10-03-2017, 12:46 PM
(10-03-2017, 12:21 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: A couple of problem with your proposal. First it requires private sellers to actually care to go through the background check. If they do not, you'll never know. The other issue is that most gun owners, the vast majority of them, will not go through the process and are adamantly opposed to a national gun registry. The answer to why is very simple, but will be dismissed as paranoia by many; they don't want a list by which the government could easily proceed to confiscation. If you don't think confiscation is a potential issue then one need do no more that listen the past day and a half. Australia comes up as an example of a country that "took action" after a mass shooting to, according to them, great success.
For compliance, I am assuming you make the connection that compliance is dependent on registration, which is admittedly an issue. Now, nowhere do I advocate in my paper for a national registry for the specific reasons you mention. I specifically focus on the national level only being responsible for providing support and the legislation itself. The idea is that the policy is having the states implement a program for stronger background checks. Specifically, this would involve uniformity in reporting. The main reason that the focus is on state, and even local, level action is because in another section of the memo I address the evidence that when background checks are performed at levels closer to the individual, the checks are stronger.
What this means is that checks being performed at a local law enforcement level are stronger than a state level which are stronger than a federal level. Right now, states are only mandated to check with the federal level, which is the weakest. We see a correlation between lower rates of gun violence and lower level checks. Having this at the lower levels also means we can decentralize any information on the firearms themselves. This leads to the reason that I make no mention of a registry and do not bring it up in the memo.
If I was not working within a constraint on the number of pages, what you would have seen was a proposal for record keeping requirements for private individuals involved in the transfer of ownership of a firearm. By mandating this record is kept, there is still a paper trail of ownership for a legally purchased firearm that can be followed utilizing a warrant process. If there is a break in the transfer chain, the last person to have owned the firearm legally (which could be verified with a background check record performed at the time, even if there is no record of the firearm itself) could be held criminally liable for actions performed with the firearm. This is a way to help insure compliance with the law without relying on any sort of centralized registry at the municipal, state, or federal levels.
Most firearm owners are law-abiding in their ownership of their firearms, and they wish to continue to be. I understand concerns with a registry, but we must recognize that there needs to be some way to hold people accountable for the firearms being used in crimes. The vast majority of firearms used in violent crimes were originally purchased in a legal manner. If we have a way that we can track the firearm from original purchase to the last legal owner, even it is takes more legwork than a registry, it helps provide some accountability there. We would also have to put in place requirements for reporting firearm thefts.
