Accessories and Legality, Supressors are legal?! Options

[FXcalibur]

It's always struck me as odd that many firearm accessories are legal when the guns themselves require permits. Carrying a stick (staff) is also illegal, and no permit available.

[TinkerGnome]

I guess the school of thought is that there's no point to making accessories illegal if the weapons themselves are. Few people have ever been injured by sound surpressors which weren't attached to guns.

[Smiley]

What kill sme is that if you're carrying around a heavy pistol with EX Eplosive rounds, a laser sight, and a silencer with a PERMIT, you're fine. But if you're caught with a knife, you're boned.

[Rev]

Only sinless dregs carry sticks and knives.

Respectable people like to carry guns.

You know, I think that it is absolutely illegal to carry around a knife more than four inches long unless it is packed up (eg in a box) where I live, but you can get a permit to concealed carry a gun.

I remember going to court in middle school or something and the case was some poor immigrant who was pulled over and they found a rather large (like 10 inch) kitchen knife with the blade wrapped up in newspaper in his car and hauled him in for posession. He said he was going to or from work with the knife, and that he had wrapped it up in newspaper so it was safer to carry around. His employer had somebody there to back up that he had to bring his own knife to work.

As I recall the judge just told him to get a box and let him go. Just a cardboard box was enough. The judge seemed to think the whole thing was pretty stupid.

[A Clockwork Lime]

You're hardly "hosed" if you get caught with a knife. At most you'll be paying 100 or 200 nuyen for carrying it around, assuming a cop makes both his Perception (8) and Police Procedures (8) Tests to spot it and decide to write you up for it. If you have it in a Long Coat, he has to make a Perception (12) test instead.

Carrying around, say, an Ares Predator with only a Silencer and Laser Sight tucked into a Concealable Holster, even with a permit, means the cop spots it on you with a simple Perception (3; 4 in a long coat) Test and will likely hassle you until you show the permit. Its Legality power of 6 is what should be used to determine he hassles you or not.

Either way, the pistol is going to be a bigger annoyance than the knife almost every time.

This post has been edited by A Clockwork Lime: Apr 29 2004, 05:31 PM

[Kakkaraun]

Yep...in Minnesota, we have very lax concealed-carry laws (LAX to a ridiculous extreme), but I think we also have the 4-inch knife rule. Also, no butterflies, no switchblades. Guns are okay, but no spring-loaded pokey-hurty things!

:please:

[Shanshu Freeman]

[Nikoli]

Here in Ga they have that 4 inch rule. So I asked the permits clerk what it would take to legally carry one. Get this, she didn't know, she suggested that a carry-conceal permit would cover it, but again wasn't 100%. that's government dollars at work for ya.

[Kakkaraun]

[CardboardArmor]

Well, the staff permit thing is really because there's no way in hell you could regulate a permit system for staves. They literally grow on trees. Permits usually require you to register the weapon and registering staves and knives is a little hard. You can't take ballistics impressions, most bludgeoning and stab wounds are a little too ambiguous to be traced back specifically to your weapon, et. al.

Hence, it's easier to make them broadly illegal than to try and regulate them.

[TinkerGnome]

Huh? Permits are for a type of weapon, not for an individual weapon. At least, that's a pretty logical assumption to draw from the fact that you get a -2 to availability for getting the item on the street if you have a permit (SR3 p 274).

[A Clockwork Lime]

Permits are purchased per weapon (5% to 10% of the weapon's cost).

[TinkerGnome]

Yes, so a permit to possess and transport a Predator would run you 45 :nuyen:, but if the Predator you had a permit for got destroyed, you could get a new one at -2 availability. So one permit works for all Predators, it seems.

It's possible that it doesn't work this way at all, but I don't know how having a permit would make it easier to get the gun otherwise.

[Moon-Hawk]

[A Clockwork Lime]

I think the point of that particular law is that if it's in a stapled bag, it's obvious you're just transporting it. Sure, you could pull it out if you had to... but you could do the same thing with a lockbox, too.

It's just like alcohol. You can have a case of unopened beers in the backseat, but a single open container in the car is a big no-no. Sure, you could open one of the other beers at anytime, but since they're still sealed, you probably haven't been drinking any of them. With the knife, since it's still sealed in the bag, it's at least probable that you haven't been stabbing someone with it and are instead just transporting it somewhere.

[CardboardArmor]

I actually meant for 'real-life' permits. I know in some places they require that your weapon be profiled, but yes...In Shadowrun, this wouldn't work.

[Snow_Fox]

Permitts to carry are usually for the individual, not the weapon, but each weapon has to be itself legal/registered, so if you get picked up "Do you have a permit for that gun under your arm miss?"
"Yes here it is" at which point you'd show your permit for the gun and the right to carry only, oh yeah, no permit for that particular gun.

[Method]

Funny thing... I've heard some gun clubs are actually encouraging the use of sound suppressors to "cut down on noise polution" and that they are trying to legalize them on those grounds...

So legal scilencers aren't so far fetched...

[Capt. Dave]

They're legal...if you have the appropriate federal license.

Technically, with a Class 2 FFL (Federal Firearms License), you
can own a fully automatic submachine gun with a silencer.

[Arethusa]

[Snow_Fox]

The trick is justifying them. It's hard enough to justify a carry permit.What job do you have that could possibly need a silencer? The only one I know of would be a Vet, who might need to put down a horse in a stable, and doesn't want a loud noise to scare other animals.(thank you James Herriot)