[Saya]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I'm pretty sure straw purchases for firearms are not legal, if she is located in the US she admitted on an internet forum to making fraudulent statements on a Federal form. I ain't a lawyer or nothing, but

"12a. Are you the actual buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring
the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to
you. (See Important Notice 1 for actual buyer definition and examples.)" seems pretty cut and dry. If they gave each other hundreds of dollars in cash or gift certificates with which to make the purchases, then they are cool, but actually buying a glock or whatever to wrap up in a box for someone else is a no-no.

It depends on the state, from what every website on the matter can tell me. Even then, a lot of people seem to have gotten guns as gifts, legal or no: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/proud-gu...gram-1.1092096 and http://www.wate.com/story/20341935/m...wives-children Seems the gun Lanza and Holmes used was an extremely popular gift this year. This site talks about the different state laws, some laws you can give guns with no law saying you can't, other require transfer paperwork: http://www.nssfblog.com/giving-a-fir...ers-from-nssf/ But its not the same across the board.

The "gun show loophole" applies to any private seller - any actual FFL still needs to do the standard background check and so forth, that just applies to sales between private individuals, for example if you decide you want to sell a gun of yours when gun-dealing is not your primary profession, and it can only be done between state residents. Out of state, it has to be conducted through an FFL. Personally I think it should have to be done through an FFL regardless.

Yeah, but its still mighty easy for someone to avoid a background check and get their hands on one, no? Even then, a lot of people can buy a gun in their name and intend it for the family to use, like my cousin has a hunting rifle her husband bought because she lives out in the middle of nowhere and is afraid of coyotes and bears and shit. Its not in her name, but she has access to it and can use it.

I hear you for sure on this one, and knowing a gun nut or two, it could be a problem. A big one. I don't see an easy answer to this. Actual efforts to enforce this would have to be handled, well, diplomatically, to avoid having a siege. I just don't think doing nothing is the way to go.

You know I'm Canadian and I can count on one hand the number of times I've encountered a gun in my life, right? And even if its impossible to have a wholesale ban on guns, I don't really see the right to bear assault rifles that can kill a significant amount of people in a short period of time is what the forefathers intended.

It is, and I don't believe any one approach would stop everyone hell-bent on carrying out a mass killing with 100% certainty. I do think that it is possible to stop some - if you can catch them before they get set in motion. This is why I was advocating earlier for better access to mental health care - the time to stop these guys is not necessarily at the point of purchase, although I don't think it's a bad idea to do some kind of psych screening there just in case.

Except that a) from what we know, Lanza, Holmes, Harris and Klebold at least had excellent access to mental health care, took advantage of it and had several people concerned about them. There was no way that mental healthcare being expensive has anything to do with rich/well off white guys. Unless you're saying everyone should be forced to go to therapy, there's no way that even if it is accessible that everyone will take advantage of it or want it. And as I pointed out earlier, screening is a joke because I don't think its rare at all that mentally ill people know exactly what to say on a questionairre, and if you're worried about sociopaths, they're very very good at lying and conning.

There's no way to say assault rifles are a right but we should discriminate against the mentally ill to prevent anyone from misusing them. No way.

I'd like to see it covered by tax payers, just the like current cost for the NICS background check, the person at the counter buying a gun doesn't foot the bill for that. Of course I'd like public option health care and a pony, even though those will probably not happen. Still, raising the cost for the individual isn't the answer. The goal shouldn't be keeping guns away from poor people, it's about keeping them out of the hands of people who will misuse them. I don't want rich people or anyone else being irresponsible or malicious with a gun. Casting too wide a net is definitely a problem, you don't want to disenfranchise someone on a whim, but it's becoming more clear that not doing anything at all is not a viable strategy.

A background check is a relatively easy thing to do. It costs like what, twenty dollars here to get one done, its not exactly a huge expense, when a therapist could be up to 200 dollars an hour rate. Its seriously expensive, and even in Canada not everyone can just waltz in and see a therapist free of charge whenever they want, there's a screening process to put you on a priority list, unless you're suicidal you're probably going to be waiting months. There simply aren't enough doctors with enough free time to talk to any Tom Dick or Harry who wants a gun for however long it would take them to give them a clean bill of mental health, and like Miss Absynthe said, most people are not the picture of mental health so it would either mean very very few people would be allowed to have a gun or psychologists would just have to draw a line somewhere on what's too mentally ill to be owning a gun, it would probably take a long time to figure out if a person is fit to have a gun, adding more to the costs to the taxpayer, and considering the ongoing discrimination against trans* people alone in the psychological community I'm not confident that it would be fair either.