Some questions on firearms registration

[Glassunion]

The topic of registration has come up again recently and I repeatedly have sought some answers, yet for some reason no one has been able to answer. Perhaps someone could help enlighten me on some of these answers.
My questions are pretty simple:
1. How would the registration of firearms prevent crime, or effectively point to the perpetrator of that crime?
2. Would firearm registration work? Meaning; will everybody (or at least a sizeable majority) actually register their firearms?
3. Would all (handguns, rifles, shotguns, muskets, etc) firearms need to be registered?
4. Who would pay to start and maintain it? Tax payers? Firearm owners?
5. Would it be a federal or state level registration?
6. Who would have access to that information and would they need a warrant?
7. How would the system be free from abuse of power?

My feelings on the subject of firearms registration are mixed. I do see some benefit; however I do not feel that it is worth the monetary expense, the infringement of rights and intrusions into our privacy.
I do not feel that firearms registration can prevent crime, nor do I feel that it would be an effective tool for law enforcement on tracing the perpetrator of a crime beyond the tools already available to them today. I cannot figure out how, beyond the fact that the person purchasing the firearm being “afraid” of getting caught giving a firearm to a criminal, or “hey, I better not shoot this guy because the firearm is registered in my name” actually preventing the crime. There are several states that require registration and those states have spent literally millions of tax dollars in time and resources, setting up and maintaining those registries. However, I have yet to find even 1 example where registration was instrumental in identifying a suspect who committed a crime. Not one.

I also have a strong feeling that an actual registration would not work. I highly doubt a sizable majority, let alone everyone would register their firearms, myself included. Also, criminals cannot be charged with failing to register their firearms. This seems to me to fly in the face of the point of registering. The only people you can charge with failing to register are law abiding individuals who have never committed a crime.

The issue that I have with a partial(some firearms, not all) registry is that it goes against what I think that a registry would be good for. I think a registry would be good for identifying people that are no longer eligible to possess firearms. A law abiding citizen who registers their firearms, goes out one night and kills someone in a DUI and is convicted, is no longer eligible to possess firearms. If at the point of conviction the registry is searched they find that individual owns firearms they can have the individual transfer possession, sell or surrender their firearms. This only works if all firearms are registered. If long guns are exempt, this individual would be able to retain their firearms.

I think that the expense is too high. I cannot think of one state or federal program that is cheap to the tax payers. I also cannot think of any program that actually cost what was proposed. In California, the proposed long gun registration was initially budgeted for $400million. How many criminals do you think they will catch with the long gun registry? Would that money be better spent elsewhere? You can feed a lot of people with that money. You can put a lot more police on the street with that money. How is their state budget doing? Canada is in a terrible boat with their registration system. Initially it was to cost $119million with $117million in income from the registration ending with a cost to tax payers of $2million. In reality, the cost to tax payers has passed $1billion in 10 years.

Lastly… How does one prevent abuse of the system? I can think of no system that we currently have that has not been abused by executive power. Look at the Patriot Act… What is to keep an authority from compiling lists of gun owners and cross referencing it to peaceful protests groups, like those opposed to natural gas drilling, peace activists or gay rights groups? Thus opening up yet another avenue of harassment of law abiding, peaceful citizens.

I do see some benefit, however the cost is too great and the benefit to me seems far too insignificant.

My two cents...

[county worker]

1. The answer is very simple. Those who commit crime with a gun would not bother

to have their guns registered.

Those kinds of laws are what I call feel good laws. When ever there is a shooting like in the college in Virginia there is a call for greater regulation such as owner registration. You can still kill with a registered gun so registration in that case would not have prevented the shootings.

People feel good if they pass a law such as gun registration even though it does nothing about the problem of gun violence.

Now if someone was to commit a murder such as a gang killing, they sure as hell would not use a registered gun to do it. They would make sure any gun in their possession was not registered.

Personally I don't like the increasing numbers of gun owners but I also don't want a bunch of feel good laws on the books.

I am a gun owner by the way.

[Glassunion]

4. Thank you...

That is about the most straight forward answers I have received on the topic.

P.S. Happy Veterans's day... A day late.

[county worker]

5. Thanks, being a Veteran that really feels good.

[Glassunion]

6. That's why I said it. n/t

[old mark]

2. PA has no registration, at least not officially - state police keep records of sales

of long guns for a few weeks; records of handgun sales are kept forever, as the PA State Police are in violation of the law...They are supposed to be removed from the record after a few weeks as are the long guns.

State residents may legally buy and sell long guns privately to other state residents with no paperwork in a face to face transaction or even via UPS. Handguns must be transferred through a FFL dealer.

So the biggest violater of the gun laws here in PA is the state itself through the State Police which keeps records of handgun sales despite legal prohibition from so doing.
I wonder if our new republican government will remove this legal fiction and restore the rule of law to PA...they never saw fit to do so since the late 1930's, and I doubt they will now.

mark

ADDED: PA does NOT HAVE any "waiting period" nor any limit on the number of guns purchased...I have bought as many as 6 handguns at one time. We are frequently under attack from politicians in New York State for our "lax" gun laws, yet we have far less violent crime involving guns than does New York, which has terribly restrictive gun laws. In my county alone there are well over 25,000 persons licensed to carry a firearm, yet "gtun crime" is quite low. (That 25 thousand figure is almost 10 years old - I am sure it is much higher now, closer to 50 thousand.)

[Goldstein1984]

3. My question is...

Would a person willing to break laws prohibiting crimes with firearms obey a law requiring registration of firearms?

I've owned and used firearms responsibly for most of my 54 years, but I'm afraid that if I were required to register all of my firearms I would probably keep a few unregistered and hidden away. I would have said otherwise ten years ago, before the development of the corporate national security state became so obvious. I fear my government. That government has guns. They have demonstrated their willingness to use them against adversaries and innocents unfortunate enough to be standing near adversaries. So I need them too.

I know that answer doesn't seem "liberal," but it's precisely because I'm a liberal in a developing police state that my views are what they are. I'm a pacifist, but I plan to react violently if that pacifism is interrupted.

I'm afraid you're going to get no simple answers.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

7. By law, a criminal prohibited from owning firearms cannot be compelled to register any firearms.

It deals with self-incrimination. If you illegally own/possess a frearm and you registered it then it would be equivalent to self incrimination. Therefore, criminals prohibited from owning firearms are actually EXEMPT from registration requirements.

I forget the name of the case, but it established law. Some goblin actually defeated a registration charge on the basis that registering would have incriminated himself. LOL, wtf?!?

[Goldstein1984]

11. Americans have a lot of guns, and most use them responsibly

The American people also consist of a lot of veterans of military service, and all of them have been trained to use them effectively in a variety of circumstances.

As the corporatist national security state continues to evolve, expect it to suddenly begin demonizing the ability of citizens to defend themselves from a government that no longer represents them. Especially ironic in a nation born in a violent act of rebellion against an unrepresentative government.

In his book, "The Anti-American Manifesto," Ted Rall begins with this ironic juxtaposition:

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
~Declaration of Independence of the United States, 1776

"It shall be unlawful for any person with the intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any government in the United States, to print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute, or publicly display any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence."
~U.S. Code, from 1940 law still in effect

[Euromutt]

13. Haynes v. United States (1968)

Haynes was a convicted felon caught in possession of a sawed-off shotgun; he successfully contested the charge of not having registered the weapon as a short-barreled shotgun (under the NFA of 1934) on the basis that doing so would have caused him to incriminate himself (though the illegal possession charge still stuck).

[X_Digger]

14. Haynes v US is the case you're thinking of.

See also Grimm v City of New York and State v Shultzer.

[old mark]

8. MOST crimes involving firearms here in PA are done by people who

are legally prohibited from owning a gun. They certainly would never TELL anyone in government they have an illegal gun. Sadly, most of these gun charges are plea-bargained away and are never prosecuted. The law enforcement and justice system is really at fault here, too - many people convicted of violent felonies were given early release to ease crowded prisons...several of them got together, stole several firearms and murdered a Philadelphia police officer while robbing a bank several years ago...had they not been given early release, they woiuld all have still been in prison at that time...several of them had gun charges waived as a condition of their their plea bargain, which would also have kept them in prison longer...One of them walked away from a halfway house located less than 2 miles from my home, to join his friends in robbing the bank. They are all back in prison.
PA has since changed it's early release policy

mark

[Goldstein1984]

10. Gotta let the violent felons go to make room...

for those convicted of victimless crimes like drug possession.

The system is twisted.

I know this will get an angry response, but citizens have never been in greater need of the tools to defend themselves.

[haifa lootin]

9. My position is that I have no obligation to report my usage of constitutional rights

to anyone if I don't wish to. And I virtually always don't wish to.
:-)

[Kennah]

12. Why gun registration will not work

I do not buy the argument that gun registration will reduce gun related crime, and here is why.

The argument is that if guns are made harder to get, then at least some criminals who use guns in the course of their "work" will be deterred--perhaps switching to non-violent theft, or even going legit.

I doubt many will argue the war on drugs has been a success. One can count the quantity of drugs seized in the United States, which was 1,626 metric tons between January 2009 and November 2009.
http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs38/38661/movement.htm

It is not known what percentage of smuggled illegal drugs make it into the United States--although I will state the obvious and say the number must be between 1% and 99%.

Drugs are a consumable product that feed an addiction. In the course of crime, guns are a durable product used as tools to perpetrate crime. If illegal drugs can make it in, then guns can certainly make it in through illegal channels to be supplied to criminals.

Because guns are not consumed in the course of perpetrating crimes, one gun can be used by one criminal to perpetrate many crimes. Because guns are not consumed, then the markup on guns in the course of importing them is not going to drive up the price of illegal guns such that criminals cannot afford guns to perpetrate violent crime.

The only things registration can lead to are unnecessary expense and bureaucracy at best and confiscation at worst.

One of the unintended consequences of alcohol prohibition was an arms race. If smuggling 50 bottles of gin was just as illegal as smuggling a six pack of beer, and one were going to violate the law, then one may as well increase the profit margin to alter the risk/reward ratio. If most guns to criminals enter the country through illegal sources because of registration, then I suspect a significant portion of the smuggled guns will be honest to goodness fully automatic rifles and sub machineguns--not inexpensive $100 handguns.

[lawodevolution]

15. Registration is a violation of the 5th

Being forced to prepare documents that are meant to convict you in court later is a form of self witness or self incrimination if such documents are ever used against you. This will only give criminals another tool to push the blame for their violent crimes onto other people.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.