Registration

" Registration and universal background checks would show when a gun moves from the legal world to the black market and help prosecute those people that provide guns into the black market and the hands of criminals."

Would prosecution include those govt 'officials' involved in such programs as Fast & Furious ?

Do you really think most criminals get their guns from legal sources with a paper trail of any type - - - rather than those stolen ?

Application of any degree of logic and common sense blows holes in your arguments. Given that crimes using firearms have actually declined over the years, (and an examination of world history), it should be obvious what the purpose is of gun registration.

I would assume that you have gotten the answers you expected, so now how about some "hair splitting" to flesh out your original post??

Absolutely not, and here is just an example why I will never support registration in any form.

From a forum in which I recently took part, the op is from Australia and I suggest everyone read this thread.

http://forum.opencarry.org/forums/s...1-in-10-own-guns-in-NSW&p=2058764#post2058764


"It was a sad state of affairs. Take my father for instance, he owned 'military-style' semi-automatic rifles, and when the laws changed he had to hand them all in. And if he didn't, he was going to prison. When the handgun laws changed in 2003, he was made to surrender several of his handguns as well. He never did anything wrong and was treated like a criminal thanks to one nutjob."


If people want registration, perhaps they would feel more at home in Australia, U.K. or maybe North Korea............

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There is no more need to register firearms than there is to register laptops, cameras, bloggers or church goers.

So, no.

Pro's:
-Allegedly makes crimes easier to solve (after the fact), which is the same thing that's said about microstamping and every other asinine law they've pitched at us
-Motivates owners to maintain records of their serial number/models in case their guns are stolen (though this motivation stems from the threat of a policeman's gun)

Con's:
-Guns will be taxed. Governments will lick their chops when they see that Mr. X has $25,000 of "their" money just sitting around not contributing to their grand designs.
-Guns will be further regulated. Suddenly stuff like storage requirements and allowing guns to come into proximity of prohibited persons is slightly more enforceable
-Guns will become expensive. Registering guns makes registering ammunition inevitable. Registration/verification fees for guns and ammo will skyrocket, both due to bureaucratic greed as well as seen/unseen forces seeking to price plebian gun owners out of the market
-Gun owners will be harassed. Expect extra scrutiny if the cops ever come by if you have a large/valuable collection. In today's environment of illegal governmental collusion, I would expect all sorts of mischief from low-ball property tax audits to imminent domain seizure if the local governing body turns against gun owners
-Gun owners will be jailed. No matter how many exceptions they put into the law, there will be plenty of activity made illegal that was perfectly acceptable previously. In fact, the more exceptions, the harder it is to figure out what is no longer acceptable. The result will inevitably be lots of gunowners with no ill intent being stung by officers or linked to bad actors and jailed. This will have a chilling effect on other law-abiding gun owners; making them question whether tip toeing through the minefield of gunownership is worth the trouble.
-Guns will be seized. Perhaps not through confiscation, but knowing where they are makes it incredibly easy for police/agencies to seize these 'dangerous' (and valuable) assets in the course of their work, and force you to expend lots of time and money on their system getting your property back. I suspect the "Asset Forfeiture" rules or whatever they're called, where the police will purposely bust someone at their home so they can seize all their assets as 'related to the criminal endeavor,' will be abused with police staging stings and trumping minor charges on gunowners --the money's just too good

So yeah, adding at best a chance of linking an illegally-willfully transferred gun back to the mythical 'gun runners' pouring guns into restrictive areas doesn't sound like a fair trade. Especially considering the BGC proponents have offered nothing but their assurances that the above cons would be addressed. That leads me to believe they fully intend to enact each and every one of them.

TCB

Yes, the anti gun people seriously want federal registration of all firearms. For the most part, they see guns as one of society's evils (even though it is a thing) and want them out of the hands of private citizens. Registration is the first step and there will be more steps down the road including things like taxation, registration fees, potentially psychological fitness exams, more limitation on what can be owned, and so forth. It is all part of the master plan, people control in the US, and reducing the power of average citizens in an ultimate sense.

For those in favor of registration, can you show me any cases where registration actually led to the arrest and prosecution of someone? Real examples of how it actually helped the police.

No, I don't.


And what's this cat you expect to "let out of the bag" as you put it?

"It was a sad state of affairs. <b>Take my father for instance, he owned 'military-style' semi-automatic rifles, and when the laws changed he had to hand them all in. And if he didn't, he was going to prison. When the handgun laws changed in 2003, he was made to surrender several of his handguns as well. He never did anything wrong and was treated like a criminal thanks to one nutjob.

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You are confusing two different things. This man did not have to surrender his guns because the were registered, he had to surrender them because they were illegal. The only other option would be to illegally keep the banned gun. Personally I have no use for a gun that I cannot use without fear of arrest. The key is to prevent the gun from being banned in the first place not try to keep guns after they are banned.

If people want registration, perhaps they would feel more at home in Australia, U.K. or maybe North Korea..........

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I have no doubt I would feel at home in the UK having visited there several times. I had some very good talks with some shooters over lunch on a couple of my visits. Never been to Australia but the Australians I have meet have been very friendly. North Korea? Now you are being silly, North Korea has nothing in common with the UK or Australia.

No because half of the folks wouldn't abide by it anyway, so why implement another useless law that can't be enforced.

You are confusing two different things. This man did not have to surrender his guns because the were registered, he had to surrender them because they were illegal. The only other option would be to illegally keep the banned gun. Personally I have no use for a gun that I cannot use without fear of arrest. The key is to prevent the gun from being banned in the first place not try to keep guns after they are banned.

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And I think you're missing the larger point that registration is a necessary step on the way to a ban. You cannot enforce a ban of a common once legal item without registration. I prefer to fight anti gun laws every step of the way.

I'll put it this way. If we have universal background checks and registration. MAIG, Brady, etc. aren't going to declare mission accomplished and go home. We cannot afford to give ground on the issue.

So, come on let this car out of the bag.

gym said:

No because half of the folks wouldn't abide by it anyway, so why implement another useless law that can't be enforced.

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Because the government will enforce it when they feel like it. Just look at the immigation laws. It would be selective in my opinion.

It's very difficult to trust that politicians would stop at registration when we catch them saying "confiscate, confiscate, confiscate" on hot microphones.

...and if I may point out, government is a fluid, constantly changing entity. You may have two years of a 2a friendly period, then the next election see a rabid confiscation hungry electorate that will employ every tool in the shed to pry firearms out of your warm, living hands.

Registration and universal background checks would show when a gun moves from the legal world to the black market and help prosecute those people that provide guns into the black market and the hands of criminals."

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Not really. Once a legal firearm moves into the black market (usually through theft) there is no way to track who has it. To think otherwise suggests that you actually expect criminals and other prohibited persons to go through background checks and to register their illegally held weapons.

Many, if not most have past felony convictions on their record, and can be prosecuted under laws that prohibit simple possession. Here the legal status of the gun is moot. Unfortunately these statutes are all too often not employed by prosecutors who are “to busy to be bothered.” I was personally involved in three instances where the cases were open-and-shut, but the criminals walked anyway, either through plea-bargain or non-prosecution.

The sole purpose of background checks of private transfers (mandated to be made through Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers to insure hard-copy records are kept); and registration is to provide the government with the means to impose ever-stronger rules and regulations over firearms ownership, and in the extreme has led to confiscation.

JSH1 said:

This man did not have to surrender his guns because the were registered, he had to surrender them because they were illegal.

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You're a smart person as evidenced by your posts; how can you logically separate the inclination to regulate/ban from the inclinatation to register? You've mentioned the alleged benefits to LEOs on numerous BGC threads, and yet we have plenty of LE professionals on the board here who state it's at best a tenuous secondary aid to investigators after the fact. There are also numerous tangible threats posed by registration that have been exploited against people historically and recently(registration followed by a ban). Just curious; why you continue to maintain such a conflicted argument?

TCB

It has been held as a matter of Constitutional Law by the Supreme Court that criminals cannot be forced to register their firearms under the 5th Amendment. By this decision, registration can ONLY affect the law abiding.
I honestly don't care what platitudes you wrap it in, registration equals confiscation, and history bears that out as a truth.
The last gasp of the liberal is, "Why worry if you have nothing to hide?" My answer, "The mere fact that i have nothing to hide gives nobody the right to look," and that answer covers registration of lawfully held items, as well.

^ If the man in question was in England, he had to surrender them because it was impossible to re-register them, hence he would have been in possession of an unregistered gun (which of course was already an offense, and the police would have known exactly where it was thanks to the prior registration).

Rather ingenious how they went about it; set up a registry, make it mandatory, make it a crime to possess an unregistered gun, make people renew their registration every 5 years, then just wait for the right emotional time to cut off the registry.

Once they'd cut off the registry, owners were compelled to turn their guns in, and in ones and twos as their registration expired over the next 5 years. This saved them having to go door to door looking like the gestapo, plus if there'd been a handful who refused to turn them in when their registration expired it's known who & where they are, and possessing an unregistered gun is already an offense.

I wouldn't say registration leads to confiscation, I'd say that mandatory registration creates the conditions so that later you don't have to go door to door searching and confiscating. You can compel the owners to turn them in.

Correct Chris, and as the American Indians learned, the next Administration has no duty to keep the promises made by a former one, other than what honor politicians hold themselves to.


When Germany wanted to re-unify after the fall of Communism, Russia said it would not file protest so long as Nato promised not to admit any new member nations east of Germany. The West agreed, Russia let them re-unify without protest, and Nato promptly broke its promise.

Not even a decade after that agreement Nato admitted Hungary and Poland.
Then it really got busy, admitting:
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, and Croatia.


So trust a politician to keep a promise some other politician made 20, 40 years ago who he probably didn't like anyway? I am not that foolish.

And I think you're missing the larger point that registration is a necessary step on the way to a ban. You cannot enforce a ban of a common once legal item without registration.

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A registry is not required to ban an item but one would be required to allow current owners to keep their weapons and only ban new production.

Take semi automatic weapons as an example. If semi autos were banned anyone found in possession of a semi automatic weapon after the implementation date would be arrested. Some would turn in their weapons and others would not.

someone said: " Registration and universal background checks would show when a gun moves from the legal world to the black market and help prosecute those people that provide guns into the black market and the hands of criminals. So yes, I support registration and universal background checks. The very real benefits to law enforcement outweigh the tiny risk of confiscation."

As we sit here debating this, California and New York are using registration lists to confiscate firearms from owners who had complied earlier with the 'sensible gun laws'.

As someone else observed, please post a link where a registration ever aided the police in a criminal investigation.

If you are tired of owning and using firearms, support 'sensible' laws to deal with gun violence including registration and universal background checks.

A registry is not required to ban an item but one would be required to allow current owners to keep their weapons and only ban new production.

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But with a registration set up prior to the ban you can
a) compel the owners to bring them in as their registration expires over the next 5 years
b) already know where they are (for those few who won't comply)
c) don't have to risk a PR nightmare going door to door looking like the gestapo
d) deal with the owners in 1s & 2s as their registration expires rather than everyone at once
e) possession of an unregistered gun is already an offense, so you're not even creating a new criminal penalty

I'm not going to pretend to know that England set their system up with those goals in mind, but it certainly worked out well for them when they did decide to ban things in 1997.