Pawnbrokers Fighting Crime: HB372

Virginia House Bill #372 proposes to amend existing legislation by demanding that pawnbrokers use digital photography to transmit images related to their business transactions. Full text here:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB372

I don't like it. Photographs of the objects pawned and the person bringing them in are not unreasonable, but using digital photos to transmit images of the person's ID virtually guarantees that the identity information of what's most likely a law-abiding citizen will be transmitted via the Internet, where, of course, it's available to evildoers around the world.

Plus, digital photography isn't cheap. This bill raises the question of who proposed it to Delegate Pogge--someone involved in the sale of digital photography equipment or services, or a rich pawnbroker trying to eliminate competition? Do youall ever wonder why the people who say the most about a free market are so seldom the ones who investigate the protectionism that keeps the market from actually being free?

That said...I'm betting, without having talked to them, that our local pawnbrokers will like HB372, although they're the kind of older people for whom the demand that they learn to use digital cameras might be considered an unreasonable and discriminatory hardship. They're also the kind who like a challenge. If you don't like a challenge, you're not likely to succeed as a pawnbroker.

I've never bought or sold anything in a pawnshop, but in a small town a certain amount of networking does go on among all the secondhand dealers. It's a sign of hard economic times when a town the size of Weber City is able to support two pawnshops. Sometimes people from these pawnshops have brought unclaimed pawns in for resale...and I have this to say about the junk people have tried to pawn off as valuable. The official owners of the pawnshops may be grandfathers, but they are not blind. They feel sorry for some of their customers. If they hadn't felt sorry for some people who brought in various objects that obviously wouldn't work even if replacement parts and repair service were still available, they would have put on their glasses.

In some secondhand markets you can hear the police scanner, and in some you can't. This does not mean that thieves are welcome anywhere. Last year, when newspapers ran the story about the pawnbroker catching that scag who'd stolen a guitar from a local church, a lot of people immediately said "Yesss!" And the year the gun shop was robbed, I can tell you that everybody in the Weber City Flea Market, where I had a booth at the time, was quietly calling the gun shop to describe every piece of hunting equipment we saw in the building. None of it was even similar to any of the stolen guns, but wouldn't we all have loved to put the thief in jail. I didn't handle firearms and, for that reason, I was the first to call in a description while someone else was haggling.

The existing law HB372 proposes to amend is recommended to all pawnbrokers, secondhand dealers, consignment store staff, charity/thrift store staff, and flea market vendors. It is positively inspirational reading. It suggests many legal and even courteous ways to make thieves' lives more difficult, and perhaps restore stolen goods to a neighbor some day. The rest of us aren't required to take the same measures pawnbrokers take to trace theft, but up to a point we all want to. If you buy things or accept consignments from people you don't know personally, you want to start doing some of the things the law requires pawnbrokers to do.

But transmitting photo images of people's state IDs or passports--via, what, a cell phone?--goes beyond the point of fighting crime. This practice is likely to enable more serious crimes than it's likely to prevent.

Fellow Virginians, please encourage your Delegates to say no to HB372 until the offending clause is removed from it.