One of the concerns I have about mandating background checks on all firearm transfers is the resulting paperwork trail. It may sound nice that no one can buy a firearm without proving that they are not a felon or mentally ill, but there is no way to conduct these checks without creating a paper trail. A paper trail means that the government has a list of who has purchased a firearm and what firearm they have purchased. A list means eventual confiscation.
I can hear you now, screaming that I am a paranoid tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut militia type, worrying about jack booted thugs kicking down my door to take my guns. It will never happen, you say, we live in a free country, you say.
Here's the problem with that argument. It always happens. It is an historical fact. Dozens of countries have implemented universal gun registration requirements and I don't know that you could point to one in which the list hasn't been used to confiscate guns. Want examples closer to home?
California and Connecticut.
When I was transferred to California I was told that I had to register my SKS, a Chinese built version of a Soviet rifle. Semi-automatic (one trigger pull, one bullet) , low power cartridge, no detachable magazine, no pistol grip, no folding stock, ie didn't have most of the features that people scream about as "military style assault rifle". I visited the local police station and they told me I needed to register it. I did a little more digging and found that there was no legal requirement that I register my firearm. The police had flat out lied to me. I chose not to register it.
A few years later, just after I had left the state, the California Attorney General changed his mind. The same guy that had decided that the guns were legal under the California Assault Weapons Ban decided that they weren't legal under the same ban. The law had not changed, he changed his mind.
Guess what happened to the people who had dutifully shown up at their local police stations and registered their guns. Exactly. Confiscated.
So don't tell me that it could never happen in this country. It already has. There is one reason and one reason only for gun registration and that is so that the government has a list to work from if or when they decide that you can't be trusted to own a firearm, Second Amendment notwithstanding. And there is one reason and one reason only for requiring that all firearm transfers be processed through the government, and that is to create that list.
Some of you may be tempted to claim that the real reason is to keep the "wrong" people from getting guns and that registration is just a side effect of this goal? Here's the problem with that argument. Hasn't so far.
Adam Lansa stole his guns. Harris and Kliebold got their guns illegally using a straw purchaser (who bought them legally), Seng Hui Cho bought his guns legally, Jacob Tyler Roberts bought his gun legally, Anders Behring Breivik bought his guns legally. Registration didn't stop any of them and couldn't have.
Canadian politicians, when debating the long gun registration bill several years ago were unable to provide one single example of a crime that would have been stopped if there had been full firearm registration. (After spending approximately three billion dollars on this boondoggle, the government finally killed this useless program last year).
So let's drop this ridiculous idea that someone we will be safer if the government has a list of firearm owners and what they own. The federal government already has too much power over our lives and this is one area in which they don't need more.
A right that has to be regulated and registered is no right at all.
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