Just another gun thread, don't bother reading.

[Esquilax]

@esqui, how do you propose laws like Australia's would be enforced in the US considering that there are already more guns than people and no one with guns has any interest to register or give them up?

See, that's the thing: I think America's gotten itself into a near intractable situation in that regard, mostly due to the psychology around gun ownership there. Now that there's a good, long period of time in place where gun ownership has been this fundamental, baked in part of the American political makeup, now that it's this cultural signifier for freedom and the American Way, now that a certain segment of the population has made this issue their battle line which cannot be crossed, I don't exactly see an easy way to a better situation. The people who believe most firmly that gun ownership is core to being American are exactly the same people who will not listen to reason and budge even an inch, and who will respond to attempts at change by concocting oversimplified, exaggerated stories to make it harder, politically, to actually enact any decent legislation (the gun control issue would be a lot easier to resolve if you didn't have the "Obama's gunna take yur gurns!" folks stirring up the other idiots and turning this into a partisan political issue, rather than a commonsense one.)

I don't know that there is a way to enact laws like Australia has in the current American climate. I know what a reasonable compromise is, but I also know that the segment of Americans that will be most affected by that are the least likely to even entertain the possibility of compromise at all, regardless of the actual content of it.

How do you stop people from selling their own guns to people who are not registered or licensed?

Yeah, this is another thing where differing cultural values will have an impact on the system; by and large Australians don't have this desperate need to own guns that Americans seem to. There are penalties for selling guns to the unlicensed (arms dealing is kind of a big deal, and if you sell a firearm you acquired legally you've got a paper trail leading right back to you, and the kind of person who's going to illegally purchase a firearm rather than go through the legal channels probably isn't going to be out of the law's attention for long) but mostly it's a non-issue because there isn't the market for guns that there is in America, nor is there this prideful need to skirt laws we disagree with. I think the gun ownership level is at like five percent in Aus, and the majority of that is not due to the fact that the laws prevent us from easily obtaining them.

America though? Different reaction entirely, I'd imagine. The way that country grew up and matured has probably made it inhospitable to reasonable gun laws. It's not a change you're gonna be able to make without a long period of adjustment beforehand.