Is it your assertion that things have been left open "wild west" style?
It's my assertion that people seem to make a false leap from "they're going to take our guns away" to "you can't tell us what to do regarding guns." While I recognize the danger of allowing the people to be systematically disarmed, at the same time the counterargument can't be "don't tell us what to do with our guns, it's our right."
Not sure I follow your logic there, but it's not confusing why gun advocates believe that gun control advocates attempt to use incremental creep to achieve an ultimate result of taking their guns away. It's just projection based on history. There's never been a gun control "success" that has caused gun control advocates to declare success, or to say, that a reasonable balance has been reached. Instead, every step is treated as a new baseline, from which no retreat is possible, irrespective of whether it functions or not. If we have thousands of gun control laws on the books that apparently don't work, why don't we take them off the books? A little good faith on that front may reduce what you perceive as paranoia on the other side.
Nor is it in anyone's experience that when gun control laws are enforced they are routinely enforced in good faith. There's virtually no discretionary standard for the granting of CCP's, for example, that hasn't been abused to deny permits without good cause (typically, by insisting that someone prove they have good cause to have one - burden shifting - and then making the standard to prove it impossible to attain).
Not even the NRA advocates for no laws, which makes your claim about "you can't tell us what to do" a bit of a strawman. The debate is about what's a reasonable or permissible constraint, not about whether they exist or not. Entire types of weapons have been taken off the table, like automatics and sawed off shotguns.
If you're arguing that gun control and safety legislation is perfectly all right so long as it doesn't infringe on the right to possess arms itself, then that's an issue of logistics more than anything else - how to regulate it correctly. If you're arguing that the government fundamentally doesn't have the right to tell people how they can buy firearms or where they can bring them, that's a different story and the logistics issue is irrelevant to the discussion.
I am arguing that gun ownership is a fundamental right, and like all fundamental rights the government's ability to constrain it is limited, and must meet constitutional muster. I've specifically asserted that certain ideas are completely unworkable without linking them to additional steps that would be unconstitutional constraints, but for all that I've suggested more than once practical steps that could have a meaningful impact. Federal background check stations at gun shows, limited immunity for voluntary back ground checks, heck I'd even back a prohibition on internet sales to strangers without a background check and identity verification.
I was asking what the big deal is, in principle, of having designated ways to transfer guns from one person to another.
Could you re-read what you originally wrote? You asked what the "big deal" was with barring guns as gifts, not about having a designated ways to transfer guns. The two things are not remotely the same thing. It's unclear from your escrow comment whether you were requiring that they go through a third party (like a gun shop) which involves fees, or just meant they have to go into escrow with the rest of estate (which is what happens now). That's why I asked for clarity, it's a big deal to suggest that person to person transfers should not be permitted.
You responded with a logistical objection (that it would invade privacy), which is fine, and it's my fault for not specifying that I was asking about the principle behind it rather than the implementation.
I think you're being too glib in your response, there's no way to separate the two unless you intend another unenforceable law be added to the books.
In practice we might say that something would be nice but isn't really workable, and that's great, because then you can have a discussion about what would be workable. But if the main issue is that the government has no right to tell a person how to obtain a gun then the rest is wasted breath. As I mentioned above, I don't really see how, in principle, telling a person how to obtain a gun is any worse than a person being told where he may and may not walk. It's not a violation of my "freedom" (i.e. liberty) to be told not to cross on a red light, even though it does restrict me in some sense.
Is it a restriction of your freedom for a town to declare all side walks are one way, such that if you go the corner store you can't turn around and go back to your house, but have to walk a few miles out of your way to return? Is it a restriction on your freedom if the town declares that you may only walk to the store between 9am and 11am (others are assigned different times) to support the "legitimate" purpose of controlling congestion on the side walks? Honestly, when you draw analogies to completely unrelated concepts you need to consider if they are truly equivalent. It's a fact that the Supreme Court has found restrictions on the right of individuals to move around the country to be a violation of their freedom, that has never prevented a local government from barring a murder suspect from leaving its jurisdiction. Some things are reasonable others are not. I can't evaluate whether a restriction on guns is reasonable without context, and neither can you.
Regarding a national gun registry, I'm not even sure what the 'real problem' is with that, so long as it was merely a means of tracking guns and not of preventing people getting them wholesale.
The real problem is abuse. Making a convenient list of gun owners is absolutely subject to abuse. Would you be comfortable with the government compiling a list of the addresses of every homosexual person so they can ensure there is sufficient police coverage to prevent hate crimes? Or would you see how that can be abused? It's not like we have to speculate here, such list with respect to guns was created in the NY/CT area, and it was promptly disclosed to the media and put into a searchable map on the internet to let anyone who wants to steal a gun know where to look for one.
There is already a registry of car licences and registrations, and that seem to work out fine. No one seems to be complaining about being denied access to a car unless they fail the test, in which case just imagine for the moment that there wasn't a test and anyone could pay for a license and get it. The argument that people could exchange driver's licences on the sly, or give each other cars without registering them (and paying the taxes) seems roughly equivalent to what you're saying about guns. No one would be the wiser if I just gave my friend with no license a car and let him drive it, unless he broke a law and was pulled over. Does this mean the automobile licensing system is fundamentally broken and that there's no way to implement it without searching every person's car for the registration and their wallet for their license? And yet this system seems to work more or less correctly, and while there are some people who break the rules it isn't enough to break the system.
Cars are not in the Constitution, nor can anyone be barred from owning a car. What can happen is that people can be denied a license to drive. I will give the government credit in this regard, they are pretty good about issuing driving licenses in an objective manner. They have demonstrated, in some places, that they refuse to issue licenses related to guns in such an objective manner, and unlike with drivers' licenses the right to bear arms is in the Constitution.
By the way, I'm not specifically arguing for a gun registry, but merely suggesting that discussions about the principle of gun regulation ought to be kept separate from the discussion about the practical implementation of gun regulation. "It won't work" isn't a very good answer to "should guns be regulated in some way?"
Except that wasn't my response. My response was that it can't work without the implementation of additional steps that do violate our rights. That's a specific judgment on the change you're discussing, why would I discuss it in isolation? If you have another way to implement it let me know. I offered back a limited release of liability for voluntary compliance that could get you to partial compliance.
We got where we are today, with a bunch of laws that aren't enforced or enforceable because of exactly that kind of compartmentalized thinking and the need to do "something" even if its a complete waste of time.
