Now I should be reported to the FBI? And what will the FBI do with these reports -- they are already not responding to bank robberies -- are they going to devote long man hours to hunting down people exercising their 2nd amendment rights to participate in a sporting activity?

Honest answer? Yes, you should be reported. I even think that ammo should be treated more strictly than the gun. The gun you can get anywhere right, but ammo you have to buy from certain sources. It would be much easier to control the flow of ammo, then guns.

I mean lets get real, a bank robbery nowadays amounts to maybe $1-$10,000 in cash (banks sneeze that kind of  money every second). Insurance covers that, nobody gets hurt for the most part. The guy leaves the bank. It might happen a few more times and the feds catch the guy and it's over.

Getting back to the reporting. So your buy got reported - no inconvenience to you at all. You bought your ammo, you had your fun, and you didn't even know any better. The feds looked at your background a second time, nothing crazy popped up and you're slotted in a Top-Buyer category with a triple star rating, end of story. Holmes, on other hand, gets a background check and then they find out he bought a bunch of arms in a short time and mad ammo, doesn't have any history of law enforcement/military, is seeing a shrink (maybe even the shrink at that point would incentive to report him), and they might even send a car over to his house just to see whats up.

I have to show ID when I buy beer at Walmart, despite being easily a decade over the limit. However, I can walk in and buy several hundred rounds for my handgun and not have to show jack. And what's the point of ID anyway?

Well that's depressing haha, but it's not a problem with the ID. The ID is great, you should be flattered to have it checked, I know I am always when I get carded. The problem is the inconsistency of checking it and the thick-headedness of members of society not to make a cost-benefit analysis into policy. If some kid gets sold a 6pack, he drinks with his friends, maybe throws up and goes home. If a kid is sold a weapon or rounds, he might never come home.

Furthermore, I have a slight problem when we start talking about infringements on any right being "inconvenient."

I have a problem with "infringement on your right" becomes so easily thrown around and so loosely understood that walking 2 blocks for something becomes an infringement. Like I said, nobody is saying you can't buy ammo off the internet or whichever way is convenient for you, but it will be reported. And reporting doesn't nothing to inhibit you or inconvenience you.

The central point is that these events are statistical anomalies. They are responsible for a lot less mortality than heart attacks, cancer or any other type of natural death or disease. However, they are flashy and get media attention so people will demand that "something must be done" while they stuff that 3rd donut down their throat in the morning.

Dude, that's because it takes 20-30-40 years to die from smoking, terrible eating, cancer... etc. Of course when 12 people and 50+ others get injured in under 5 minutes it causes media attention.

Two questions:

1. What, exactly, is the FBI supposed to do with this information?

2. Are there any other legal activities you believe should be reported to the FBI?

What does the FBI do with information such as fertilizer purchases?

Do you think no legal activities should be reported to the FBI?

What does the FBI do with information such as fertilizer purchases?

What, exactly, is the FBI supposed to do with information about ammunition purchases?

Do you think no legal activities should be reported to the FBI?

How does having thousands rounds of ammunition make a person more dangerous? Gun dealers are encouraged to report buyers of large amounts of weapons. Holmes didn't buy "a bunch of arms in a short time", he purchased a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. Allowing police to casually browse someones medical history simply because they purchase ammunition strikes me as needlessly intrusive. Allowing that would require overturning state and federal laws, and possibly Supreme Court precedents.

With no crime having occurred it would overturn the entire idea of a free society, not to mention the vast amount of wasted police time or wasted social resources on increasing police presence.

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!

Yeah, but I heard that sometimes you can buy ammunition on the internet that shoots through schools.

America! I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

Ah, yes: matriculation rounds.

Thespian-piercing matriculation rounds, I think you mean.

And reporting doesn't nothing to inhibit you or inconvenience you.

Just like the no-fly list does nothing to inhibit or inconvenience anyone.  And the police never make mistakes.

Allons-y!

Just out of curiosity, how much would  block of 1000 rounds of AR-15 ammo actually weigh?

I don't own an AR-15 or anything in centerfire so I looked it up. It's apparently just shy of 30 lbs.

America! I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

Conservatives are always so gunho (pun intended) about banning/censoring things like movies, books, video games, science literature, and whatnot, over quite petty shit like nipples. So your idea wouldn't be all that strange to them.

Also I'd go a step further. Transvaginal/Transanal ultrasounds for everyone, since conservatives have shown no qualms about limiting 1st amendment rights (banning mosques doesn't impede on "freedom of religion" in their view) or women's rights for that matter (lets make it mandatory for doctors to be board certified and have admitting privileges to even see a woman).

Good looks on the recommendation, I will def check it out.

No problem. I never would have read it unless I had been assigned it, that's for sure. It's certainly a glimpse into an extremely scary aspect of the human mind. The whole thing is quite fascinating if you ask me.

America! I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

Except for NC, do the other states ever go Blue? I would think those states are red despite their black populations, not because of them (as you stated) so the old white people characterization still holds true. I doubt most of those black households own guns (so the conversation of gun rights is usually about white people's gun rights). And the those states have a history of being horrible to their black populations.

I still don't get the "old" part. You think all young white people are liberal?

North Carolina only went blue in 2008. Before that NC was solidly red back to 1976, and is almost certain to be again in 2012.

I cannot say about GA, AL, and MS, but I can damn sure tell you that the rural black folks in NC and upstate SC own guns big time. Jim Crow was a long time ago.

[I'm not that guy.]

I cannot say about GA, AL, and MS, but I can damn sure tell you that the rural black folks in NC and upstate SC own guns big time. Jim Crow was a long time ago.

Also, I guess I stand to be accused of a little racism here, but young urban black men seem to own a LOT of guns.  Mostly not legally possessed, granted, but they certainly don't seem to have much trouble getting ahold of them if they want them.

Allons-y!

Many of those guns are from purchased by straw buyers at gun shows... ran by... take a guess before they make it into the hands of a black teen thug.

Many of those guns are from purchased by straw buyers at gun shows... ran by... take a guess before they make it into the hands of a black teen thug.

Are you sure they're not just being sold to them by the government?

Allons-y!

See here.

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It's a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson's anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general's report is submitted.)

MORE: How data could save cities from outgrowing themselves

"Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false," says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa's committee.

True, but I am (and I think improper/indecent/whoever was too) talking about rural people. Black farmers, small-town store owners, or even southern black commuters who work in cities but live in the country. I know a lot of folks like that, and almost all of them legally own guns.

[I'm not that guy.]

I don't know whether you're racist or not, but my racist uncle who lives near Philly once complained about all the 'thugs' who were in the office getting their carry permits when he was getting his. How did he know they were thugs? They looked like Carlton Banks, but didn't dress as nicely.

Lots gets written about the unicorns of the gun debate - the elusive pro-gun liberal. I think their numbers are vastly overstated. All the gun people I know are either some flavor of conservative or some flavor of libertarian.

I think pro-gun liberals are pretty rare, but pro-gun Democrats are fairly common.  Distinction worth noting.  There are also probably more gun control-sympathetic conservatives and Republicans than you'd think living in the more tony suburbs of the mid-Atlantic and New England states.  This really is more of a rural / urban divide than a party line divide, although the fact that the parties are divided rural vs. urban sometimes makes it seem otherwise.

Allons-y!

Anecdote time: I'd say about 80% of my friends in San Francisco thought that SF's Prop H handgun ban was really stupid, and about 80% of them would look at you funny if you were to try to suggest they were libertarian, much less conservative. Granted, maybe 10% of them owned guns themselves (I didn't either, at the time).

I'm always intrigued at how few people here in Central Texas know who/what the Pink Pistols are, and the Mulford Act-esque reaction that sometimes engenders.

I will certainly concede that different regions may produce different results. In the upper Southeast - lower mid Atlantic area the vast preponderance of gun folk are some flavor of conservative or libertarian. YMMV, and it obviously does.

The Pink Pistols are given a fair amount of (perhaps somewhat grudging) respect on most of the internet gun forums I frequent. Your average Firing Line or High Road poster may not be excessively queer-friendly, but they do recognize fellow travelers when they see them.

[I'm not that guy.]

> the unicorns of the gun debate - the elusive pro-gun liberal

Legend has it that, if you suck my 'horn', you will place all your shots in a tight group in the red center of your target at 100 yards.