Gun registration is the bane of gun rights activists, and for good reason. The moment you enact registration, you make it clear that guns are a privilege, not a right, and that the government should know who has what. You’ve thus empowered tyranny since the first logical move of any tyrant is to disarm the populace.

The federal government is barred currently from registering guns. Now, a bill is being proposed that will stop them from funding anyone else’s registration schemes as well.

The Gun-owner Registration Information Protection, or GRIP Act, would extend the current prohibition on the use of federal funds for the maintenance of a full or partial gun registry to money allocated to state and tribal governments. Proposed by U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, she argues that work is already underway in a number of states to store personal information on gun owners and some of it may be supported by grant money from Washington. “My bill would ensure no federal funds are used, either intentionally or not, for these misguided gun control efforts,” said Hyde-Smith in a statement. “This legislation is needed to ensure the federal government is not involved in exploiting the personal information of law-abiding people who own or purchase firearms legally.” Filed as S.3135, the bill would help ensure that a myriad of federal grant programs made available to local and state agencies and governments wouldn’t be used to bolster efforts to store and track gun owner information. Currently, the U.S. Department of Justice funnels millions every year to local authorities through the National Criminal Histories Improvement Program, NICS Amendment Records Improvement program and the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, much of it used to prop up local criminal databases.

The NRA has endorsed this bill. Them backing it isn’t surprising. It would be major news if they didn’t.

Frankly, every gun rights advocate should be tripping all over themselves to support this one. Especially if you don’t like federal tax dollars going to stupid things. For a guy like me, this is just win-win. I fail to see a downside here.

The anti-gun activists will lose their crap, of course. They’ll scream all about how the feds have no authority to tell states what to do–funny how federalism is only good when it’s something they agree with–but those arguments will fall on deaf ears. After all, no one is telling states they can’t have gun registration. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.

Instead, it just means that my tax dollars from Georgia won’t help fund California’s registration system. That’s important to me.

No, that may not be happening now, but think for a moment and it won’t be hard to see anti-gun politicians trying to sneak something like that into a budget bill that no one is going to read anyway until it’s way too late. This, at least, makes that kind of thing illegal. It’s a strategic preemptive strike and a damn good one too.

Every now and then, someone in Congress really screws up and does something right. Amazing, isn’t it?