[Vision2020] How Many More . . .

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 8/17/2012 3:08 PM, lfalen wrote:
> Ending the drug war would have a far greater effect on gun crime both here and in Mexico than taking guns away from law abiding folks.

I did not write one single syllable that indicated or implied anything 
about taking guns away from anyone, whether or not they are law-abiding. 
What I wrote was about establishing a restricted-use record of ownership 
that 1) would provide financial information for purposes of gain-or-loss 
determination for income tax purposes, and which, with appropriate 
administrative law provisions in place, 2) would transfer firearm 
ownership information to law enforcement individuals for their use in 
the course of their legitimate law enforcement business.

The sky is not falling with respect to firearm confiscation, and neither 
you nor anyone else should be writing to indicate that is what I 
intended or implied.

Ending the drug war may have some marginal effect on gun activities, but 
likely would not eliminate them. The set of actions that likely would 
have a significant effect on drugs-related gun crimes would be for 
federal and state and local governments to cooperate to legalize, tax, 
and make available to adults those products, or remediating substitutes 
for those products, from which the criminal drug gangs make their 
profits. The effect of these governmental actions would be to remove 
high levels of profitability for the drugs business from the gangs. When 
drugs are insufficiently profitable to allow drug gang business success 
from trafficking in them, old-fashioned marginal microeconomics will 
indicate to the gangs it is time for them to cease business.


Ken