The government tracks swimming pools, too. Wanted to get it out there before someone makes another stupid analogy.
What happens to all the guns owned by people who don’t qualify for the FFL? Can I still kick armed people out of my place of business? What restrictions are in place on the sale of firearms?
I for one have been proposing something similar. I don’t know that registration automatically leads to confiscation, but confiscation is simply not possible without it. There are too many privately owned guns in circulation. Should it come to it, the government could probably find a lot without registration, but there would be a great many left. There are many people who support total confiscation, and many more who support confiscation of certain types of firearms. I am unaware of anyone who is calling for confiscation of privately owned vehicles. Right now, those who favor confiscation are in the minority, but that could change with some other, spectacular tragedy like Sandy Hook. See Cecil’s comment about calls for confiscation leading to the “apocalyptic tone” of pro-gun groups arguments.
I’ll bite- the reason guns are different than cars or pools or all the myriad other things that are registered with governments is because there is an active and vocal minority trying to ban the things outright.
None of the others have that- they’re registered either as a taxation vehicle, a public safety concern, or some combination of the two. I sort of doubt that annual gun inspections would be very useful, so the only thing registration would be useful for is the (IMO) dubious idea that they could be traced in crimes, taxation, or confiscation.
I say “dubious” above, because I’m not at all convinced that the guns used in crimes are either traceable, legal or worth the trouble of registration. By that I mean that there are literally millions of legal guns in the country, as well as (likely) hundreds of thousands or millions of illegal ones. What percentage of crimes are ascribed to guns in each category? Is that cost really worth registering them? My gut tells me no- millions wouldn’t ever be registered, instantly criminalizing millions of otherwise law-abiding people, and I have a feeling that the ones that would be registered wouldn’t be the ones used in crimes anyway.
However, if it’s a mechanism to tax them and hopefully discourage ownership, or as a mechanism to eventually confiscate them, then that’s a more sinister, but more rational reason in my book.
Oh, and the records are only stored at the point-of-sale. Modern guns aren’t kept in any kind of Federal registry anyway.
Why is this relevant from a constitutional perspective?
My friend has a safe full of machine guns that have been registered the entire time he has owned them and if you were going to confiscate anything I would have thought that machine guns in private hands would be near the top of the list. One thing the registry has done is keep the guns out of criminal hands. The chain of title tells you who the last legal owner of the gun was and you can ask them how a criminal ended up with it.
Or in preventing the easy transfer of guns from those who are allowed to own firearms to those who are not.
We are about 99% of the way there to a national registry for all guns that pass through the hands of an FFL. A national registry would only require registration of private sales and a bot more recordkeeping.
And registration is a way to help keep them that way. Just about every gun sold by an FFL since about 1968 has gone through about 99% of what is required for registration. How many 50 year old guns do you think are being used in crimes? Registration should restrict the flow of guns into criminal hands.
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However, if it’s a mechanism to tax them and hopefully discourage ownership, or as a mechanism to eventually confiscate them, then that’s a more sinister, but more rational reason in my book.
So you think that we have the political power to prevent registration and licensing but not the political power to stop onerous taxes on guns?
Yeah that’s why I said 99%. The federal government destroys that information. All we have to do is let them keep it and then you have the backbone of a national registry.
As a gun grabber (the phrase does not offend me, and the OP was quite scrupulous in treating both sides equally which I commend him for), I would not take the deal. I don’t like people packing heat in public. I think we’re all safer with fewer guns in the street. If somebody in Aurora had been armed and decided to get in a shootout with the killer, the chances are very good that many more innocents would have died.
I could live with people having hunting weapons unlicensed, but all handguns would have to be registered and the owner pass a background check and a psychiatric exam, and the the weapon not be capable of shooting X rounds in Y seconds (we’ll work out X and Y later), and CCW permits only issued to those with a demonstrated need.
Because a national gun registry doesn’t do a goddamn thing to prevent crime. So the feds find that the guns in the Newtown Massacre were registered to “Lanza, Mrs., Female, White, Newtown, CT” What the fuck would that have done? Nothing. What would gun registration do to stop criminals from filing off serial numbers? Nothing.
But my grandfather goes to jail because he didn’t read the newspaper and register the shotguns that have been in his family for 100 years. Wonderful law.
Registration is just a gift to people who don’t think we should have guns anyways, inconvenience law abiding citizens, and don’t do a fucking thing to stop what we are trying to stop.
Gun nut here. No to everything.
I think most gun owners would say it all depends on who has those guns. I would rather be on a street with 100 armed law abiding citizens than on a street with 1 armed criminal.
Why do you think that? An armed citizen would have the benefit of knowing who to shoot at while the aurora shooter might only know the general direction of the armed citizen. The cops were there within 2 minutes, an armed citizen might have been able to keep the shooter occupied or pinned down long enough to have saved a few lives, and with any luck might have disabled the aurora shooter early.
Do you want psychiatric exams for handgun owners because you concerned about gun suicides because I can think of no other rationale for subjecting handgun owners to psych exams but not rifle owners. Handguns are a compromise, you give up on just about every other factor to have a light portable firearm that you can carry under a jacket. Rifles can fire faster, further, more accurately, and with more power than a handgun.
We already have a pretty good idea of who is most likely to commit gun homocide, and those people are already prohibited from possessing any firearm, not just handguns. In fact even WITH those restrictions, the vast majority of gun homocides are committed by people who aren’t allowed to possess guns int the first place.
If you think that psych exams for handguns are going to prevent mass murder then I would direct your attention to what happened at the Boston marathon. If you want to stop crazy people then perhaps you should focus on the crazy people and not try to throw up irrational barriers to owning or possessing firearms.
I’m not sure what you mean but the rate of fire on a gun is controlled largely by how long it takes you to aim unless you are just trying to throw lead downrange. Spray and pray doesn’t work very well, especially with a handgun.
What threat do you think a liberal CCW policy presents?
I the majority of states give CCW to anyone that passes a background check (or doesn’t require a permit to carry concealed). What danger do you think CCW poses? If I can show you some research that indicates that having liberal CCW laws does not increase the rate of gun violence then would that change your mind?
So, is it your position that, if the majority of American voters decided to confiscate guns (an exceedingly unlikely prospect, but whatever), the majority should not assert its will? So, the citizens have to have gun to protect democracy from…democracy?
You assert that confiscation is “simply not possible without” registration. Why not? I live in a small town with about a thousand households. Ignoring armed resistance and Constitutional issues, what would keep the local police from going through every home and confiscating the guns they found there? Sure, some guns would be hidden somehow, but if the search were sufficiently thorough, it would certainly make a significant dent in the number of guns in our town. (I’m not advocating that the police should do this, I am just insisting that registration is not at all required for confiscation.)
DA, I posted your proposal on another forum; it’s an automotive forum, so it leans conservative but it’s not quite the echo chamber that is ar15.com. Here’s the responses so far:
(bolding mine)
That’s literally the first 5 responses to my thread. Given the equally frosty reception from conservatives here, I’m truly baffled as to why you think this idea has any political legs. I’ll keep you posted though, I’m sure the level-headed conservatives are just around the corner!
Come on. A registry gives confiscators a checklist of weapons to find and the people and addresses who are supposed to have them. It makes it easy. Several orders of magnitude easier than confiscation without a registry.
I think focusing on how to stop crazy people from doing crazy things is a waste of time. Trying to prevent the next Newtown has almost nothing to do with guns and much more to do with identifying crazy people.
You would need to destroy the gun to get at all the serial numbers on a gun. So the registry doesn’t do anything to prevent criminals from filing serial numbers off a gun, gun designers do.
Yes, that is the compromise. You get a license and register and you get lower gun crime, nationally homogeneous gun laws and access to surplus select fire M-16s.
Assuming we are trying to stop gun violence. I think registration reduces the flow of guns into criminal hands. I wouldn’t support registration if I didn’t think there was an upside to it.
The vast majority of gun homicides are committed by felons, people who have restraining orders against them, domestic abusers, etc. These people get their guns from someone else. Either from friends and family or off the street from a a gun dealer who is effectively a straw purchaser (I think these are the source of the majority of guns used by people who aren’t allowed to have guns).
Licensing and registration reduces the flow of these guns.
Why?
Well I suspected I would get more resistance from gun nuts than gun grabbers. Perhaps I need to highlight that licensing and registration reduces gun violence by reducing criminal access to guns.
One of the responses makes a good point that we do not enforce the guns laws we have right now very well.
Well, I never said all gun nuts are rational.
And don’t forget the equally frosty response from the gun grabbers.
I think fears of national confiscation is paranoia. If you have the political power to stop licensing and registration, why wouldn’t you have the political power to stop confiscation? So what if its easier to do something that they will never do?
No. Screw that.
I think all gun laws are unconstitutional anyway. So why would I be willing to compromise any more than whats already been shoved down our collective throats?
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And don’t forget the equally frosty response from the gun grabbers.
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What the fuck? Equally frosty? One gun grabber, BobLibDem, perhaps the SDMB’s most prolific and possibly only one, has rejected your compromise. Go ahead and count up the gun nuts who have said no and then explain to me what you think “equal” means.
But this whole think got sparked again because of the dead children in Newtown. If we can admit that gun registration wouldn’t have prevented their deaths, then why are we pissing around with assault weapons bans, gun registries, background checks, and the like when what the public wants is to stop more Newtowns from happening?
I will assume this is “shall issue”, where anyone who asks gets the license who has not been convicted of a felony. Restraining orders are not an adjudication of guilt, so it would have to be “no currently active restraining orders against the person”. Presumption of innocence, and all that.
Do you need this license to go hunting, and put your shotgun in the car?
What do they do with the information? Suppose I loan a gun to my friend, and he robs a bank with it. Am I liable, if I had no knowledge of his intent?
And do I need to update this registry every time a gun changes hands, even temporarily? What if the gun is stolen or lost, or inherited?
You need, I think, to flesh this out a great deal more.
Also, are sub-machine guns legal again?
Regards,
Shodan
Because of the urgent need to do something, to show that we as a society are determined that this can’t happen again.
A ban on high capacity magazines is not “pissing around” – it wouldn’t have prevented Newtown from happening, but if the shooter had to stop and reload it would have dramatically reduced the carnage. But we’re incapable of even doing that.
Further, with a national gun registry, I would think that we would see a sharp increase in gun thefts, either real ones, or ones reported as such for under the table cash as sales to criminals.
And a criminal only needs to steal/buy on the black market one gun. I have a gun that my great-great grandfather used when he was speculating in gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the late 1800s. It still fires well and ammunition is readily available for it. I killed a deer with it in 2010. I could rob a bank or commit a murder with it. How do we control the transfer or possession of something that only requires a once in 150 years commitment to buy, beg, steal, or borrow?
Further, the criminal doesn’t care, because he already cannot possess a gun. If the cops find a gun on him today, he will lose it as he is already likely a convicted felon. He won’t care about violating a gun registry law, if he doesn’t care about breaking into someone’s house and stealing a gun.
Then, when what I have described comes to pass, the other side will want to close the “ammunition loophole,” the “unsecured registered gun loophole,” the “unlucky bastard” loophole which is where if you report a bunch of guns stolen the BATFE will be up your rear end suspecting you of gun trafficking.
I understand that you support gun rights but simply want a “reasonable” compromise. Those on the other side have admitted that they don’t want to stop at any point other than a total handgun ban and maybe letting us keep rifles and shotguns at a federally approved armory. They flip side of getting legal select fire M-16s is not important to me. I don’t want or need one. I support someone else’s right to have one, but I don’t have the funds or the desire for one.
National CCW is nice, but NYC, Chicago, and DC don’t want it. They will fight tooth and nail. Even if we get it, carrying in those areas will be a “beat the rap but not the ride” type of situation. They will impose restrictions that are so onerous that we will just leave our guns at home. I want to protect myself, but I don’t want to be getting into fist fights at Riker’s Island and missing time with my family at the Statue of Liberty just to finally be exonerated in the end.
I would gladly support “reasonable” gun laws if someone would tell me how those laws restricting my freedom actually helps anyone.