I don't think this will be in "The Armed Citizen"

[Sixpence]

Originally posted by lazs2

sixpense... Let me get this straight... You believe that it is not prohibitively expensive to double the price of firearms?

No, you are misunderstanding, what I originally said was " I can't wait til technology catches up and we can have lojack for guns". Now that would mean cost being relative, but let us put cost aside, because that is not the root of the argument here. The argument is that the government will want to put lojack in people. Talk about tin foil hats, this is to track stolen guns, not track people. It's not about the government keeping track of anything. It's about a 90% recovery on stolen guns.


Certainly, if we put lojacks on people we could save a lot of lives too tho right?   camping and hiking gear?

C'mon lazs, when is the last time someone stole a tent and held up a store with it? You are reaching here.

I said I didn't fear the legal gun owner, I feared the criminal with a gun. But I am going to add paranoid tinfoil hat gun owners to that list

[bustr]

Sixpence,

RFID technology as it is now will allow the tracking of items if one of these tiny chips is hidden say in a recess in one of the grips on the handle of a pistol. Chips have unique serial numbers emitted in their broadcast so the government could mandate a number range to be issued only to RFID chips hidden in small arms sold in the US.

Then when you purchase your next Glock your name and RFID serial number goes into a permenant registry. But alsa this has been rendered a violation of Fedral law against keeping long term databases of gun owners in the US. This would also open concerns to invasion of privacy since the government would be able to track your firearm any time they wanted. This kind of tracking ablity opens the gate to the slippery slope of you the law abiding citizen now being registered and classed as smi-guilty untill you can satisfy the whim of the states capricious standards because you have a state mandated tracking chip in your privately owned property.

This is no different than the standards for invasion of privacy that have gone through the courts now that special police units and Federal agencies have technology that can thermaly and radio image you in your home from the public street. And the ability to use acoustic technology that can hear you whispering in your house from across the street. The police and Federal agencies have argued that since they never trespassed on your property, entered your home, or placed a wire tap that they had the right to evesdrop on you. In these cases it was on known drug dealers who they could not get the goods on. Their reasoning was kinda like if you have a loud argument with your wife and passersby hear every word. In every case the Federal judge ruled that the people have the right to the expectaion of privacy in their home/castle.  The RFID chip in your firearm would fall in this catagory of invasion of privacy because the police/state could track it in your home.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by lazs2
Crime has dropped in the entire U.S. The real reason is tougher sentances and more cops... we catch and convict on a lot more crimes than say england..  Getting tougher on crime is working.  

Yes, I agree with that. There are certain problems in England which I will describe here. The main one is the current "soft on crime" government that we have. Tony Blair swept to power in 1997 on the strength of a mountain of promises of a better life. Few of these promises were kept. His government's style has been a massive increase in spending on welfare, and our National Health Service. But whereas spending on the NHS rose by about 45%, productivity or "output" from the NHS rose by only 5%. That's because no plans were made for HOW the extra money was to be spent. For all the money that's wasted in the NHS creating more and more bureaucrats, there's less money to be spent on prisons and putting more police officers on the beat. The govt. says we can't have a national prison population greater than 80,000 - so too many convicts get lenient sentences, and people like first time burglars don't get jailed at all.

Add to that the problems that the police are having. The govt. now requires the police to fill in so much paperwork that only about half of an officer's time is spent on front line duty. The govt. has tried to remedy this with its usual spin technique - they've tried to redefine some paperwork tasks as "front line duty".

I know that there's a good deal of leg pulling in these gun threads, but I do try to stick to the facts! It's true, crime has got worse in some areas since our 1997 gun "ban" but your NRA draws erroneous conclusions from this because of having made a direct link between the 1997 legislation, and the crime trend since. In truth, there is no link.


If you get time, read the story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/13/ncrime13.xml

Right now, we're being governed by a party that wants to turn us all into a nation of supplicant benefits claimants. The more people they convert, the more people they'll have voting for them. It will all end in tears, of course. But the day will come when we return to sound values, law and order and proper deterrents like prison. When power is transferred back to the ruling class where it rightfully belongs, first time burglars will be jailed. If the sentence is 3 years, I want it to mean 3 years.

[/PPB for the Conservative Party]

[bustr]

Beet,

Amen to you.

I have read articles on crime and politics from the UK for the last 2 years but could not summarise what I was seeing as well as you just did. I lived in Luton when I was 4-5. My memory of the English people who lived in my neihborhood was that they were upstanding, hard working and god fearing people. I guess in almost 50 years alot has changed......