Don Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Once firearms are registered ,however, confiscation becomes extremely > easily. Few citizens would > resist once the federal records made arrest and imprisonment a > certainty. The few who did not comply > could easily be dealt with later.
I am skeptical that mandatory registration actually makes confiscation much easier--at least at the level of gun ownership typical in the U.S. If 0.1% of the population owned guns, yes, I suppose registration would simplify confiscation. It could be done over the course of a month or two of concerted effort, and generate relatively little public awareness (assuming that a free press no longer existed). I think it likely that only 1 out of 50 would resist, and while expensive in terms of police officers killed, it could be accomplished without running out of officers or regular troops. But with perhaps 40% of the population armed, such confiscation would be very, very difficult to do. The sheer scale of it would preclude doing it even over the course of a year, and if 1 out of 50 gun owners resisted, the government would probably run out of police officers or soldiers willing to engage in such actions. A selective disarmament of "unreliable sorts" or particular weapons might be practical, but the all encompassing confiscation preferred by some would not be. The "unreliable sorts" could be disarmed by selective searches, and unless this was a very large fraction of the population, if only 40% were armed, searching the homes of unarmed political dissidents wouldn't be all that expensive in terms of time and manpower. Don't get me wrong: there's enough selective use of registration records to worry me, but the police state model of complete confiscation doesn't seem to be the major problem. For that matter, use of existing 4473 forms, anyone had ever held a hunting license, confiscation of gun rights group membership lists, and subscription lists for hunting and gun magazines, would probably get a big chunk of the most dangerous gun owners anyway. What registration lists do accomplish, is to make is sound plausible that effective confiscation is possible. I know that such information would disproportionately fall on the law-abiding, and have little or no effect on career criminals. I don't think the general population is aware of this, however. Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.claytoncramer.com Being a citizen of the Republic is not a spectator sport.
