I have an idea. Gun control proponents say they want to have serial numbers on the gun so it can be tracked back to the seller, and we can find out who bought it. Gun rights supporters do not want any serial numbers because it would put all owners in a giant database, which government could then access. It seems there is no solution to be able to reconcile this desire of gun control proponents with the worries of gun rights supporters. Usually if you can track a number one way, you could track the number in the other direction too. But advanced mathematics does have a solution. Is anyone familiar with the fundamentals of the way crypto currency works? I'll vastly simplify it so you can all understand it. You can take one number, and know that it corresponds to a second number. But if you only have the second number, there is no practical way to be able to know what number it corresponds to. The mathematical function is far easier to perform in one direction than the reverse. Suppose law enforcement found a gun and obtained the serial number from it. They would not be able to know, by themselves, which person that gun corresponded to. But they could enter the number into a database. Gun dealers and gun manufacturers would all have their own completely separate individual databases. They would take their database and see if the serial number corresponded to any of the numbers in their database. You might think this would be overly hard and involve the need for too much computational power, but there could be a prefix on each serial number to help them. Knowing this prefix would help the database of the gun dealer narrow it down to a much smaller number of possibilities to consider, like maybe 20 or 200. If they found a match, the gun dealer or gun manufacturer could voluntarily give the name that matched that number to law enforcement. If law enforcement started overwhelming the database with too many requests, then gun manufacturers could decide not to comply. There could be imposed, by a law, a certain limited number of requests law enforcement could make per year. Maybe only 250 would be allowed per year, nationwide. More could be allowed if the request was only specific to a certain area, maybe using only 4 zip code numbers. There would still be a limit on that too, for each zip code. To perform this, the gun dealer could use a certain special computer that was hack-proof. This computer would only ever be used to perform this one task, and its connection to the internet would be limited to only accept a list of numbers, in a preconceived very simple format, and not accept any programming commands. (No program "updates" would be possible on this computer) The thing about these numbers is that they oftentimes can involve a "key" number, to "unlock" one number. If the government simply managed to seize the database of the gun dealer or manufacturer, it would not mean anything to them. The gun dealers could incorporate lots of fake random names into the database, maybe 3 times more fake entries than real ones. The number associated with each name in the database would not be a serial number. If the government gets their hands on this database, it would be nearly useless to them. Rather the gun dealer will have to use a certain password that allows the programming to use the list to do its intended function. This would not merely be any ordinary computer password, but would be completely mathematically integral to allowing the function to work. Even if experts took the computer apart, the information in it could not be used by them. Gun dealers could share two or three backup copies among their partners in the area, so that even if one computer was destroyed or that person died, the database could continue to be used. The knowledge of who the backup copy was shared with would not be shared with anyone else. There are some inherent logistical mathematical limitations to this. Supposing that the function was ten billion times more difficult to solve in one direction than another, all it would take to crack the function would be the use of a computer ten billion times more powerful than the ordinary low cost computer. It does seem to be able to work with cryptocurrency. Government could pay for the computers, and then local authorities could require the dealer to perform a simple test to verify that the system worked. If they suspected a gun dealer of not entering data in the system, they could send in an undercover person to make a purchase and later report the serial number on that gun to verify whether the gun dealer was keeping up with his responsibilities. Maintaining the security of these computers would be a big vulnerability. If someone were able to tamper with the computer before it reached the gun dealer, then all the security could be useless.
If conservatives do not write the language of compromise then progressives will. Why don't you think up a compromise idea, oppose it at all costs, but then push it as an alternative if it becomes obvious there's a push towards something and you won't be able to stop it? Are you capable of understanding that? This is strategy to benefit you.
Compromise implies "give and take". What would gun control advocates be giving back? What current laws would be relaxed? When the stated goals are "no more gun violence", "no more mass shootings", and "no more school shootings", there is no level of compromise that will ever be good enough not to require more compromise.
Compromise becomes necessary when one side will make the "compromise" without you, if you do not first act to put some change in place. Of course it can be difficult to know exactly when such a situation is actually imminent. All sorts of sides in history missed out on their chance to define the wording of their compromise because they were too stubborn, and held out until the last when a law was pushed on them and there was at that point nothing they could do about it.
I'm not sure if you are understanding. I am suggesting a way to minimize your losses, which could be inevitable in the future. It would be like a country negotiating a defeat treaty while they still hold a half decent position, rather than suffering total defeat and the enemy writing the terms of surrender.
Perhaps the more important issue here is that the gun, or the owner might not have committed a crime. Or, in the case that they did, the legal availability of those guns or existing restriction around owning or buying a gun didn't stop the person who committed the crime. Democrats simply want to know who has what so they can confiscate them entirely. Why? Because an armed citizenry can do essentially what Ukrainians have done to the Russians. They can, so inclined, stop the tyranny. And that is what frightens democrats. Ask why they don't want to spend money on policing. It's a simple answer. It takes away money from their other cool ideas, and they don't believe in a peaceful world, they want folks to be fearful, and dependent then, on government. These are pretty transparent truths about democrats. They feel like only they can have the actual power, and you cannot. Why? Because you might not want their version of paternalism that they so would want to inflict on you. And you can't have a recourse, that just won't do. My observation about the crime in TX yesterday was that media went out of their way to not discuss the motives, or in fact the actual perpetrator, or the actual set of facts about the shooting to attempt to craft the same narrative about this shooting as was the lefty marxist who shot up minority folks in Buffalo. And instead of being able to do that, turns out the disgruntled hispanic kid didn't fit that narrative sufficiently so they chose to withhold the information long enough to wax on about racism all day long to make their point. The real circumstances of this shooting indicate that police were already engaged with the now deceased killer and chased him. Seems dude wanted to take his anger out on a target of those unable to fight back. And he did. And media hid that set of facts from most folks who didn't have access to the local media in tx who did report it. Serial number identification of the weapons used yesterday really wouldn't have had any effect on the day, in my opinion. Why? Because the kid seems to have not hit any of the usual red flag indicators that have at least to this point been released from the investigation folks. What would have been vastly more effective would have been an armed resource officer at the school trained to engage, a single entrance to the school that would have restricted access and further movement through the school, etc. Those aren't ever discussed by democrats because, gasp, they might create a sense of safety for parents. Why are schools targeted again? Because killers know there isn't anyone there who is going to shoot back at them. Cowardly if you ask me, but then, who knows what vain glory goes through the minds of these kids. If we want to start actively stopping these folks, more folks with guns who have the will and the training to engage these crazy folks when necessary is likely the only answer. Of course, that flies in the face of what democrats want and it won't gain any traction with them. And that really all flows directly back from their desire to have a defenseless public whom they can abuse. This is the way of the plantation.
So stop using the word "compromise". You're suggesting that we slowly let them erode our rights away until there is nothing left, rather than opposing this for as long as possible. Nothing that the Democrats want to do will get them to where they want to be.
When it becomes inevitable that you're going to lose your footing, slide, and lose some ground, it is better that you write the law to define that loss rather than they do. You seem to have difficulty understanding that concept. I'm just afraid you're being overly optimistically hopeful. Look how much ground has already been lost. If that isn't enough, take a look at the impending demographic changes. Georgia, a formerly rock-solid conservative state, has seemed to be on the edge of tipping blue, Texas is on the verge of sliding over the edge, Virginia is under attack as the hugely populated D.C. suburbs sprawl outwards. If you do your research, California was still by many measures a purple state in the early 1990s. If you keep up with any news, you know that is obviously totally long gone. Maybe time to get more realistic, and less idealistic?
Once they realize that we've conceded, they'll keep going. Do you think that if we give up on UBCs, AWBs and capacity restrictions that they won't come back for more. The realistic position is that no matter what we give them they will keep coming back for more. They could pass every single law in the Democratic Platform and there will still be mass shootings and school shootings, and they'd told us that their tolerance for those is zero, especially given the power to impose any law that they wish.
