We’ve been seeing a lot of this logic lately:
Hafter’s daughter, Lizzy Hafter, a Dean’s List graduate of the University of Virginia, was murdered in September 2006 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Charlottesville, Virginia. The killer had stolen the gun weeks earlier. The gun had not been reported stolen. Lizzie’s mother is advocating for a law in South Carolina, Lizzy’s Law, to require gun owners to report to police a gun that has been lost or stolen.
How would this woman’s daughter have been saved if the gun had been reported stolen? It’s a violation of federal regulations to have a firearm on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the first place, but does reporting the firearm magically remove it form the hands of the criminal?
The only situation where they might legitimately claim this could help is where the gun was not actually stolen but sold to someone that could not legally own a firearm. They can claim it will cut off one of the source channels of firearms into the black market.
It doesn’t work of course because instead of saying it was stolen a person could say they sold it via an ad they posted at the local range or some such thing. And no, they don’t remember the guys name or phone number. That will lead to the requirement that you always go through a FFL for your private sales or register your firearms. And of course that is unacceptable because of the hazard of firearm confiscation–as in what happened after The Weapons Control Act of 1938.
hey, another law named after ONE unfortunate victim. Laws named after a highly publicized victim are usually (not always) absolutely useless and seriously infringe upon civil liberties.
I hate these laws requiring you to report guns stolen. The government is re-victimizing the victim of a crime. Replace “guns” with any other property and this would be absurd to most people.
Because of this I’m going to write a letter. Also…. Anyone have a link to a site selling “Guns Save Lives” stickers?