
Originally Posted by
Gameface
I'm not seeing it.
I've sold several guns on KSL. For certain guns I would only sell to people with a concealed carry license. But I've also sold guns without checking ID at all.
On the other hand I've never bought a gun on KSL. I take good care of my guns and when I want a gun I want something in perfect condition.
The thing is, these guns are a tool. Maybe to you a tool of terror and destruction, but not to me. If I'm not interested in shooting a gun and maintaining a high level of familiarity with it I don't want it. I'm not a gun collector and I'm not interested in stockpiling weapons. So I figure pass it along to someone who has an interest in it.
If I was going to sell a gun today (and I was actually considering selling a few guns before all this went down, and planned on listing them on KSL) I would go to a pawn shop and get about half what I think I would get selling on KSL. So while in my opinion this moratorium on gun ads will accomplish nothing to stop gun violence it will lower the value of guns privately owned in Utah to the detriment of honest law abiding citizens, while raising the price of used guns for someone looking to buy. I don't expect you to have any compassion for us. But this hit that we're taking is to provide people with emotional relief and will not change reality one bit. Just like regulating types of ammo, amount of ammo a person can buy, or the size of ammo magazines. It changes nothing as far as gun violence, but does affect people's ability to enjoy shooting and therefore do it often and be well practiced in the use of the firearms they own.
Safety and competence is important to me. The effectiveness of my firearms in the event of a crisis is also important to me. It may seem like nothing to anti-gun folks to make it harder and more expensive to practice the proper use of the firearms I own, but it matters to me, a lot. I also don't want arbitrary regulations that don't do anything to stop crime to make my firearms less effective in an extreme situation.
I'm not paranoid. I don't sit with a gun in my lap licking my lips waiting for a perp to bust through my front door so I can put a notch in my holster for my first kill, but I've been in a situation where a tweaked-out meth-head has actually busted through my front door all freaked out after his meth lab blew up. I was 19 at the time and visiting my dad so we could watch a Jazz game. My father retrieved his handgun and had it in a holster on his hip in about 20 seconds. The tweaker, who claimed he had been attacked and that people were chasing him, noticed the firearm and became much more cooperative. I don't know what might have happened. Probably not much more. My father and I could have taken the guy, but he had just run from a blown up meth lab, then broken into an old woman's house and stolen her keys and taken her van on a wild ride through town before crashing it into a tree in my neighbors front yard. He was scared and desperate. But when he realized my father was armed he did what we told him and waited for the police to arrive. In that situation the gun was not just something made for killing. It was a tool that allowed my father to protect his family and control a situation without anyone getting hurt. Several minutes later the police and an ambulance arrived and the tweaker was taken to the hospital in handcuffs.
About ten years later, on Dec. 8th 2005 my father used that same handgun to shot himself in the head and end his life.
Anyway, I know first hand that guns can do good and they can do harm. We don't live in a perfect world. We're never going to. If you pull the covers over your head it doesn't protect you from evil. That's all these silly regulations are, just covers we're going to pull over our heads and hope the boogey man goes away.