- California authorities found a man illegally owning 248 guns and 1 million rounds of ammo.
- The state attorney general said he also had 3,000 magazines and several grenades in his home.
- The guns included 11 machine guns, 133 handguns, and 60 assault rifles, authorities said.
Of course they do. They make the same calculation you do when you decide to drive over the speed limit: how likely am I to get caught, how serious will it be if I get caught, do I really need to take this risk, etc. That’s why some criminals only break the speed limit, other criminals only steal things from empty stores, other criminals inflate the value of their real estate holdings to get cheap loans, commit campaign fraud to hide an affair with a porn star, and then attempt to launch a coup to stay in power.
Let’s look at how similar criminals might make a decision about using a gun as part of their crime in London vs. St. Louis.
That is a nicely organized wall of text, you seem to have put a lot of effort into it. Too bad it is mostly opinion and isn’t true.
Merely possessing a firearm while committing a crime in St Louis is a class D felony and is punishable by up to 7 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Using a firearm in a criminal offense is also a class D felony and is punishable by up to 15 years in prison depending upon the criminal history of the defendant. In the US multiple crimes can stack the charges. So a defendant could be looking at a lifetime conviction.
Some very basic Googling would have revealed this to you. Most of this can be found under MO statute 571.
I’m not an expert on UK law but from some more basic googling it seems the laws range from 7 years for purchasing to life for the actual use of a firearm.
Once again laws don’t deter criminals, they just punish honest citizens.
That’s an idiotic point of view. There aren’t “criminals” and “non-criminals”. Virtually everybody is a criminal, it’s just that most people only break minor laws, like running red lights, infringing copyrights, littering, etc. Those people don’t break other laws because the risk vs. reward calculation doesn’t work out for them.
Even a big criminal like Donald Trump who has broken dozens if not hundreds of laws isn’t out shooting people because that’s not the kind of crime he does.
There isn’t some magic switch that turns someone from “honest citizen” to “criminal”, it’s a whole spectrum of law breaking. Even that old lady who goes to church every day probably goes faster than the speed limit, parks illegally, etc. For someone in the middle of the spectrum, say someone who cheats on their taxes, tries to scam old church-going ladies out of their money, etc. there are kinds of crimes they’ll do, and other kinds of crimes they won’t do.
Way at the criminal end of the spectrum, you have people who commit violent crimes. But, not every violent crime involves a gun. Muggers and carjackers don’t always use guns because the extra punishment is a slight deterrent. So, the law deters them. However, since the US is a society of gun nuts, it doesn’t offer as much of a deterrent as it would in some place like the UK or Japan.
No acknowledgement that your prior post had zero facts or even a basis in reality when it came to criminal law? No matter how many facts I just put out there you just want to move the goal posts and fall back to how you feel criminals calculate when to use guns or not.
Your feelings don’t constitute an argument I respect or wish to engage in further.
Dodging the point yet again, I see.
Was there a point in all of your rambling? All you did was make unsupported statements of what you felt a criminal would do.
Yes, and I know you got the point because it’s obvious how hard you’re trying to pretend you didn’t understand it. I know I got through to you, and I know that you understand the strength of my argument because you’re working so hard to pretend you didn’t see it. I know I convinced you, but you’re afraid to admit it because you’ll lose face.
You can keep pretending, but it’s just not believable, sorry.
Lol whatever makes you feel good about yourself.
Pretty much any crime done with a gun increases penalties here in the US.