Saturday, June 14, 2014

"You have to license cars! SQUAWWWK! You have to license cars!"

I swan, no matter how many times the "treat guns like cars" thing gets stomped, it keeps coming back.

I don't need any license at all to buy any car I want. There's even a private road nearby where I could take an unregistered, unplated, single-seater car with no bumpers, airbags, or even headlights and drive it in circles at 200mph and the government can't say boo about it.

Sure, I have to take a rudimentary test to take the car out on public roads, but I can take it on any public road I want. My Hoosier driver's license will let me drive all over Manhattan or down Mulholland Drive.

I reckon I'd be comfortable with treating guns like cars, but your average anti gunner wouldn't.
.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it's a pretty short list of things you need permission to buy. Also a pretty short list of items that require govt permission to manufacture.

Merle

Anonymous said...

one for your collection:
WE NEED TO REGULATE CARS THE WAY WE REGULATE GUNS
http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/we-need-to-regulate-cars-the-way-we-regulate-guns

The Jack said...

Those proposing this need not be lying.

In my experience a good chunks saying "we must treat guns like cars" are grossly ignorant of both car and gun law.

They actually do think a license is required to own a car and that every car has to be registered and they don't really think about the whole interstate driving thing or horror of horror that not every state has an annual inspection requirement.

Though when push comes to shove so often the liars and the ignorant will dismiss all the actual car law and go for "Well cars are registered and have mandatory insurance"

Kristophr said...

If we treated guns like cars, a 12 year old could buy an 88mm FLAK gun on ebay for a crate-full of Benjamins, have it shipped to his folks' back 40, and use it to shoot-up prairie dogs all day.

Ammo might be almost as expensive as .22LR, though.

Kristophr said...

The Jack: Yup. No insurance or registration needed for farm trucks.

leaddog said...

Lessee...
Learned to drive at age 6, old chevy pickup 3 on the tree...

Only a small fraction of the vehicles we owned had registration and tags, but nearly all of them were operated up and down the local public roads on a daily basis...

Bought and sold vehicles from the age of about 12 or 14...

No one cared...

OK, lets treat guns like that. I'm game.

Anonymous said...

There is a paved road up north of Atlanta where I got my unlicensed car up to 200 mph. Didn't get a ticket, either.

Art

Old NFO said...

Sigh... How many times can we play Whack-A-Mole???

Steve Skubinna said...

As we all know, the grabbers will not argue in good faith. Everything they say is false.

Drang said...

Still want a Toyota Hilux turbo diesel, though.
I'd probably call it The Stig...
('Cuz calling it Jezza, Hamster, or Captain Slow would be creepy.)

Don M said...

Fun is when you combine guns with vehicles. Tanks, for the memories!

mikee said...

My postdoc year at Georgia Tech was blessed by the research advisor I had, who owned a tomato-red 1968 Alfa Romeo Julietta fitted out for amateur racing.

He used to let his lab staff borrow it for ridiculously high speed runs to the Granger's tool store or out to lunch at the Varsity.

Yes, let's make guns work like cars, so I can borrow any full auto machine gun owned by a friend and use it almost anywhere at all, just for funsies.

Joseph said...

Considering that automobiles killed almost 4 times the number of people than are murdered by any sort of firearm in 2011, I have to ask what these loons are thinking?

Anonymous said...

I'd be happy with regulating guns like cars except for the registration part.
Registering cars is generally a revenue producing tool, while registering guns is generally a tracking/confiscation tool (although police are now tracking people via their car license number nowadays).

KM said...

TW-except for the registration part

There is no mandatory registration if the vehicle never sees public road. You don't need plates on private property.
Buy used and all you need is the signed title from the previous owner...if it never gets put in your name, oh well!

Andrew M. said...

I read a story of a wisconsin man who was caught drunk driving for the 7th time. 6 times convicted and he was still able to get a permit. Applying this to the guns/cars analogy. I could be convicted of 6 crimes committed with a gun and still be allowed to own guns! Yee Haw!

Anonymous said...

Re your third paragraph, Tam:
Forgive my bringing in another subject, but it's what I've said for some time regarding same-sex marriage, & judges negating state laws banning same. If a state must recognize all other states' marriage laws, despite legislation expressing the wishes of an individual state's voters rejecting other states' more liberal (note the lower case) laws, then every state should be made to recognize my TN HCP, and I should be able to carry in NYC, SF, or anywhere else.
Naturally, I agree with the other point: that on private property I need no license to operate a motor vehicle, nor must it have tags or insurance. For that matter, it doesn't need to be titled. I can operate it as intoxicated as I may care to be. I can trailer my farm truck to a friend's house & let them use it, even if they have no license due to its suspension by the state. Regulate arms the same as vehicles? Let's start today--I'm all for it!
--Tennessee Budd

Anonymous said...

KM -

In Washington State where I live, the law says that the seller must submit a report of sale to the DMV within 15 days of sale.

A friend of mine sold his pickup and didn't submit a report of sale. Months later he got a call from a towing company informing him that they had his truck in their impound lot and that he owed them for the towing and storage which was $400 and climbing. Not being able to prove that he had sold the truck months previously, he had to pay up. Ignoring it would have gotten him nasty calls from a collection agency or possibly even a court order compelling him to pay up.

So, at least in WA, it's a good idea to be sure the vehicle is properly registered.

Netpackrat said...

Clearly, we need universal background checks for all car and truck purchasers. Nobody should be able to pay cash for a 30 (or so) million grain projectile, with no questions asked like that.

Tam said...

tailwind,

"So, at least in WA, it's a good idea to be sure the vehicle is properly registered."

That does not follow from your first anecdote. Reporting a sale is not the same as registering.

If you've got a five acre paved parking lot in your back yard, you can legally go get a Miata and drive it around on your property 'til doomsday without registering anything. If you sell it to somebody else, file a report of the sale with the BMV. Not the same as registering it.

Anonymous said...

Everyone is missing the point here. Its not constitutionally protected to drive vehicles. It is to own guns. We shouldn't have to register anything but sex offenders. This country is becoming oppressive.

Weer'd Beard said...

The constant repetition of this trope, calling civilian rifles "Battle Field Weapons" (while ignoring Mauser Actions and pump-action shotguns, revolvers, and single-stack semi-auto pistols, all of which served or are similar to service weapons), and espousing the brilliance of the work of Arthur Kellermann all show what you tied to the Ideological Turing Test.

The anti-gun people are completely incapable of getting inside our heads...or unwilling because all the data points that we're right.

They spend all their time tilting at windmills, and patting themselves on the back for repeating stupid talking points that can't even stand under their own power.

Ancient Woodsman said...

All good points and pondered on this end many times.

One that I thought would make their heads explode would be the lack of a tie between a licensed driver, and ownership of the vehicle. One may lose their privilege to drive and the state will revoke the driving license, but the person still retains possession of their vehicle - and can still do anything they want with it as long as it is not on a public way.

Yes, for the most part I would support the idea - but it wouldn't take much conversation before the other side whined that "that's not what I meant!" Nothing offends them more than to show them plainly that their mighty thoughts are just wisps of vapor.

Windy Wilson said...

But a record of sale that goes into leviathan's data base becomes a record of ownership, which is the same thing as a registry of ownership.

I was thinking that the appropriate response to a low information voter parroting this "argument" is, "Great Idea!", after which you explain how Indy cars don't have license plates or mandatory insurance cards or any of those other things the LIVs think HAVE to come with treating guns like cars.
That ought to shut them up for a bit. At least until the next "convincing arguments for thoughtless people" comes along.

skidmark said...

Reporting the sale of a car is more to end the bite of the taxman - or at least redirect it to the other guy's wallet. And here where I hang my hat & gunbelt if I report the car sold more than 90 days before the expiration of the registration I get a refund mailed to me.

BTW - the reason you can drive from one end of the country to the other on your home state's DL is because drivers and their advocates (think AAA in the early years) pushed, pulled and kicked the various states into an Interstate Compact, not because Congress got involved. The same could be tried for permission slips.

stay safe.

bob r said...

At least in Washington State the system for vehicle ownership "titles" is the gun controller's wet dream. All vehicles *must* have a title. If you sell a vehicle then you *must* report the sell to the state and you *must* report the name of the purchaser. If you *buy* a vehicle, you *must* complete the transfer of the title to your name (a *licensed* automobile *dealer* may do this for you). To complete the title transfer, you *must* have a state issued identification card; a "driver's" license is the most commonly used but the state does issue an id card useful for "proof" of identity (and age) but that cannot be used for driving.

Automobile "registration" is paying a tax the "allows" you to use the vehicle on the public roads -- subject to meeting other additional requirements. So, no you don't have to "register" the vehicle to use it on "private" land.

This is another case of a word being used in two different contexts and having *very* different meanings in each of those contexts. It's also one of those cases where if "they" hold an election, I'm still "voting" NO even after the polls are closed.

Will said...

bob r:

CA is the same. Someone MUST be the registered owner.

The DMV would not renew my DL because I hadn't paid the registration on my Bronco for two years. I didn't bother to file a change of ownership form, since I sold it to a DEALER. (I'm pretty sure they took it to Mexico.) Two years of fees and late payment penalties is what that cost me.

Sigivald said...

Reminds me of the "car argument" for universal healthcare.

You have to have car insurance, so why can't we mandate health insurance?"

... because health "insurance" 1) isn't insurance and 2) isn't for liability.

It baffled me that people could make that argument and seriously seem to think it was a zinger rather than painfully stupid.