5 ms·

It seems to me that one of the major drivers of hostility to NICS is the fear that the government having a complete and accurate listing of gun purchases will e

by Harkins 14y ago

It seems to me that one of the major drivers of hostility to NICS is the fear that the government having a complete and accurate listing of gun purchases will enable a future fascistic government to neuter resistance by confiscating guns. So one way to reduce political opposition to NICS would be to make it useless as a database of gun ownership. Run it in such a public fashion that everyone can trust it's not keeping track of all guns, or constantly run fake queries against it for all citizens so that gun owners cannot be identified. I unsure if what I've read about this belief is fringey or common among gun owners, so maybe this is not necessary to gain enough political support to require background checks for all firearm sales.

rdl 14y ago
There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry, so that should influence NICS design. We saw in California and NY that registration -> confiscation. I actually trust the federal government more than the California government, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. Borderline guns (say, .50bmg) which are 100% registered would be at risk to confiscation in the future if possession is banned. It would be much easier legally to ban possession of the .50bmg, particularly in semiauto, than anything else, since those are so expensive and rare, and so destructive that they look great on TV.
- jberryman 14y ago
  what are you referring to with "registration -> confiscation"?
  - philwelch 14y ago
    If you register all the guns, or all the gun owners, then you have a list of people so you can go knock on their doors and take their guns away from them. Gangsters exempt, naturally--they didn't bother registering in the first place.
    - dmix 14y ago
      People often aren't aware that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with protecting you from other citizens, instead it's about protecting the civilians from having an authoritarian government being the only one with guns. Combine that with the fact the DoD has a program to share excess weaponry with the police. So the domestic police force becomes militarized as the citizens are being stripped of weaponry. It's a plausible concern.
    - jevinskie 14y ago
      I think the grandparent poster was looking for those specific CA and NY examples. Were SKS somehow confiscated in CA? How did CA get around the tricky "ex post facto" thing?
      - rdl 14y ago
        There isn't a clear case: The .50 and AW bans in California had a mandatory registration period. If you did not register during that 90 day window, you could never register them in the future, so they were illegal. There was a legal challenge during that process -- the AG said he'd extend it, someone anti-gun sued him, and the extension was invalidated; they then started sending letters to those who hadn't registered by the original deadline telling them to turn their (now illegal) weapons in. NYC has local law 78 and there was confiscation based in prior registration. http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc2.txt http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc... Essentially, NYC used long gun registration records from the early 1980s to confiscate newly-defined assault weapons after a 1991 AW ban. There was a window given for AW registration in 1991, I believe, to get around the legal challenge. Japanese-Americans had guns confiscated in Hawaii in 1942 (there were no mass internments in Hawaii, though) Outside the US, registration was used to facilitate confiscation in Ireland, Bermuda, Jamaica, and Greece. I think there wer also cases of registered handguns in Chicago where if the registration lapsed (there was an annual renewal requirement), the registration data was used for confiscation.
- dmix 14y ago
  > There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry There was also one for wiretapping citizens.

by Harkins 14y ago

rdl 14y ago

There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry, so that should influence NICS design. We saw in California and NY that registration -> confiscation. I actually trust the federal government more than the California government, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. Borderline guns (say, .50bmg) which are 100% registered would be at risk to confiscation in the future if possession is banned. It would be much easier legally to ban possession of the .50bmg, particularly in semiauto, than anything else, since those are so expensive and rare, and so destructive that they look great on TV.

jberryman 14y ago
what are you referring to with "registration -> confiscation"?
- philwelch 14y ago
  If you register all the guns, or all the gun owners, then you have a list of people so you can go knock on their doors and take their guns away from them. Gangsters exempt, naturally--they didn't bother registering in the first place.
  - dmix 14y ago
    People often aren't aware that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with protecting you from other citizens, instead it's about protecting the civilians from having an authoritarian government being the only one with guns. Combine that with the fact the DoD has a program to share excess weaponry with the police. So the domestic police force becomes militarized as the citizens are being stripped of weaponry. It's a plausible concern.
  - jevinskie 14y ago
    I think the grandparent poster was looking for those specific CA and NY examples. Were SKS somehow confiscated in CA? How did CA get around the tricky "ex post facto" thing?
    - rdl 14y ago
      There isn't a clear case: The .50 and AW bans in California had a mandatory registration period. If you did not register during that 90 day window, you could never register them in the future, so they were illegal. There was a legal challenge during that process -- the AG said he'd extend it, someone anti-gun sued him, and the extension was invalidated; they then started sending letters to those who hadn't registered by the original deadline telling them to turn their (now illegal) weapons in. NYC has local law 78 and there was confiscation based in prior registration. http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc2.txt http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc... Essentially, NYC used long gun registration records from the early 1980s to confiscate newly-defined assault weapons after a 1991 AW ban. There was a window given for AW registration in 1991, I believe, to get around the legal challenge. Japanese-Americans had guns confiscated in Hawaii in 1942 (there were no mass internments in Hawaii, though) Outside the US, registration was used to facilitate confiscation in Ireland, Bermuda, Jamaica, and Greece. I think there wer also cases of registered handguns in Chicago where if the registration lapsed (there was an annual renewal requirement), the registration data was used for confiscation.
dmix 14y ago
> There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry There was also one for wiretapping citizens.