4 ms·

>Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. Because people aren't concerned that in a decade or three, politicians are going to use the registry of motor veh

>Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. Because people aren't concerned that in a decade or three, politicians are going to use the registry of motor vehicle licenses to help them in confiscating motor vehicles from normal people who want to keep them around in order to protect their families.

tptacek 7y ago
Which is of course irrational; motor vehicle licensure is far more powerfully coercive and has more public policy goals than firearms licensure. The political psychology point is well taken, of course; the problem with all gun control proposals in the US is that they're perceived, with some validity, to be a slippery slope towards universal confiscation, the same way abortion regulation is perceived as a slippery slope to a universal ban. But in the airless vacuum of a message board we should be able to discuss the proposals on their merits without being chained to partisan political analyses.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  By suggesting their concerns are irrational, are you saying you think it's more likely that registries of vehicle licenses are going to be used to perform vehicle confiscations than that registries of firearm licenses are going to be used to perform firearm confiscations?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Yes. (Substituting "restrictions" for "confiscations", of course).
    - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
      That's quite a substitution you've made there.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        I don't agree. Suspending or revoking someone's driver's license is as coercive as the government needs to be, and state governments has already applied that power for non-driving purposes. "Confiscation" of firearms is wholly unrealistic; what would actually happen is that discovery of unlicensed firearms on private property (for instance, when responding to a police report) would become a criminal matter, just as driving without a valid license matters only when you get pulled over for something else. But my broader point is just common sense: people are far more dependent on cars than on firearms; regulating access to driving privileges offers governments more tools than access to firearms does.
        HBKXNCUO 7y ago
        >what would actually happen is that discovery of unlicensed firearms on private property (for instance, when responding to a police report) would become a criminal matter And do you think they're going to poke their noses equally around homes belonging to known gun owners as they do those of non gun owners? >people are far more dependent on cars than on firearms Sure, but some people benefit a lot more from the proliferation of firearms than other people do, and the people who are harmed by the proliferation of firearms have a much stronger motivation to remove them than do people that are harmed by the proliferation of cars. No one is really concerned that the government is going to stop people from being able to drive cars without a viable alternative that works for the vast majority. There is concern that the government is going to stop normal people from owning guns, eventually. They don't need to confiscate them to do that, they just need to institute mandatory background checks so it's illegal to hand your guns down to your kids without government permission, and gradually make it more difficult to get a license, and then legal gun owners die off and all there are left are the lawbreakers.
nextlevelwizard 7y ago
If you really are concerned then why would things be different without the registry? Unless you bought you gun and ammunition using cash there already is a paper trail leading straight to you.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  If there are no mandatory background checks, then it's legal to buy/sell your guns without a paper trail. It is legally possible to have guns that the government doesn't know about, or to dispose of them without the government knowing about that. That makes a registry of limited value. If they ban a gun you own, and they come looking for yours because it was in the registry, you can say "I don't have it any more", and that will not be a confession to a crime that is punishable by jail time and a lifetime ban on gun ownership.

tptacek 7y ago

Which is of course irrational; motor vehicle licensure is far more powerfully coercive and has more public policy goals than firearms licensure. The political psychology point is well taken, of course; the problem with all gun control proposals in the US is that they're perceived, with some validity, to be a slippery slope towards universal confiscation, the same way abortion regulation is perceived as a slippery slope to a universal ban. But in the airless vacuum of a message board we should be able to discuss the proposals on their merits without being chained to partisan political analyses.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago
By suggesting their concerns are irrational, are you saying you think it's more likely that registries of vehicle licenses are going to be used to perform vehicle confiscations than that registries of firearm licenses are going to be used to perform firearm confiscations?
- tptacek 7y ago
  Yes. (Substituting "restrictions" for "confiscations", of course).
  - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
    That's quite a substitution you've made there.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I don't agree. Suspending or revoking someone's driver's license is as coercive as the government needs to be, and state governments has already applied that power for non-driving purposes. "Confiscation" of firearms is wholly unrealistic; what would actually happen is that discovery of unlicensed firearms on private property (for instance, when responding to a police report) would become a criminal matter, just as driving without a valid license matters only when you get pulled over for something else. But my broader point is just common sense: people are far more dependent on cars than on firearms; regulating access to driving privileges offers governments more tools than access to firearms does.
      - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
        >what would actually happen is that discovery of unlicensed firearms on private property (for instance, when responding to a police report) would become a criminal matter And do you think they're going to poke their noses equally around homes belonging to known gun owners as they do those of non gun owners? >people are far more dependent on cars than on firearms Sure, but some people benefit a lot more from the proliferation of firearms than other people do, and the people who are harmed by the proliferation of firearms have a much stronger motivation to remove them than do people that are harmed by the proliferation of cars. No one is really concerned that the government is going to stop people from being able to drive cars without a viable alternative that works for the vast majority. There is concern that the government is going to stop normal people from owning guns, eventually. They don't need to confiscate them to do that, they just need to institute mandatory background checks so it's illegal to hand your guns down to your kids without government permission, and gradually make it more difficult to get a license, and then legal gun owners die off and all there are left are the lawbreakers.

nextlevelwizard 7y ago

If you really are concerned then why would things be different without the registry? Unless you bought you gun and ammunition using cash there already is a paper trail leading straight to you.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago
If there are no mandatory background checks, then it's legal to buy/sell your guns without a paper trail. It is legally possible to have guns that the government doesn't know about, or to dispose of them without the government knowing about that. That makes a registry of limited value. If they ban a gun you own, and they come looking for yours because it was in the registry, you can say "I don't have it any more", and that will not be a confession to a crime that is punishable by jail time and a lifetime ban on gun ownership.