something, having to have all this spelled out for you. We have laws to deter criminal activity. The punishment for the law is supposed to be more severe than what the crime can yield, thus dissuading the behavior. In your driver's license example, the only people that really drive without a license are those who have had it suspended already. Taking away further driving privileges isn't going to influence those people much, but jail does. This is why driving without a license isn't all that common. However, when you're intent is to shoot someone and commit murder then the worry over the slight crime of acquiring a firearm illegally isn't there. If you made it punishable by death to illegally acquire a gun, you might get somewhere. Can you both put your brain back in "Drive" and stop asking such stupid questions?
I could care less about same-sex marriages. Marry anyone or anyTHING you want. I couldn't give a shit. The problem is the left doesn't stop there, but teaches about gay marriage in school, to my children. THAT is where I draw the line. You have no right to instruct my child about a sensitive topic that I believe they are not old enough to make a fair decision on. "Guns in passenger compartments" doesn't put anyone on a slippery slope, since you voluntarily board a plane - which is owned by a private company - and in order to do so you must adhere to their rules. If you don't like that you can't carry a gun on a plane, you have a choice - don't fly publicly owned airlines. Your choice. But when it gets to what I can do in my home, on my land, in my life, stay out. You liberals don't want to stop at my door - you want into my house. You want to police my lifestyle, tell me what to eat. Tell me what healthcare I should buy. What insurance I need. Tell me I can't own something allowed in the constitution, or that I can't smoke. Or that I can't drink. Get out of my life and stop drawing the bullshit comparisons between what happens in my private life to what happens in public circumstances.
More blah blah from you. Laws define criminal activity. A law to do a background check on a prospective buyer is an onus on the seller. Now please grow yourself a brain.
AK was pretty stupid but these two take the cake. If anyone drops by the P&R and reads these two talking they are going to think we are all a bunch of morons. I'm embarrassed for them. Maybe we could convince them to start posting at the Sesame Street forum instead.
You asked the idiot question why we have laws in the first place. My response was in answer to that...idiot...question. I've stated before that I am for background checks- at least once in this thread. But putting a law in place to insist on them would do little to stop the hundreds of thousands of guns already out there with no checks done on them. How would you handle this? Please share your self-proclaimed brilliance with us. All of the guns out there that have been sold privately to individuals at this point - all of the guns that are in possessions of criminals nationwide, or even law-abiding citizens? They've passed so many hands by now. How is your law going to stop any of that? I own a gun, a sig .380 (which I use for my carry) that has seen at least three or four individuals in it's lifetime, none of which have ever been registered. If, tomorrow, I sold this to a criminal unknowingly, and he went out and shot a clerk at a convenience store, there's no way that gun could have been tied to me unless they managed to lift a print from it (something any gun owner would take care of when they sold it). How does your law prevent anything here?
You being for background checks puts you firmly in the common sense group and out of the gun nut group. There is no way to fix all the problems, but we can take simple limited steps to fix some future problems, stopping the background check loophole at gun shows is one way, very limited invasive and it is already required by most gun sellers. Gun registration would be another smart thing to do to help catch and stop criminals. A fix all, no of course not but a common sense thing to do regardless.