<OT> I'd argue that the flaw you pointed out in my auto registration/licensing argument is sort of nitpicky, but never mind. You didn't address the other forms of automobile regulation, for safety and other purposes, and I left perhaps the most relevant one out.
As you may have noticed from certain recent high profile cases, most car and truck parts are easily traceable. (Oklahoma City, New York Trade Center). Guns are required to have serial numbers, but all efforts to require minimal traceability at that level have been strenuously resisted politically. I'm not talking about individual registration, just requiring sellers to register when and where they sold what, and allowing the FBI to maintain a database for that information. Why is that? This particular issue only comes up when a gun is a piece of evidence in a crime. More often than not, such guns prove untraceable.
And, on the usual slippery slope argument of registration sooner or later leads to confiscation, does anybody seriously see that happening? Given the historical trend of gun laws to be progressively weakened rather than strengthened after some high profile incident leads to some weak law being passed, how is this going to come about? The NRA is suddenly going to lose its lobbying clout? Sounds like the usual war on some drugs argument about marijuana, it inevitably leads to heroin addiction or something.
This second point is quite hypothetical, of course, I can't see any form of gun registration being required in the foreseeable future. The first point is much less hypothetical, and seems to me to be a straightforward aid to law enforcement.
Cheers, Dan. |
