Yes, the government by force of law can wholesale strip citizens of their second amendment rights by having a list of gun owners. The ATF not even 5 years ago w

Yes, the government by force of law can wholesale strip citizens of their second amendment rights by having a list of gun owners. The ATF not even 5 years ago was doing this with all sorts of guns that were formerly legal. In particular, ex post facto laws seem to not apply with the ATF. Once they issue a new "opinion" it becomes defacto law because of the Chevron Defense. The result, is ATF door kickers visiting people who were, possibly weeks ago, entirely law abiding citizens. "Ghost guns" in particular were used to justify no-knock raiding several law abiding citizens when the ATF "opinion" came out. In that case however, the ATF more-or-less told manufacturers if you don't give us names we will send you to prison for life. The government having any list of any kind of person is never good. Ever. The government already "has" a list of gun owners. 4473s are kept forever. If a gun store shuts down, the 4473s are shuttled to storage in the ATF's buildings/containers/whatever. They have, historically, used these for all kinds of questionably legal "enforcement" procedures. However, since the 4473 list isn't entirely accurate - for example, gun transfers do not require a background check in many states, you could have destroyed the gun, lost it in a literal boating accident, etc there's plausible deniability. A government run list would certainly be designed to eliminate this - and that's a horrible, horrible thing for the 2nd. Presently the only "real list" is for NFA items. I'd imagine a government-run list would have the same privacy invading, civil rights abusing powers the NFA-owners list has. A manufacturer on the other hand could be coerced, as "ghost gun" 80% lower manufacturers were, to narc on their customer base. However, there are legal avenues to at least slow this process down significantly. It's far better, if we have to choose, to let manufacturers have the data. They have historically been far better stewards of the bill of rights than the ATF ever has.