If You Think Gun Registration Is Benign, Think Again

What is the public policy objective for gun registration? Does it prevent crime? No, I doubt it very much. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but how would it?

Everyone who buys a gun and then registers it has completed a 4473, so they are on file somewhere as a gun owner. People who buy privately and legally are pretty much the same population as those who buy through FFLs. So we are left with the people who buy illegally...felons and others who are barred from purchasing or possessing weapons.

I think those people are called "criminals," and that is a segment of the population that is curiously uninterested in obeying the law, so registration obviously doesn't apply to them.

What are we left with? Government control and power and, in this case coercion and pre-trial punishment.

Elderly Man Who Shot Two Burglars In His Home Charged With Felony Over Inherited Gun

It's a Gateway Pundit article, but I checked the links, and they are pretty much straight down the middle with this one. It is a vile and disgusting example of government overreach, and an obvious example of the hatred that government has for anyone who has the temerity to ignore their authority.

Nowhere is it even suggested that this poor man should not have been allowed to possess firearms...his only transgression was against the power of the state, and we cannot have people acting as free men!