It seems like it should be unnecessary to point out that dead people cannot be "legal gun owners." But that's how Fox frames the issue. Even Charlton Heston conceded that his guns could be taken after he had died. The article goes on to quote Tom King, a gun rights group representative, claiming that the heirs are not told that, under the law, they can sell the weapons or apply to have them re-registered. However, there is no confirmation of that claim. In all likelihood the heirs must be told of their legal options and probably are.

King also asserts that the law is the latest example of authorities targeting law-abiding gun owners. Once again, dead people are not law-abiding gun owners, so the law cannot be targeting them. And the heirs, absent a registration in their name, are not in compliance with the law.

The Buffalo Police Department held a press conference to explain that the policy is intended to keep firearms out of the wrong hands. When a registered owner dies, the weapon often is not safely secured by surviving family members, if they even know that it exists. It is also not traceable in the event it is stolen or used in a crime.

A pro-gun website was quoted in the article as saying that this is "the camel's nose under the tent to get at every firearm they can." That is a typically paranoid response by gun nuts who seem to think that dead gun owners are a significant constituency of Americans whose constitutional rights must be protected. Let's call them 2nd Amendment Zombies.

Naturally, the right-wing media circus has come to the defense of this newly christened special interest group of Departed-Americans who are being discriminated against. The story is spreading fast to outlets like the Tea Party News Network, conspiracy king Alex Jones' Infowars, and Glenn Beck's TheBlaze.

This law is just common sense. It is no different than title rights to cars or houses or other similar property that cannot remain in the name of the deceased. Eventually all gun owners will die and, without enforcement of this statute, every gun would become unlicensed and untraceable. The fact that gun nuts are getting worked up over this demonstrates the extremism of their views. They don't bother to spell out their alternative, which is apparently to allow the registrations to lapse and let thousands of guns go unaccounted for.

Therein lies the true agenda of the NRA-theists. They are already suggesting that, due to this law, 2nd Amendment "patriots" should decline to register their guns so that the feds won't know about them when they die. Their worship of guns is so fanatical that it extends to the afterlife, and they will oppose any registration policy that interferes with the free distribution of guns to anyone who wants them, including criminals, the mentally ill, and terrorists (and, yes, the NRA has opposed legislation prohibiting gun purchases by those on the terrorist watch list).



What's next for these lunatics? If guns can remain registered to corpses, then why not allow new weapons purchases to be registered in the name of a recent migrant to the hereafter or a favorite departed uncle? Why not just register all your guns Jesus? Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas.