And now I have a sidearm

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 2:39 am

How do regulations apply to people buying pieces of a gun from a whole bunch of places and assembling it themself? Do you have to have a background check for each piece you buy before it'll be delivered? Do they just not care? Are you supposed to be honest and apply for a license after you acquire all the pieces?

George · Post by **George** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 1:36 pm

You can legally buy almost all of the parts without notifying the government, because it would be impossible to combine those parts to make a functional weapon. The final part (for most rifles it's the receiver) must be transferred through a licensed dealer, which generally involves a background check.

"Parts kits", which contain everything but the receiver, are pretty common, but mostly only unscrupulous dealers sell them. It's like a car without an engine. Its much cheaper than a functional car, and you don't need to register it or get license plates. However, if you ever do want to make it functional, you'll need to buy the engine, and pay the government. After buying the receiver and hiring a trained gunsmith to assemble the gun (it takes proper tools and skills to assemble a gun into a safe device), the total costs are generally higher than buying a real gun to begin with. Also, parts kits generally contain poor quality, mismatched parts, so the assembled gun probably won't shoot as well or last as long as a real one.

It's possible to manufacture a receiver in a reasonably well equipped machine shop. However, that requires licensing and registration (buying a receiver only requires the background check). Look on eBay. Many people sell blueprints to manufacture all kinds of receivers, including fully automatic ones. All of those sellers omit the fact that doing so would be illegal.

Joe, you're in a even worse situation. California has very strict laws about certain types of guns, and prohbits pistol grips and removeable magazines on rifles. Any military-style rifle would be illegal in California unless it were redesigned at the factory. I'm not sure whether you can possess pistol grips and magazine, even if they aren't part of an assembled rifle.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 7:30 pm

George wrote:Joe, you're in a even worse situation. California has very strict laws about certain types of guns, and prohbits pistol grips and removeable magazines on rifles. Any military-style rifle would be illegal in California unless it were redesigned at the factory. I'm not sure whether you can possess pistol grips and magazine, even if they aren't part of an assembled rifle.

I think that would make me in a better situation since all the nuts who want that stuff will have to move elsewhere...

George · Post by **George** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 8:26 pm

quantus wrote:I think that would make me in a better situation since all the nuts who want that stuff will have to move elsewhere...

Yeah, there certainly aren't any gun-related crimes in California...

Laws only stop the non-criminals who weren't dangerous to begin with. Black market weapons (including modern automatics that aren't legal anywhere) are as common in California as anywhere else.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:03 pm

Agreed, laws or any security for that matter never stops people who really want to do something. It does stop the random person from just going postal. The percentage of those people to the overall number of gun related crimes is undoubtedly quite low.

George · Post by **George** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:58 pm

quantus wrote:It does stop the random person from just going postal.

Only spontaneous killing sprees can be averted this way. Anyone with any patience can buy a black market gun, obtain one from an acquaintance, or steal one.

Post by **Jonathan** » Thu Sep 23, 2004 11:38 pm

Man, this is a complicated. I googled a couple of things, just for fun.

Sifting through all the conflicting claims, I decided that the safe belief is that if everyone was just to nice each other, there would be less crime. Therefore, I am immediately going to go implement this, possibly in the form of a federal statute or possibly a private billboard campaign. I haven't decided.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:21 am

Just don't go all Christian Fundamentalist on us.

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:25 am

I know! I will force people to be nice to each other at gunpoint! This is a plan that cannot possibly fail.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 1:22 am

Let's see how this'll work out...

Joe wrote:Be nice to me, or I'll shoot you!

George wrote:Ok, but you be nice to me or I'll shoot you!

Joe wrote:Are you threatening me? I told you to be nice to me, or I'll shoot you!

George wrote:You're not being very nice to me...

<BANG>

Joe wrote:I told him to be nice to me.

Clearly, this didn't work out for George.

George · Post by **George** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 2:08 am

quantus wrote:Clearly, this didn't work out for George.

But, I have learned from this example. Letting Joe live will inevitably result in my death. The only rational course of action is to kill Joe now, before the hypothetical conversation takes place.

With logic like that, I could be president.

George · Post by **George** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 2:48 am

Dwindlehop wrote:Man, this is a complicated. I googled a couple of things, just for fun.

Sifting through all the conflicting claims...

The entire debate is rooted in personal belief. The statistics and case studies are only used as after-the-fact justification. It's similar to religion. Beliefs change only in response to major life events or drift very slowly over time; they are never affected by logic or argument. Actually, it's also similar to religion in that both sides believe that allowing the other side to have their way would result in danger to everyone. Neither side can afford to make any concessions because the extremists on the other side would use that as leverage to gain further concessions.