It’s because the main laws that regulated these things arise out of different statutes that were enacted at different times and under different circumstances.
An agency’s main job is to interpret and execute its enabling statute. They may seem similar but the subject matter is all very different.
You’d have to read about the history of each of these two agencies.
I don’t know much myself but I suspect they were born out of working groups from predecessor agencies.
Don’t forget that back in 1998, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms reached a Trade Agreement with the Food & Drug Administration
WASHINGTON, DC—The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms and the Food & Drug Administration reached a formal trade agreement Monday. Under the terms of the deal, the ATF will provide the FDA with alcohol, tobacco and firearms in exchange for equal value in food and drugs.
“My administrative assistants and I were enjoying some of our food the other day when it hit us,” FDA Commissioner Michael Friedman said. “We have tons of food lying around, and tons of drugs, but nothing to drink, smoke or shoot. Then, someone—I think it was [deputy commissioner] Phil [Royce]—suggested we call up those guys at the ATF across town and see what we could get. Turns out, they were ready to deal.”
Governments are organized according to political processes rather than rational ones.
Even under ideal conditions, any (especially larger) organizational body is extremely difficult to keep from falling into these types of irrationality.
We have many names for variations on the phenomenon. I’ll cite groupthink. You can fall down a rabbit hole on your own from there.
I’m still annoyed alcohol isn’t administered by the Food and Drug Administration. It’s both a food and a drug. I want nutrition labels (mostly for the calorie count) on my alcohol. They don’t have them because the ATF does not require them as the FDA does.
Honestly, the ATF can just be split with half being folded into the FDA and the other half folded into the FBI. The ATF doesn’t need to exist.
Although neither the ATF nor DEA existed before the 70s, part of the reason might have to do with ATF’s precursor existing for a really long time, before we cared about many other drugs. DEA pretty much came about under Nixon’s war on drugs.
Most people don’t consider alcohol and tobacco drugs, also alcohol, tobacco and guns have been around in the US for hundreds of years. Pretty much all the drugs that the DEA covers are relatively new compared to alcohol and tobacco, Cannabis is probably the only exception but even that wasn’t nearly as common to grow and consume as the other two. The ATF was founded a year before the DEA.
Me either, I looked it up to figure it out and was surprised as well. I thought they were founded further apart. I think the ATF had a different name formerly.
Yeah, that’s about it. The ATF deals with making minor interpretations of existing law regarding its purview (which are sometimes challenged in court) as well as enforcement of regulation regarding items that are legal. The DEA is all about enforcement of the prohibition on drugs. It’s the same reason that the DEA and the FDA are different, despite both dealing in drugs.
Never understood the ATF hate until I became a gun enthusiast. Heysus! Even us libs hate 'em!
I bought a perfectly legal .22 rifle, pretty much this (without whatever suppressor thing is shown). It’s like the baby brother version of an AR-15. Jams a lot, but it’s fun!
Note the stupid looking flexible stock. That was a way to get a “short barreled rifle” because a normal, rigid stock would be illegal. “Uh, it’s not a stock. It’s a handicap thing for one-armed shooters.” Yes, it can work that way and yes, it’s a loophole.
Now I’m a felon for owning such a thing even though it was legal when I bought it. ATF: “We changed our mind. And no your gun isn’t grandfathered. Because fuck you, that’s why.”
Shit like this is why shooters rail against any gun legislation. One dumb thing after another like this sucks political capital that could be spent on better, more effective gun laws.
I’m with you. We absolutely need some common sense gun legislation, but every time it comes up, it turns into a political mess. And almost all of the legislation is either like a bandaid on a leaking dam, or overbearing nanny-state bullshit.
I’m with ya’, but gun debates taught me to avoid the “common sense” argument, in any context.
If you use those words, you imply that anyone that doesn’t agree doesn’t have “common sense”. It’s a shortcut to say, “You’re an idiot if you don’t accept my premise.” And that’s no way to reach consensus.
I’d used that term my whole life! Now I avoid it like poison.
Maybe drifting off topic a bit, but I’d like to hear your “common sense” ideas. There’s got to be ideas we can all come around to.
I’ll go first, and it seems an easy one; Draconian laws regarding storage. Do it please ya’ gunslinger, but everything other than your primary and secondary self-defense weapons must be locked in a safe. Don’t care about ammo. Don’t care about guns in pieces that you’re working on. Does it fire? Pick two and rotate the rest out your safe(s). That doesn’t seem unreasonable. And if you’re unsecured weapon is stolen or used by a minor? You. Are. Fucked.
You’ve glossed over how someone would get caught. Storage is done in private residences, so in order to catch someone you’d need to search their homes.
Regular searches would be unreasonable. As well as any searches just because they own a gun. The only time someone would be charged for this is when another search of the home would be conducted. The law wouldnt protect anyone nor would it increase safety or lower the rates of crimes, but add more charges to someone already being arrested. It would only inflate prison times.
No, you just make people have a requirement to carry gun insurance. See if the insurance company wants to write you a policy unless it’s sure you’re storing the gun properly. Maybe you need to provide a receipt for a storage locker before they will write the policy.
Maybe you do have to have someone inspect it. Plenty of states have motor vehicle inspections.
Let the free market solve this problem. Right now. Gun owners want all the toys they can dream of but want zero responsibility for when someone inevitably uses their gun to murder someone.
You can’t keep a Tiger in your living room. In order to catch someone with it, police aren’t going door to door doing Tiger checks. That’s how literally every law works.
Brother, I can talk dumb and ineffective gun laws all night long without repeating myself.
Problem is that people, of any political persuasion, don’t get the notion of political capital. I rant about it a lot. :)
No matter how right you think you are, no matter how scientifically valid your reasoning, no matter how sensible, no matter what, making laws costs goodwill. Decisions cost votes. And votes determine one’s ability to stay in office and effect the sorts of changes one, and hopefully, their constituents want.
Knowing that and factoring it in is what politicians need to be doing. FFS, this is high school Government 101.
Guns for example:
“We want a ‘high capacity’ mag ban!”
Well, none of that works like you think. High cap mags jam, the military won’t even use 'em, only mass shooter idiots, and I’d rather their shit jam. Besides, swapping a mag is trivial for a shooter, 4-seconds if he sucks. Can we talk about it?
“Children! Safety! WANT!”
OK, it’s gotta cost voters, and cost you a chance to make real changes.
“WANT!”
tl;dr If the Democrats had brains enough to read the room, they’d drop the non-stop gun ban shit, take the issue back from the assholes, gain all those single-issue voters and sweep the polls everywhere.
So I have no idea about guns but would you say there is no legislative way to end the fact that the USA is the only first world country with a mass shooting like every other day?
Again I am not arguing for or against any one particular measure or ban.
I don’t know anything about high cap mags or whatever.
But I do know that other countries seem to show a correlation between stricter gun laws and less fatalities by gun.
Or is it your 2nd amendment that stands in the way of effective legislative measures?
It just seems like a problem that should be so easy to solve and as a European it just seems strange that you guys seem to be completely unable to even make improvements.
other countries seem to show a correlation between stricter gun laws and less fatalities by gun.
Other countries have universal healthcare and functioning social services. I suspect there’s a stronger correlation between those things and lower levels of violence of all types.
I think the issue here is that lawmakers don’t know enough about guns to write laws to regulate them effectively. They just ban things that sound dangerous because it makes it look like they’re doing things without actually having to do things.
Republicans have a legitimate argument that Democrat gun control laws are fucking stupid, and Democrats have a legitimate argument that we need more gun control. Most of us just sit here wishing you can be allowed to own a gun, but not buy a fucking assault rifle from some random dickhead at at a gun fair.
Most of us just sit here wishing you can be allowed to own a gun, but not buy a fucking assault rifle from some random dickhead at at a gun fair.
You’ve fallen into the trap yourself. “Assault rifles” are defined as “select fire rifles in an intermediate caliber intended for infantry use.” Select fire rifles have been banned in the US since 1986, 37yr ago, unless you have your Class III SOT (which means you have the licencure required to own them because you showed an ATF agent your business plan of selling them to mil and police.)
What you have an issue with is just a regular semiautomatic rifle that cosmetically looks scary and black, but functions just like every other semi auto rifle or pistol on the planet. Not only that, but all rifles (not even just ARs, all rifles) are responsible for 500/60,000 gun deaths for a rate of 0.2% of gun deaths. Banning them would do nothing, mass shooters already use handguns more and as we see from the VT shooting you can kill a lot of unarmed people with them.
For the one year they weren’t riding around in cars? Btw that study has been majorly debunked, it included kids 0-19 and only took place in Philly, NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, and LA, our areas particularly known for gang violence, gangs which are famously all populated with people under 25 (cause usually they don’t live much longer, or get arrested, or quit but that’s the least popular option.)
Gun violence is gun violence and our major cities are the places we should be studying and conforming our policy to. You people are deranged and gullible.
It would require a constitutional amendment to outright ban guns, and our Congress can’t agree on year to year budgeting. Getting the required votes to ban guns would be functionally impossible. Honestly even if it didn’t require an amendment I don’t think it would be realistically passed as a regular law.
So: banning guns outright is off the table entirely.
More gun controls always seemed to be approached in an incredibly stupid way- they tend to ban the scary things rather than the dangerous things.
Tbh, “banning the dangerous things” is still not the way to solve this problem imo.
Like could we be incredibly abelist and say “the mentally ill can’t have guns anymore?” Yes, we could, and that may help against mass shootings, but it also further stigmatizes the mentally ill, most of whom will never commit a crime like that anyway since tbh mass shootings are only .001% of our gun crime so it is unlikely. Could we be incredibly racist and say “well 12% of the population commits 50% of the crime, so no more guns for black people?” Yes we could, in fact that was the point of Pistol Purchase Permits and CCW permits, often they require sheriff approval and if that sheriff is a racist, the sheriff who is a police officer in America, where the cops are kinda known for being racist, he can deny the peemit “for any reason.” And yes it is still being used like that in some areas.
Could we say no calibers above .30? I guess, but that would include .45ACP, seems like a dumb thing to ban a fat slow round that can be eaten by a 2x4 (hyperbole but actually not by much lol). And what of 12ga? No Turkey hunting because slugs also exist?
Could we ban all rifles? Yeah, but they are only responsible for 0.2% of our gun deaths at 500/60,000. Not very effective.
Could we ban handguns? Probably not tbh. The support isn’t there yet, they need to get the scary rifles banned first so they can say “see that didn’t work we need to ban handguns now.”
Imo we need to find out and address the reasons for the violence, be it economic instability, or our shit ass school system training people to be factory drones in a country without factories, or whatever. Sure it’s harder, but “all things that are worth doing take effort.” People are looking for an “easy way out,” but there just straight up isn’t one.
They just change the definitions when it suits them.
High capacity used to be the big 50-100 round mags. Now when they say “high capacity” they mean standard capacity 30 round or even smaller. Plenty of places ban anything over 10 or 15.
When kept separate from a receiver, it’s perfectly legal, they’re just gun parts. So just make sure you travel with it in pieces and only shoot with friends out in nature
Add comment