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AG candidates would seek to require fingerprint scanners in new guns sold in Massachusetts

WBUR reports on a gun-control debate between Democratic attorney-general candidates Warren Tolman and Maura Healey. Tolman would require fingerprint authentication for new guns, which he called the unsafest product for sale today; Healey says she's down with that, too, but wants to focus on broader crime issues.

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Comments

Most dangerous on the market? A car kills more people than guns.

I propose that every car has a interlock breath device in the car to end drunk driving murders. And there is a three day waiting list for alcohol, so we can conduct a background check to ensure that you have no history of OUI or alcohol abuse. I also propose that we limit the amount of alcohol that a person may buy and limit the strength of the beverage, no one needs alcohol with anything above 10% alcohol by volume.

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Strawman fallacy.

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Red herring.

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Many people need a car to get to work to earn a paycheck to pay the rent, grocery bills and health insurance. Does an AK47 help you pay the rent? Think about it.

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Bill of Rights vs. Bill of Needs?

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depends what you do for a living!

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They are not just talking about AK-47's, they are talking about all firearms. And yes, plenty of people rely on firearms for paychecks to pay rent, etc.

Tolman said they are the most dangerous item on the market, which I was pointing out that they are not. I then was sarcastically suggesting that in order to make the roadways safer, bc many more peoples are killed from drunk driving accidents then firearm deaths, that we could implement some "common sense solutions" to deter drinking and driving. I know people need their vehicles to get to work, but they don't need to be drunk to do it. So if we install the interlocks on all cars, then people could still get to work without endangering anyone in the process. It doesn't effect anyone ability to drive a car, only if theyre drunk. And the same applies to alcohol, as it also kills/injures more people than firearms.

See, so I was on topic.

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product. Cars, Prescriptions Drugs, Ciggs, Booze all kill at a higher rate than guns.

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I own three chain saws. A running chain saw would probably be more terrifying than a .38 at the local 7-11.

NOBODY will reach for a running chain saw. But, better to use the gas one rather than the electric. If I can get it started.

Bottom line: Technology is sometimes unreliable. If I were (was?) a cop, the last thing I would tolerate is something getting between me and a tool that I need in a life or death situation.
Say what you want about concealed carry, but if you're licensed in Mass to CC, then you sure as hell know what you're doing, safety-wise. You also know that when you really need it, it has to work the first time. Your hands better be clean or the reader might malfunction.

My take? It's just a cheap ploy to get more pistols banned.

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Dude , I had the same trouble with the saws. Try this when you hard store them, works sweet.

http://www.trufuel50.com/product-info/?gclid=CMLT7Yqwp8ACFYMF7Aod5CsAgA

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Cheap bastard that I am, I was using marine winterizer. Good suggestion, thanks.

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Empty out the stabilized gas first, use the good dope, take the hit for the $$$ . Middle of Feb. , when a limb falls and you got to cut it up, the saw will start. If you really want to go wild , some of the Sunoco's sell ethanol free high octane racing fuel in 5 gal. pails, it's dear , $69 or so. I have an old Husquavrna , that just won't run on the ethanol gas. I keep it , it's a beast , .058 thickness chain . Timber !

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cars, prescription drugs, and booze only kill if they're improperly used. Guns have only one purpose - to injure and kill things.

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Make sure you tell that to Marty Walsh during his next Boston Olympics meeting. The lives of all of those live targets the athletes shoot must be saved.

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There are a lot of target shooters out there. So, there's a second purpose.
Anyway, yes, guns can be used to kill people and animals. It's actually one of their most basic functions.
So, why add something that interferes with its function?

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Res jumped in line ahead of me, waaahhh.

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look at all killers....

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Those kill the users, guns kill the users sometimes but usually others, often innocent people.

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An intoxicated driver had never killed an innocent bystander? Or a family driving along in another car?

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Maybe so, but no one has ever died having had cigarettes pills or a chainsaw thrown at them.

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Criminals that already break every law in the book would use these why?

Also why does the AG think they have the authority to legislate?

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So you are saying no one is killed with a legally purchased gun? What are gun owners so afraid of? If they aren't killing people with their guns there is no harm. But that is the issue, gun owners want to be do whatever they want with their guns with no repercussions.

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So law abiding people can't own something because some other people might break the law?

I guess we all can't buy alcohol or cough syrup anymore because someone might abuse it.

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I don't think you understand at all....read more of the comments for details but it sounds like your mind was made up before you clicked on the link

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Flip side: why do gun advocates constantly run with the line that since any gun regulation will not stop 100% of illegal acts with guns, therefore no regulation should be attempted? Because that's basically what the opponents are arguing here. One would never apply the same logic to motor vehicles and suggest since traffic lights do not prevent all accidents, therefore we should just get rid of them.

In the cost-benefit analysis, what is the cost of doing this? It will not harm lawful gun owners and will prevent some illegal use of guns. I see no real downside other than yes it will not prevent all illegal acts but no law does or can.

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I agree with you, except the "won't harm any gun owners" is usually determined by someone who knows nothing about guns and is wrong (see southern preachers lecturing scientists about global warming and evolution) and the fact that it is established fact that nothing will ever be enough....they are all incremental steps toward a very restrictive end goal (see "minor inconvenience" anti-abortion laws like ultrasound and counseling)

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Not trolling and actually asking: what harm would this cause lawful gun owners?

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simply put: there are almost no guns that exist that would meet this requirement and NONE have been made in numbers beyond the prototype phase. So in the short term it would completely stop all gun sales in the state. In the long term (think several years at least) someone might develop large production run of one or two models for sale (still unlikely due to economies of scale) or a way to retrofit existing designs (also unlikely). Basically at the very best it would end all gun sales in the state for several years and after that limit the selection to a few, more expensive, less reliable models.

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So the harm would be that gun owners could not purchase more guns for some period of time, if what you're saying is correct. But it would not imperil existing gun owners since they're not going to retrofit existing firearms.

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It would not imperil guns currently owned by anyone no...so people that never intended on purchasing a firearm (or selling one) ever again would not be impacted. This would be a small percentage of gun owners. It would also impact everyone who has not been able to purchase one yet because of age, finances etc.

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Guess what? These laws have been passed for a very long time to no effect. You really think more will help? The same people are breaking the law which always broke the law in the first place.

This is all about control for power hungry politicians and not crime.

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One big problem is lax enforcement of our current laws. Laws are not going to work if they're not enforced. This can be seen everywhere. Look at how many cars don't yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, especially when there's a "yield to pedestrians" sign. Follow that with how often people are pulled over and fined for that very act. Is the solution to make a new law? No, the solution is to go out there and enforce the law currently on the books.

Massachusetts already has an approved firearms roster. All of the guns on the link below are legal for sale in the state of Massachusetts. Now look at all of the postings Adam has put up with seized firearms, and follow that up with a look over what BPD has confiscated. You'll find a number of firearms listed by both Adam, and the BPD which are not on the state's approved firearms roster. This to me is pretty solid proof of a firearms ban not working. It works for people such as myself who choose to follow the laws. For those who have no care at all the ban is simply a suggestion and criminals may not even know it exists.

So the cost-benefit analysis? What benefit does it have? I say none and say so because firearms in the state of Massachusetts are already supposed to be locked up, and kept from individuals unfit to procure a firearm.

http://www.mass.gov/eopss/firearms-reg-and-laws/frb/approved-rosters/
http://www.mass.gov/eopss/firearms-reg-and-laws/firearm-safety-locking-d...

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On the flip side, why do gun control advocates only look to attack lawful gun owners? Why not say, go after the criminals? This law is like the NY law that you can only have 7 rounds in your magazine. The only person that law inconveniences is the lawful gun owner, the idiot with the illegal firearm isn't worried about that extra misdemeanor charge for having more than 7 rounds in his magazine.

"Hey I'm going to shoot someone"

" hey man, before you go shoot that place up, make sure you don't have more than 7 rounds in your magazine, you def don't want that charge added on to your attempted murder charge"

This law is going to cost the legal gun owner more money to buy the firearm and like someone else pointed out, this is more of a way to ban more firearms bc most firearm companies aren't going to spend the money or aggravation on doing this to their guns, the market and headache in MA isn't worth it.

How about, I don't know, young the mandatory minimum on illegal possession of a firearm?

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If you're gonna engage, leave the straw men at home. There might be a legitimate point to saying these will have minimum benefit even if enacted, there's at least an argument there most people will listen to including me. But to say gun control advocates, who number many DAs and police orgs along with regular citizens, don't care about going after criminals is a bunch of bs.

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this is true...but the agenda most of them push typically impacts lawful gun owners more than criminals. When I hear the brady campaign or bloomberg calling for mandatory life sentences for felons in possession and not whining about complete red-herrings like assault weapons, smart guns, and ammo microstamping I might pay attention

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http://bgr.com/2014/04/15/galaxy-s5s-fingerprint-scanner-hacked/

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/the-iphone-5ss-fingerprint-sca...

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Fool-a-Fingerprint-Security-Syste...

The biometric systems are highly unreliable. Fingerprint technology is known to have problems. So much in fact a new fingerprint locking tool comes standard with a key backup for unlocking the device:
www.sentinl.com

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Could be a retina scanner like in the Terminator. For those who don't know, he ripped a guy's eyeball out and held it up to a retina scanner. Haha. H...woh.

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In order to activate it you must look straight into the barrel...

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Wait wasn't the Demolition Man?

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I thought we just got done passing a bunch of gun control?

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To think, local politicians have been campaigning on fixing BPS for decades. And look!

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This is a nice theory, but again, is something that will only apply to lawful gun owners. Once a firearm is stolen, the trigger will be replaced, or the technology stripped or what have you.

It may stop unarmed teens from being shot 8 times when allegedly reaching for a police officers firearm (since it would do them no good anyways) but outside of immediate use cases I don't see this being very effective.

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The unlocking of stolen cell phone should be a hint that this tech won't work.

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This would be a defacto ban on all gun sales in the state due to the fact that almost no one makes these products and tooling up to produce them for one state would not be economical.

Meanwhile the vast, vast majority of crime guns will continue to come out of state and once again only law abiding gun owners will suffer.

Oh....and you can be sure they will exempt the police

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take them $300m and 2 years to create a database to store the information.

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That's not true, there are plenty of such products out there... the problem is, the last time a store tried selling one, they got so many death threats, they had to take it off market - it would've triggered the NJ smart-gun law.

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No there aren't. Why do you think this tech isn't ALL OVER CONTROL HAPPY EUROPE?

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are you talking about the shitty 22 pistol that cost 4,000 dollars.....yeah real competitive

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Wait, law abiding gun owners acted like thugs and threatened to murder the owner. But I thought gun owners were angels who never used or threatened to use their weapons to hurt people.

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if someone was threatening to kill someone else they are by definition not law abiding.....

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i wouldn't expect any less of a comment from a ragging democrat. does he propose stricker punishments for criminals who get caught with illegal firearms? Prob not.

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that every comment makes sensible points about why this measure, and ALL other attempts at gun control by the state of MA, will fail: they will have no effect whatsoever on the rates of violent gun crime in Boston/Lawrence/Springfield/etc. because criminals will simply acquire the type of gun they need through whatever channel is available to them.

To any "liberal" who supports "gun control":

If you think the drug war has failed (and it has), why do you think prohibitions on guns will be any more successful (or any less racist in effect if not intent)?

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AGREE 100%

I STRONGLY encourage you guys to frequently check the BPSnews website. You will find that:
A) Guns get taken off the streets on the daily
B) The people causing trouble almost always are possessing the gun illegally without a license (I've never seen otherwise)
C) Most of the guns seized are models that are already illegal to sell in Massachusetts

this is just another ploy by a mass politician to push around an unpopular demographic in mass (gunowners)

this is no different from politicians in alabama passing all kinds of stupid rules about abortion to push around a unpopular demographic in alabama (women who want abortions)

political grandstanding that serves nothing more than punishing people minding their own business

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because its not a prohibition on guns the way the drug war was. The drug war is being (slowly) replaced with regulations on selling drugs, while right wingers say any regulation on owning and using weapons is a prohibition, which is a lie. There are regulations and rules (databases) on owning cars or operating larger vehicles requires more training and licenses. But right wingers want weapons floating around everywhere, bringing the wild west circa 1850 to cities where everyone will be able to have whatever they want, including terrorists, and we will have daily shoot outs and maybe the "good guys" will win.

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The wild west was historically far more peaceful than popular culture has lead people to believe.

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I want real gun control -- banning many weapons entirely. But the fingerprint thing is just stupid. The people buying firearms in legit, over the counter sales are not the gangs and thugs. The over-the-counter sales are more likely to be involved in something domestic (if used for harm) and in these cases a fingerprint isn't needed. A fingerprint won't stop a weapon from being stolen and it isn't going to stop weapons bring brought in from other states with lax laws.

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Come from "out of state?!?" And,somehow, that is "proof" that we don't need any refinement, adjustment, etc. of gun laws?

In my thinking, the fact that illegal guns come from "out of state" (ie; from a state with lax gun laws) proves that tighter, national gun laws are needed. I'd betcha dollars for donuts that every "restrictive" state is bordered by a lenient one, and that guns flow freely over the border. Great system, isn't it?

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are working wonders for our neighbors. Mexico almost had zero murders in the last 10 min.

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Most of the illegal guns (as well as many of the legal ones) in Mexico come the USA. The US is the Mexico of illegal guns, where lax laws and enforcement leads our neighbors in the North and South with an infestation of illegal weapons.

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So your argument is about federal laws? Great, vote for someone to further your agenda, in the mean time leave law abiding gun owners in Massachusetts alone

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Exactly, MA needs no further gun laws. The focus needs to go outside our borders and leave our law abiding gun owners out of it.

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Since 1998 when MA passed stricter laws than the bordering states our crime rate has gone up while theirs has gone down.

The issue is criminals themselves and not the tools of the trade.

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owned guns. And it is these people who are responsible for the vast majority of 'gun crime' in the U.S. You can pass all the laws in the world aimed at legal gun owners, it won't make a dent in the rampant violent crime and gun related crime which occurs statistically overwhelmingly in some urban neighborhoods. As for MA passing all kinds of legal gun ownership restrictions, it's meaningless grandstanding by politicians and 'advocates'. The average person who commits the typical violent gun related crime doesn't give a crap about the law and can pretty easily obtain illegal guns and other firearms, often sourced outside this state. MA doesn't have border guards, our borders (much like our national borders in many spots) are wide open.

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Criminals generally use ILLEGALLY owned guns.

Really? Do you have any evidence to back that up?

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have established criminal histories,especially gelony convictions, which automatically make it illegal for them to own a firearm. Yet, who'd have thunk it, they obtain them (illegally) and use them,anyways.

Almost all the guns, probaly all of them actually, in the City of Boston for example, that are used in a violent crime, are illegally obtained and used by unlicensed owners.

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