ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation

Carrying a gun does have benefits, and it does have drawbacks. Lots of room for this to be subjective, and lots of room for someone to subjectively find this to be a good thing to do.

    Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker?

That restriction got people so angry that they did mid-term recalls. Not even just waiting till next election.

I go to my local gun store, which is actually a front for the ATF. In my mind, looks like a bunch of seedy characters, but i assume they're trustworthy because, natch, they have a license from the ATF.

I strike up a conversation with the bearded, scraggly guy behind the counter. What would I like? I don't know. How about a shotgun? As we talk, he talks more and more about "cool" guns. Perhaps sawed-off barrels, or big loads. At some point, we cross the line between talking about legal guns and illegal guns.

Now here's the thing: beats the shit out of me where we crossed that line. I'm trusting the guy behind the counter to be a reliable guide to what can be bought or sold. From the ATF standpoint, however, I am fully aware of the intricacies of firearm law and am now soliciting them to commit a crime.

A few months go by. Then the ATF comes knocking at my door with a warrant, a hi-res video, and I go to jail. Perhaps for many years.

Now we can argue whether they would actually prosecute or not, or what any sane prosecutor would ask for solicitation, but the fact of the matter is, in the ATF's view, I'm a hardened gun criminal. It'll go on my record, and this will become part of the intelligence files at ATF.

If you can't see what's wrong with this picture, you've lost your moral compass.

The two most important graphs for understanding U.S. law enforcement:

Total state and federal prisoners: http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/State%20and%20....

Total violent crime: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zJiRb6FKYgM/Tqil-T4fLpI/AAAAAAAAAF....

Violent crime increases almost 5x from the mid 1960's to the early 1990's. The number of state and federal prisoners consequently increases 5x during that period. That's not the result of "for-profit justice." That's the result of people supporting aggressive enforcement and incarceration in response to skyrocketing violent crime.

The real problem is: what happens after 1995? Violent crime drops by over a third. Yet, prison population continues to grow until it plateaus in the mid-2000's. That's where jobs and budgets come in. They make it difficult to dismantle the whole apparatus, and indeed, to really convey to the public that crime has in fact dramatically decreased.

That said, I think the solution to this is time. U.S. prison population has been trending down for the last several years. The baby boomer generation's attitudes towards crime were forged during the 1970's and 1980's as crime skyrocketed, but that attitude will start to die out as the boomers do.

And that's one of the most frightening aspects of modern-day law enforcement tactics, especially when considered in light of the surveillance techniques now at their disposal.

The standard presumption that everyone is fully aware of the legal boundaries of daily activities falls to pieces when someone is in virgin territory. In your hypothetical case, you've never bought a gun before, and you're probably a little nervous and out of your element. You're easy prey for a sting of this nature, and your nervousness would "read," in the context of the surveillance video, as criminal intent.

Ironically enough, it's the law-abiding citizens who are least likely to be aware of the intricacies of criminal law. The real criminals would cover their bases. So by its very nature, a sting like this one produces perverse outcomes. It over-selects for innocent bystanders and petty criminals, and filters out the savvier criminals who are actually the locus of the problem ostensibly being combated.