>>There are a number of ways that rules could be written to require background checks to be performed on firearm sales without allowing any new sale-related information to flow to the government
But how would the government be able to know that a background check was done if it doesn’t know where the guns are in the first place? The gummint loves its metrics!
>> but that wouldn’t solve a more important danger with background checks: they make it much easier for the government to arbitrarily deny individuals’ rights to keep and bear arms without any sort of due process.
They could do that now since all dealer sales require a background check. To say that expanded checks would catch the people who can’t pass a background check now and have to go to private sales actually supports the anti-gun crowd’s assertion that unchecked private sales supply guns to people who shouldn’t own them.
One could pass a rule requiring that an individuals who sells a firearm to another individual should keep a copy of the credential used to verify the sale against a list of people who had been convicted of felonies, and if within the next ten years they are presented with the physical firearm itself they must tender a copy of such credential to the government. If the government has physical possession of the weapon, such a request would not facilitate its confiscation (since the government already has it!). A variety of means could be used to ensure that maintenance of a reliable and unalterable archive of the version of the list that existed on any date. If the buyer wasn't on the forbidden list, then the government shouldn't care whether the background check was done. If the buyer was on the forbidden list, that would suggest it wasn't done.