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If you want to keep your freedoms, you're in the place - but 70 million other
American gun owners aren't. Tell them - Pass-it-on!
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The Farce of Registration and Licensing
We are hearing from many of the anti-gun/anti-rights groups in this country that
because of the violence created by criminals using firearms, we should register our guns
like we do our cars and license the gun owners. However, if laws were passed wherein we
truly register our guns exactly like we register our cars and had similar licensing
procedures for gun owners, those who do not favor the rights of the law-abiding citizens
to possess a firearm would still be dissatisfied with the results and would continue to
clamor for additional laws until or guns were completely confiscated and banned.
As gun owners and as intelligent human beings, we recognize the primary reasons we
would never support gun registration. For the obvious reason, one only needs to look at
the history of other countries and governments that have taken that approach. Registration
is merely a step to confiscation. That is a fact!
We have seen this happen throughout history, and we are currently seeing it happen
elsewhere in the world. Other nations have established gun registration "for public
safety" of the public. Invariably, in every case, governments have used the
registration scheme as a means of future confiscation. In fact, it is even happening to an
extent in the good ol' U.S. of A.
California required licensing and registration of certain types of firearms in the
early 1990's. As always, the argument was that anyone who owned one of the so-called
"taboo" firearms would never need to worry about losing the firearm, but that
for their own safety the state wanted to know where the firearms were and who owned them.
So, the good law-abiding citizens did what they were told and registered the firearms.
The result? You guessed it. The new California Attorney General came in and ruled
these guns were illegal to own and required they all be turned in, even though the
previous AG promised it would not happen. In addition, the state went so far as to say
they had a list of everyone who had properly followed the law and registered their
firearms, and that each gun would need to be accounted for during the turn-in process. So
much for the promises of the state.
However, there are those individuals in our society who would not look at that as a
valid reason for not registering our firearms and licensing gun owners. Instead, they
merely accuse you of being a paranoid schizophrenic. So, if you really want to make your
point clear, calmly and rationally play along with them for a moment and talk about the
true meaning of registering gun owners like we do our cars, and provide them with ideas
they probably never thought about. Listed below are some examples.
1) The first question to ask is which government body would perform the registration
procedure. To truly be like vehicle registration, the firearm would be licensed by the
state. Thus, the federal government would have no interaction with the individual.
2) Ask the question as to why cars are registered. The fact is, cars are not
registered as a way to track drivers nor the vehicles themselves, but as a way to tax
vehicles and drivers.
3) It is not required for an individual to have a registered vehicle or a license to
drive a car on private property. This is true in all 50 states. Thus, as long as the
firearms stays on private property, no registration or license would be required,
regardless of age.
4) A license to drive a car on public property is issued by all 50 states, and the
license is available to every person of a minimum age (usually 16 years) who can pass a
standardized test. In most states, youths can obtain driver's permits at a younger age and
can legally drive on public roads with a licensed driver of any age. If guns were
registered like cars and gun owners licensed like drivers, the same would be true.
5) All driver's licenses and registrations issued by the individual's home state are
honored by all the other states. Thus, with a license and registration, an individual
would be allowed to travel freely from state to state, and even Washington DC, without
fear of prosecution.
6) A person can buy and sell privately owned cars without background checks or dealer
and individual driver's licenses. A person with numerous traffic violations and other more
serious crimes on their records can walk onto any car lot and purchase a vehicle without
showing a license or going through a background check of any type, even if the individual
has been arrested numerous times for such crimes as drunk driving. In addition, vehicle
sales and transfers can be made directly between a dealer and individual or two
individuals who live in different states, and an individual is not required to purchase a
vehicle in their home state.
7) All individuals have the right to purchase vehicles they can afford, regardless of
the power of the car. Most speed limits on public roads in this country do not go above 75
M.P.H., but we are free to purchase cars with enough power to far exceed that speed. In
fact, most cars, even the inexpensive ones, can exceed legal speed limits. A person can
also buy an inexpensive, downscaled and "no-frills" vehicle if they so desire.
So, if guns are to truly be treated like cars, it would no longer matter how powerful or
inexpensive the gun would be, so long as it passed a standard safety test if it is to be
fired on any type of public land. Again, if it is only to be operated on private land, no
test would be required.
8) It does not matter how many vehicles and individual owns, nor does it matter how
many are purchased, sold or traded in any given day, month or year. Thus, the same would
hold true with guns.
9) Finally, consider this. Persons accused of crimes in this country are not required
to do anything to incriminate themselves. They are protected by law in this regard. Thus,
if a criminal has committed a crime and the registration and licensing scheme became law,
only the decent law-abiding Americans would be required to participate. Since it is
already illegal for a criminal to own a firearm, they would have no need to even attempt
to obtain a license or they would incriminate themselves. If they used a gun in a crime,
there is the possibility that that gun could be used as evidence against them in a court
of law, thus they would be protected from registering the gun they used in the crime.
Do the proponents of licensing and registration see this fallacy? The law-abiding
citizens pay fees, fill out forms, stand in lines and go through mounds of "red
tape" to remain law-abiding. The criminals, meanwhile, do nothing. Ultimately, when
our rights keep getting chipped away, just as what happened in other countries, only the
law-abiding will give up their firearms. The criminals, meanwhile, do not. Only the rights
of the law-abiding are taken away.
So, what do gun owners and the anti-gun/anti-rights activists think about the
registering and and licensing of firearms and firearms owners? In truth, if gun owners
were truly licensed like we license drivers and we truly registered guns like we register
cars, the anti-rights crowd would never go for it. The reality is that the law-abiding gun
owners don't want it. Just like most of the so-called "common-sense" gun control
proposals, only the criminals come out as the winners, and that makes no sense at all.
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