[Blimey]

Saw this in the tresmond thread via link by adk.

Antonin Scalia says gun control is heading to Supreme Court | Mobile Washington Examiner

As others have noted the SCOTUS has said a person can have a commonly used firearm for protection and this extends to states. The main ruling we don't have is a guideline on what control states have on control of guns. This is what SCOTUS has to decide.

Can anybody with experience in this matter guess as to a timeline? The Heller and McDonald cases were close decisions and I imagine this would be too. If one of the pro-gun justices is replaced (age, retirement) prior to a ruling the impications are difficult to overstate.

i realize there is no case officially on its way yet. Of those that are contenders I wonder which is most likely to get there and what year it would do so.

 

[Bob11]

This would really suck if they didn't rule in our favor. I believe all hell will break loose then.

 

[loki34]

If they find against us good luck trying to confiscate what people have as there is no data base of who we are right now.

 

[bcbcmc53]

Lets keep it that way...

 

[Blimey]

If they find against us good luck trying to confiscate what people have as there is no data base of who we are right now.

There is no technical reason a full audit of all FFL sales cannot be conducted nation wide and a fairly good list compiled. Not saying it will happen but in today's world anonymity is mighty hard to come by.

 

[sandman77]

I heard Tresmond say probly a year but who knows. If there's no changes to the current roster of judges the court will likely rule in our favor on the 7 rd mag limit and AR ban. If Obama replaces one of the pro gun justices forget it.

 

[Dieter122]

oops nm

 

[thorbird]

The court balanace is so crucial. If Obama gets another shot at a justice, he will end any shot at justice for us. The oldest liberal anti US constitution hag will surely retire before Obama is out, so that he can re-appoint a younger judge who will be there for many years. So, please take care of yourselves you conservative justices. It is your patriotic duty.

 

[DrgnFly]

Interesting

 

[Blimey]

The court balanace is so crucial. If Obama gets another shot at a justice, he will end any shot at justice for us. The oldest liberal anti US constitution hag will surely retire before Obama is out, so that he can re-appoint a younger judge who will be there for many years. So, please take care of yourselves you conservative justices. It is your patriotic duty.

Yeah, I am not familiar with the justices but I think the one most likely to leave is a dem-appointed, so Obama will do another.

IF Scalia actually could get Kagan to go along with something, it would be a pro-gun decision for sure, but otherwise it will likely be a 5:4 type thing, so if a conservative-appointed justice leaves during Obama's term, you can probably forget it.

 

[Cityguy]

There is no technical reason a full audit of all FFL sales cannot be conducted nation wide and a fairly good list compiled. Not saying it will happen but in today's world anonymity is mighty hard to come by.

wouldn't they have to attempt to dig through all the ATF 4473 forms and then only then know the original purchaser? From there they'd have to interview everyone and disprove claims that they sold or gifted the firearm?

 

[1911guy]

I was hoping to see the website to donate to the cause. Did I miss it?

 

[Hardrada]

If it goes to SCOTUS, and it doesn't go our way, brace yourselves.
1. it would be hypocrisy for SCOTUS to rule in favor of the state. It would defile the Constitutional enumeration of our natural rights.
2. Lock and load.

 

[ARA]

wouldn't they have to attempt to dig through all the ATF 4473 forms and then only then know the original purchaser? From there they'd have to interview everyone and disprove claims that they sold or gifted the firearm?

I might be paranoid, but I believe that if you've ever bought a gun or ammo w/ a credit card, filled out a background check, etc, they know exactly what you have. Remember when the movie Enemy of The State came out in 1998? The NSA gave an interview saying that kind of satalite tech was decades away, and they wish they could do that sort of thing. Google earth was being designed 3 years before that for the public. And when it launched in like 2004 ish, we could all read our own license plates, and the NSA was like 'oh yeah we can do that too'.

'They' can do way more than they let on. Anyone who doesn't think so is just being naive IMO.

 

[hermannr]

You guys are forgetting the MILLIONS of weapons that have never seen an FFL. Anything manufactured and solid prior to GCA68 potentially has never seen a FFL...I have many more of them, then I have that were purchase through an FFL.

There is a techinical issue with checking the FFL paperwork for everyone, It is called manpower.

 

[Embree Smith]

There is no technical reason a full audit of all FFL sales cannot be conducted nation wide and a fairly good list compiled. .

Well, first off -- that is unlawful

 

[Blimey]

wouldn't they have to attempt to dig through all the ATF 4473 forms and then only then know the original purchaser? From there they'd have to interview everyone and disprove claims that they sold or gifted the firearm?

I don't think it would cost too many millions, somewhere in the tens of millions probably, but certainly less than a billion, to grab them all and have them digitized. It would only give the original purchaser, so the information wouldn't be perfect, but it would give a pretty decent picture of who buys guns and how often. A person who has an FFL purchase every year or so going back 15 years and yet pretends they have no gun would be red-flagged.

There is a techinical issue with checking the FFL paperwork for everyone, It is called manpower.

All that means is money. A thousand people working on it wouldn't take all that terribly long to input all the data from each 4473.

If the desire was there, each state's issuance of hunting licenses and memberships to all gun ranges could be cross-referenced with a database, which tells you now not just who has guns but who actively uses them on a regular basis.

I don't believe it does happen now, but more information is cross-referencing gun store purchases with credit card companies (purchasing ammo at walmart on a credit card wouldn't work; AFAIK Walmart wouldn't have a way to get down to the atomic level of what items were actually purchased, so it would only work for merchants specifically identified as gun shops).

All I'm saying is there is a huge amount of information already out there. The only tricky thing is compiling it, and it's not really that tricky to do, it simply requires some money and the laws to enact it. I'm not even saying this will happen--my guess is it won't, but there is little anonymity.

 

[Homer]

I don't think it would cost too many millions, somewhere in the tens of millions probably, but certainly less than a billion, to grab them all and have them digitized. It would only give the original purchaser, so the information wouldn't be perfect, but it would give a pretty decent picture of who buys guns and how often. A person who has an FFL purchase every year or so going back 15 years and yet pretends they have no gun would be red-flagged.All that means is money. A thousand people working on it wouldn't take all that terribly long to input all the data from each 4473.

If the desire was there, each state's issuance of hunting licenses and memberships to all gun ranges could be cross-referenced with a database, which tells you now not just who has guns but who actively uses them on a regular basis.

I don't believe it does happen now, but more information is cross-referencing gun store purchases with credit card companies (purchasing ammo at walmart on a credit card wouldn't work; AFAIK Walmart wouldn't have a way to get down to the atomic level of what items were actually purchased, so it would only work for merchants specifically identified as gun shops).

All I'm saying is there is a huge amount of information already out there. The only tricky thing is compiling it, and it's not really that tricky to do, it simply requires some money and the laws to enact it. I'm not even saying this will happen--my guess is it won't, but there is little anonymity.

The only tricky thing is compiling it? That's not just a tricky thing, it is a monumental thing. Speaking as someone who works in IT/CS, setting up a solid and consistent DB would take years with compliance of all 50 states. In addition, credit card companies do not report customers purchases to the government, that would take a specific request or a court order and even then it couldn't be for everyone, only the target of an investigation. Membership DB of gun ranges? What DB? What about public ranges that have no membership or small ranges that don't even have a computer let alone a DB. Databases take a lot of work to set up and maintain, you don't just turn on a switch and have a DB, the data entry may be the easy (but still time consuming) part, the DB logic and table structure is not, that would be difficult. If you're looking for a vague and flawed list of people that might be gun owners, sure that might be a little easier to set up but it would be so flawed it wouldn't hold up well in court, wouldn't even be enough for probable cause would be my guess. In short, garbage in, garbage out.

 

[LZ1]

Like I said in another thread it would take the government 50 years to convert 4473s to digital and some insane amount of funding.

People who think this would only cost "millions" have 0 idea how the government or government projects work.


They would have to put out to bid someone to write the software, someone to host the software, now they're on a 3 year hardware life cycle like the rest of government gear, then design a COOP plan for it, get it security tested, build a support team for the software, etc.

In the government world that alone is millions and years of work.


This is coming from my consulting experience working with the DoD, IRS, and other government agencies.

 

[Blimey]

The only tricky thing is compiling it? That's not just a tricky thing, it is a monumental thing. Speaking as someone who works in IT/CS, setting up a solid and consistent DB would take years with compliance of all 50 states. In addition, credit card companies do not report customers purchases to the government, that would take a specific request or a court order and even then it couldn't be for everyone, only the target of an investigation. Membership DB of gun ranges? What DB? What about public ranges that have no membership or small ranges that don't even have a computer let alone a DB. Databases take a lot of work to set up and maintain, you don't just turn on a switch and have a DB, the data entry may be the easy (but still time consuming) part, the DB logic and table structure is not, that would be difficult. If you're looking for a vague and flawed list of people that might be gun owners, sure that might be a little easier to set up but it would be so flawed it wouldn't hold up well in court, wouldn't even be enough for probable cause would be my guess. In short, garbage in, garbage out.

It depends what you're trying to get at. Something to convict somebody on the data isn't possible, nor necessarily the goal. A general picture of gun ownership, if that's the goal, is not difficult. There is no need for 50 state compliance: A federal law could say we want every 4473, and our data entry team will input all the data. These are federal forms and all revisions are known, as ATF issued them.

The structure of a database to house all 4473s is not particularly complex because the data is not complex. We're talking 100-200M records, but each record is sourced off a few-page document. The information that IRS maintains on Americans is magnitudes more convoluted. Here we're talking a single fairly simple form with its revisions.

Currently ATF can ask to see a 4473, so their data is valuable at times. I'm talking about formalizing all of it in a searchable database for easier access. Its data in the past would be arguable, but it could serve as a source of record for future data, which would be quite accurate--if it were done in cahoots with legislation that says, nation-wide, 100% of all gun sales need to happen at an FFL, else it's a felony.

Like I said in another thread it would take the government 50 years to convert 4473s to digital and some insane amount of funding.

It just wouldn't--the time--it would take many millions, though. I think a person could feed in about 250 records/day (one every 3 minutes), for 1000 people that's 4 days per million records. A couple years and you've got it done. If it takes 6 minutes to key it in it takes four years. I'm familiar with IT, not with gov; if it is as slow as you say maybe it would take a very long time to get a project going.

The usability of the data is dubious without a partnering legislation dictating FFL for all transactions, nationwide.

CC companies don't report, but they do have data.

I never said any of this is easy, but I can certainly identify a path to its implementation, if the political will and money were both available.