Second Amendment Blog
“Lost and Stolen” Challenge
Posted by: Sebastian on 
Apr 11th, 2008 | 
Filed under: Gun Rights
Talk about the defeated “Lost and Stolen” bill:
But we also think the diligence required to always know the location and condition of one’s firearm is not too much to expect of any attentive gun owner.
Frankly, anyone who doesn’t quickly notice the loss of their weapon shouldn’t own a gun in the first place. And anyone who subsequently fails to report that loss within three days can only have something to hide.
Or they didn’t know about the requirement, are poor, don’t have insurance, won’t be able to afford a lawyer, and maybe don’t trust the police to actually do something about it. This isn’t a law that’s going to affect middle class people with insurance. It’s a law that’s going to snare poor people who might have a gun in the home for self-protection in rougher neighborhoods.
With the mandatory reporting amendment, gun owners might have assumed an active role in keeping guns out of the hands of felons, adding some credibility to gun advocacy movement by actively demonstrating its claim that most gun owners are law-abiding and responsible.
Except that a felon can’t be charged for failing to report a lost or stolen firearm, because that would be self-incrimination. This law can only go after otherwise law abiding people. Explain to me how that’s fair? Or a useful tool for going after criminals with guns? Everyone just assumes this law will be effective because certain people with agendas have claimed it will be. The media ought to do it’s job and be more skeptical of these claims. As it stands now, they are merely shills. This is the great challenge with defeating these bills; it sounds great, until you really start looking at it.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am
As long as the folk arrested under this pretense of a law don’t self-incriminate, any first year public defender could obtain an acquittal. “I did not know the gun was missing, officer. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I am reporting to you now that the gun was apparently stolen, and I have just now found out about it.”
April 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
That’ll be a defense, for sure. One wonders whether they will then think we need a law to mandate that it must be within 48 hours of its disappearance, whether you knew about it or not. When this doesn’t work, you can bet they will come back for more.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I do realize that making a false police report is illegal, but how would they prove you did that if every gun owner in Philly made a report that one of their guns was “lost”, waited a few weeks and then called back and said, “silly me, I just misplaced it, all is well.”
Repeat as neccessary, clog the system. What would happen if several million police reports had to be filled out, then more paper work to close them out occurred on a very regular basis.
The system will crash.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am
It wouldn’t accomplish anything other than getting a lot of people arrested.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am
What would they be charged with?
Fine, good, great…go to court, fight and win and clog the court system. The state would have to prove you filed a false report. What evidence do they have?
Shut the system down.
What are they gonna do? Throw everybody in jail. If people would take this crap seriously, critical mass would shut it down.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:56 am
One more thing to think about. If only 10% of people who got a speeding ticket pled not guilty and went to court over it, the system would crash.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:48 am
“Frankly, anyone who doesn’t quickly notice the loss of their weapon shouldn’t own a gun in the first place. And anyone who subsequently fails to report that loss within three days can only have something to hide.”
I wonder if they would approve of a statement worded thusly:
“Frankly, any writer who doesn’t quickly notice errors in an article shouldn’t be writing in the first place. And any newspaper that subsequently fails to make a conspicuous correction of any errors within three days of original publication can only have something to hide.”
April 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Well, Sebastian, you nailed it on the head - yet another wonderful law that is intended solely to make it more and more difficult for lawful firearm owners to either be lawful or firearm owners. It would almost seem like Philadelphia was interested in driving gun owners out of the city… Oh. Right.
I assume the three days is, in some way, grandfathered for people who leave home on an extended vacation, have that home broken into, and return to find their firearms gone over three days previous?
Also, is there any caveat in the law for using the information garnered from the forced police report to assist in the tracking of the real criminal who illegally broke into someone’s home and unlawfully stole their firearms? Or is this nothing more than a glorfiied witch-hunt dressed in all of its resplendent, media glory?
April 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
The other thing to consider is that some gun owners only have one gun. Other gun owners have hundreds.
What’s a true collector to do? Spend hours each time they return home to make sure all of them are still there?
April 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Let me guess … the “officials” are exempted or immunized?
“Frankly, anyone who doesn’t quickly notice the loss of their weapon shouldn’t own a gun in the first place. And anyone who subsequently fails to report that loss within three days can only have something to hide.”
How many weapons go missing from police departments, county sheriffs, FBI, Dept. of Treasury, IRS and so many other “responsible” outfits … and how many years does it take for an inventory or audit to figure it out?
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