Democrats Pushing Gun Registry as Precursor to Gun Ban

Federal law explicitly prohibits the creation of a federal firearm registry, but the Biden administration is making one anyway. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has collected nearly one billion firearm purchase records. The government has now created a searchable digital database containing 866 million of these transactions, including some 54 million made in 2021 alone.

This massive data collection effort encompasses information on all guns sold by licensed gun dealers, and on all legal gun transfers in states with so-called universal background checks. So, federal officials will have the name of everyone who legally obtained a gun. Now, President Biden wants to make universal background checks nationwide so he can have an even more complete registration list.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey, Democrats support the idea by a 2-1 ratio, while Republicans oppose it by a similar margin. Two-thirds of Republicans believe the policy will lead to gun confiscation, and even 40 percent of Democrats believe the same. Confiscating legally owned firearms, it seems, is not merely a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Similarly, a recent Gallup poll shows that 40 percent of Democrats want a complete ban on civilian ownership of handguns. Countries such as Canada, the UK, and Australia aren’t the only ones to use registration to ban and confiscate guns. California, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. have also used registration to know who legally owned different types of guns before banning them.

Conducting background checks to see if someone can legally buy a gun is different from the government keeping a searchable record of those who own guns. Indeed, federal law has always required that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System erase background check information within 24 hours of its completion.

Gun control activists push for registration as a way to solve crime. In theory, if criminals leave registered guns at a crime scene, they can then be traced back to the perpetrator. But in real life, a gun is usually left at the scene of a crime only when the gunman has been seriously injured or killed. Also, guns used in crimes are rarely registered. In the exceedingly unusual instances that they are, they aren’t registered to the person who committed the crime. However, with both the criminal and weapon present at the scene, police can solve these crimes even without registration.

In a 2001 lawsuit, the Pennsylvania state police could not identify any crimes solved by their registration system from 1901 to 2001; however they did claim that it had “assisted” in a total of four cases, for which they could provide no details.

In a 2013 deposition for District of Columbia v. Heller II, the plaintiffs recorded that the Washington, D.C. police chief could not “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime, except for possession offenses.”

During testimony before the Hawaii State Senate in 2000, Honolulu’s police chief stated that he couldn’t find any crimes that had been solved due to registration and licensing. The chief also said that his officers devoted about 50,000 hours to registering and licensing guns each year. This is time that could have been spent on traditional, time-tested law enforcement activities.

New York and Maryland spent tens of millions of dollars putting together a computer database on all new guns sold in the past 15 years, even recording the ballistic fingerprint of each gun. But even these states, which strongly favor gun control, eventually abolished their systems because they never solved a single crime.

In 2010, Canada conducted a detailed examination of its program. It found that, from 2003 to 2009, 1,314 out of 4,257 Canadian homicides involved firearms. Of the identified weapons, about three-quarters were not registered. Among registered weapons, the registered owner was rarely the person accused of the homicide. In just 62 cases—only 4.7 percent of all firearm homicides—was the gun registered to the accused, and an unknown number of these homicide cases involve instances of self-defense. But the Royal Canadian Mounted Police failed to identify any cases where registration was integral to solving the crime.

Why do Democrats keep pushing a policy that costs so much and has no crime-reducing benefits? With so many Democrat voters supporting complete gun bans, many Republicans and Democrats believe that the registry is designed to pave the way for a ban on guns.

Here is what the founder of Handgun Control Inc (now the Brady Center) said how they would do it. They are now going after rifles.

From 1976.

Nelson T. ‘Pete’ Shields
Founder of Handgun Control, Inc.

“I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest.

Of course, it’s true that politicians will then go home and say, ‘This is a great law. The problem is solved.’ And it’s also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time.

So then we’ll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time.

My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — TOTALLY ILLEGAL.”

-Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., “A Reporter At Large: Handguns,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1976, 57-58

“Yes, I’m for an outright ban [on handguns].”

-Pete Shields, Chairman emeritus, Handgun Control, Inc., 60 Minutes interview

HCI, around 1984, suddenly made a grab for the semi-auto rifles and shotguns, and missed But they showed their hand. As a result all gun owners know we are always up against a stacked deck.

*******
And HERE IS how they will do it, one small step at a time.

And to think, in 1962 Thomas J Dodd and Emauell Cellar proposed the first federal law on common firearms.

1962; “We don’t want to take away your guns, we ONLY want to register handguns! Rifles and shotguns will not be affected”.

1964: “We only want to register all your guns, not ban them! Only Army surplus guns will be banned.”

1968: “We only want to register your guns, and ban “Saturday Night Specials” and small foreign handguns along with army surplus rifles!” (They got the ban on 5 shot army surplus rifles and handguns and small foreign pistols)

1970: “We only want to ban Saturday night specials! Large handguns and rifles will not be affected!”

1976: “We only want to ban all handguns! Long guns will not be affected!”

1981: “The NRA is a rifle organization! They should give up their handguns, and they can keep their rifles!”- Lee Grant on GMA

1984: “We must ban “assault Rifles, unsuitable or hunting!”

1989: George Bush bans import of some foreign made “assault rifles”.

1992: Assault rifle ban passed by Clinton.

2000: first calls to ban single shot .50 cal rifles...

2012 calls for MORE bans on semi auto rifles and handguns. If you can’t ban them then go after ammo limits, the magazines and styles of the stocks.

And so it continues.

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