Quote:
Originally Posted by A.Nonymous
Our cars are registered. Why not guns? Both can be equally dangerous and a registered gun can be traced more easily by authorities just like a registered car. I don't see the issue with that one at all. The idea that the feds are going to confiscate every single gun in America is completely ludicrous and pretty much everyone agrees on that.
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Because cars aren't guns.
This oft-used fallacy ignores the fact that it's
the use of cars on public roads that is being regulated, not the cars themselves. You don't have to register a car that's never driven on public roads, so why should people who keep and use their guns in private places have to register them?
While confiscating everyone's guns might not be imminent, that's hardly the only reason to keep gun ownership private. The first and foremost is because the Constitution says so. Another might be police profiling. How would you like to be shot by a cop who saw that you were a gun owner, and overreacted?
Say it can't happen? Here in Madison a young man was killed by a police officer, and although he was unarmed and too drunk to be a threat to anyone, it was declared a righteous shoot. The cop got away with murder because the wife of a neighbor who was helping the young man home decided to call the cops and say there was a burglary. (There wasn't.) Because she used that magic word, the cop's use of deadly force was unquestioned.
If police agencies get gun ownership records, there's no doubt that they'll use them that way. They already use the database that keeps records of all police contact for everyone in the US to make other key decisions. In the age of the "Patriot" law it's a cinch that every gun owner would be greeted with lots of drawn weapons for something as innocuous as a traffic stop. That's just asking for trouble!