Registration: The NRA Paradigm

Arguments against gun registration have long relied on 'common knowledge' that registration lists were used by the Nazis, the Soviets, and other tyrants to locate and disarm gun owners, facilitating mass murder of defenseless populations. But without evidence, the case is too easily dismissed. Considering that the NRA raises on the order of perhaps $200 million a year ostensibly to defend the people's right to arms as insurance against such tyranny, it's puzzling that thorough documentation on the relationship between registration and mass murder by government wasn't made widely available to NRA members long ago.

Ironically, it was a grassroots group on shoestring funding, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, that really began filling the void some years ago with the landmark books Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny, and Lethal Laws: Gun Control is the Key to Genocide (see review at www.jpfo.org/L-laws.htm). Stephen Halbrook's recent article, Registration: The Nazi Paradigm, www.stephenhalbrook.com/registration_article/registration.html, continues to help fill the void, but with a major flaw. It promotes the fiction that NRA management opposes gun registration:

"Given the...facts, it is not difficult to understand why the NRA opposed gun registration at the time and still does."

That echoes the official NRA management spin. But over the years, while opposing overt registration, NRA staff has supported a number of insidious de facto registration schemes. When Clinton pushed to make registration official, NRA staff all but donned white hats, strapped on 6-shooters, and charged in on white horses to fight the dastardly Democrat schemes. Such spectacles serve as smokescreens, hiding America's pervasive registration even as they invigorate fundraising for pro and anti-gun camps alike. (For ease of reference, part of the next section is elaborated from my earlier article "Bursting the Registration Bubble", www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1224.)

America has registration via the Gun Control Act of 1968, supported by Charlton Heston and NRA management. GCA'68 requires gun dealers who go out of business to turn over their records to the government, which, as a result, has many millions of records — legally. Besides normal business attrition, 2/3 of America's gun dealers were forced under by Clinton's BATF. Guess where their records went?

America has registration through GCA'68's dangerous gun dealer recordkeeping requirements. Just as Polish gun registration lists turned out to be Nazi death lists, privately held dealer records are effectively gun registration lists. Unless you're a deluded soul clinging to the belief that rights trump power, you know that dealer records are government property. They just haven't taken possession yet. They know where the records are and who's responsible for them. Once they decide to, they can simply confiscate or copy the records, which to an extent they're already doing. Who will stop them? The Militia?

America has registration through NRA management's InstaCheck gun purchaser background check program (aka Instant Registration, or InstaReg). The folks who run the InstaCheck system practice a cult of secrecy, perjury, oathbreaking, lawbreaking, and privacy invasion. They murdered Vicky and Sammy Weaver at Ruby Ridge and escaped punishment with the help of a corrupt judiciary. Then they murdered 24 children at Waco and covered up the evidence. Not only were they never punished for that, they got national standing ovations. These guys are like the "law enforcement" bandidos in Treasure of the Sierra Madre: They don't need no stinking badges, no stinking warrants, no stinking laws, and no stinking Constitution. So is it really likely they're afraid to keep some stinking records!? Oh sure! They'll blow your unarmed wife's head off while she's holding your baby, but your identity is safe!? They'll machine gun and crush you with a tank, or gas and burn you alive with your kids, but they won't dare keep your name?!

Yet, NRA management refuses to consider viable alternatives to InstaCheck, such as the Blind Internet Database System, or BIDS, proposed by Brian Puckett and myself, whereby dealers could check for gun disabilities on a published prohibited buyers list without the government knowing who's buying guns (see www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=2020). Nor will NRA management consider alternatives such as universal driver's license coding (proposed by former NRA Director Clarence Lovell and others) — even after the NRA Board directed NRA staff to look into them.

America has registration via NRA management's "Shall Issue" concealed carry laws, under which permittees are checked, fingerprinted, mug shot, tracked, etc. Vermont-style Carry, on the other hand, effectively presumes good citizens have permits without submitting to invasive probes. (See "Why Adopt a Vermont-style CCW Law?", www.gunowners.org/vtcarry.htm.) So, unlike "Shall Issue", Vermont Carry is not impregnated with registration. Despite that, or because of it, NRA staff has successfully quarantined Vermont Carry in Vermont, threatening legislators who promote it in states where it could pass if only it escaped NRA staff sabotage (see for example, Representative Marilyn Musgrave's letter to Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, www.gunowners.org/musgrave.htm).

For a recent example, see 2-22-02 report by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners at www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=2268 (paraphrased): "Few activists knew the sordid details of the compromise. Why? 3 letters: N R A. They ignored the better bill and backed a sponsor who desperately wanted to pass ANY bill...with dozens of holes."

NRA staff is determined to ensure that one way or another all carry laws include de facto registration of citizens who comply. For example, their position that "[Anyone] who carries or is exempted from [a] permit should be required to have...training", threatens the survival of Vermont Carry even in Vermont (see "NRA's Second Amendment", www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3198, 2-27-02). And note that while they help register you, they cite their training policy to back elitist bills for off-duty cops (aka, "Police Carry First"), undermining support for bills that would recognize an equal right to self-defense for all citizens (see comments on Kentucky's HB97, www.keepandbeararms.com/news/kabanews/read_comments.asp?nl=8439149709921).

Given NRA staff's support for these de facto schemes, is their war on registration another good cop/bad cop play, staged to help us deny the painful truth that they sold us down the river long ago?

Reluctantly, we must also acknowledge a less obvious but still likely form of de facto registration: NRA staff's control of membership lists. If total confiscation time comes, these may be a prime government resource for snaring millions of folks who are more dedicated to liberty than the typical gun owner.

Would NRA staff stand up to tyranny? Consider: NRA's self-styled "Winning Team" management now holds press conferences with Sarah Brady to promote "zero tolerance full enforcement of existing gun [control] laws" and unveil Soviet-style snitch programs complete with patriotic blurbs like "Report Illegal Guns. Call 800-...-....". (see Report on the Project Exile Kickoff, by Mark Call, 3-9-00, www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe67-20000315.html). Wayne LaPierre's obedience training infomercials praise compliance with gun grabs, implying only criminals would resist confiscation: "[He] did what any honest, law-abiding American would do...he turned in his [gun] to the police" (see NRA Says Honest Americans Would Turn in Banned Guns, by Angel Shamaya, www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3273, and It can't happen here, www.nralive.com). Meanwhile, Wayne promotes gun control. For example, with PC slogans like "NRA believes in no unsupervised youth access to guns, period.", LaPierre practically begs lawmakers to imprison parents who allow access by responsible minors, thus helping destroy 400 years of American gun culture (see LaPierre address to members, 5-1-99, www.nrahq.org/transcripts/denver_wlp.asp). Wayne even testifies to Congress in favor of imprisoning teachers who carry to defend their students: "It's reasonable to support the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act...it's reasonable to expect full enforcement of federal firearms laws...That's why we support Project Exile — the fierce prosecution of federal gun laws...it's reasonable because it works" (see, http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju63126.000/hju63126_0.htm, 5-27-99).

The "Winning" Team loves to call NRA "America's oldest civil rights organization." What a load. There's not a single gun law for which they prescribe civil disobedience. In fact, they urge full enforcement of all existing gun controls, including those that are illegal, immoral, inhumane, unfair, and unconstitutional. If Rosa Parks had listened to authority worshippers like Wayne LaPierre, she'd still be sitting at the back of the bus and drinking at "separate but equal" fountains. In his Closing Remarks to Members at the Annual Meeting on 5-1-99, Charlton Heston thundered, "Only the law-abiding...deserve...the Second Amendment. Abuse it once and lose it forever...the NRA is far more eager to prosecute gun abusers than are those who oppose gun ownership altogether..." (www.nrahq.org/transcripts/denver_close.asp). Had Martin Luther King shared Charlaton Heston's philosophy, he would've helped put "lawbreakers" and "extremists" like Rosa Parks in prison. In fact, had such ideal Heston/LaPierre policies as full enforcement, zero tolerance, 3-Strikes, federalization, and felonization all been in place for the civil rights movement of the 1960s, King himself would've gone to prison for life.

NRA's "Winning" Team comprises former government employees, mercenary lobbyists and vendors, "respectable sportsmen", and politicians with sweetheart deals to protect -- authority worshippers with no history of gun rights voluntarism (or even gun ownership in many cases) prior to an NRA position. If they'll help the enemy put you in a gulag for "violating" illegal laws, if they'll back schemes that will ultimately register you anyway, do you think they themselves would eat huge fines, hard time, or worse, to keep your identity from a tyrannical government? Would they destroy the lists, or instead turn over copies to stay alive and free, keep the $200 million a year flowing, the $20,000-a-month salaries, the $15,000-a-month expense accounts, the sweetheart deals, etc.?

Is there a contingency plan to destroy the lists? I don't know. I do know it's too late to bet your life on it. Past NRA President Hammer has claimed "we'll never give up our lists". But as former Vice Chairman of NRA's Membership Committee, list access by vendors did not escape my notice. And I'm not the only member who gets junk gun mail from outfits I never gave my name to. Moreover, while I was on the Board, years before I got on, and years after I resigned to protest the "Winning" Team coup, the IRS was auditing NRA so thoroughly it had an office at NRA headquarters. Think they didn't look at revenues, receipts, expenditures, etc.? Think they didn't find anything that might give them leverage?

Ironically, NRA management is unofficially trashing the Ashcroft Petition to Enforce the 2nd Amendment, a joint project of KeepAndBearArms.com and Citizens of America. The insinuation is that KABA and COA are using the petition to build and sell a fundraising list, even though the groups forswore generic use and don't request addresses. These are grassroots groups run by honorable, intelligent, creative activists who work like sled dogs with little or no pay for liberty — the kind who will fulfill the 2nd Amendment rather than turn in a registration list; and I know the type. (As Treasurer and Executive Director of Californians Against Corruption, Steve Cicero and I jointly got what is now a $1.1 million campaign fine, the largest ever issued, for not giving up the identities of our donors for harassment by former state Senate President David Roberti and his corrupt pals. Since then, protecting campaign donor privacy was made a criminal offense. We're still fighting: See www.CACDefenseFund.org.)

Ashcroft Petition criticism fits what psychologists call projection: People of evil motives naturally suspect others — or in the political version popularized by such ilk as Lenin, Stalin, Goebbels, and Clinton, preemptively accuse others — of the same. He who accuses first is immune from suspicion. For example, they say petitions are useless politically, good only for fundraising and list building. That reveals their contempt for you with each NRA fundraiser they send disguised as a bogus petition or poll.

They say you're better off helping NRA's "Winning" Team and its "grassroots" members councils rather than helping independent efforts. It shows their contempt for real grassroots, which they see as competition to be co-opted and diverted to internal NRA politics rather than built into a formidable gun rights resource. Under threat of decertification or worse, once-vibrant councils are forced into toady-run Potemkin villages. Among others, Santa Barbara's council was decertified for opposing anti-gun politicos with phony A grades from NRA. And according to Fairfield-Suison council founder Pete Nesbitt, LaPierre "special assistant" Paul Payne threatened to come to Nesbitt's home and beat him — in front of his family. Through liaisons like "Pol Pain", councils invite Cal-DOJ officers to instruct obsequious members on how to obey our latest bans. Other honored guests include congressional strongman Loretta Sanchez, who, when asked how women could defend themselves without guns, advised, "get a husband." Incorrect questions are pre-screened and the oppressors are warmly applauded (see The Professional Face of Evil; A Verbal Confrontation with California DOJ Lackeys, by Angel Shamaya, www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=354).

When deciding which groups to entrust with your address, consider: Does management consist of principled anti-appeasement leaders with histories of voluntarism, or "respectable sport shooters" who think gun grabbers will go away if only us "extremists" give up rights "no legitimate sportsman needs"? Or junk mail and PR firms that meddle in board elections to save $80,000-a-month retainers? Or politicians and lobbyists protecting their future "access" and their power to distribute unearned grades, cash and volunteers to candidates? Or an off-book-compensated celeb who never lifts a finger while his own home state passes gun ban after gun ban, who rewards you for letting him represent you by pandering to the media, telling them guns like yours make him nervous and there's no legitimate reason for you to own "AK-47s"? Or an EVP who spends $300 million in subversion of bylaws, then has his opponents ambushed by a liar for hire posing as a "conservative investigative journalist".

(David Brock, whose 1997 "Wayne's World" piece trashed LaPierre's opposition, later expressed regret for lying, smearing, and whoring. Brock, who is gay, also 'outed' the existence of a "secret society" of homosexuals in high levels at conservative institutions. See July 1997 Esquire interview; also "Confessions of a Hit Man for the Right", L.A. Times, 6-16-97; and "David Brock, Liar", Slate, 3-27-02, www.slate.msn.com/?id=2063759. More recently - big surprise - Brock openly voted for Gore and wrote "Blinded by the Right", which basically smears his old right wing pimps for having him perform so many smear jobs he can't get the taste out of his mouth. This book is worth buying, Brock assures us, since it's all true and fair, especially the parts about smearing and lying like "a whore for the cash".)

As long as gun dealers keep records of gun owners (GCA'68) and governments do the background checks (NRA/NICS), i.e., until GCA'68's recordkeeping is repealed and either the dealers themselves check that buyers are not on a prohibited list (Puckett-Howard/BIDS) or some other registration-free system is enacted (Lovell), citizens should presume themselves registered after a background check. By supporting GCA'68 and NICS, and suppressing Vermont Carry, NRA management has doomed American gun owners to systematic, gradually increasing registration -- that is, unless the gun rights movement wakes up and puts a stop to it. Moreover, given NRA management's political corruption, its insidious support for gun control, and its paragon of submission to "authority", NRA's membership lists should be presumed compromised, and therefore effectively equivalent to registration lists.

There may be a very small silver lining to letting this open secret out, however. Over decades of activism, I've run across a number of gun owners who won't join gun rights groups (or even vote) for fear the government will get their names. Many are surely sincere, but I suspect others are latching on to a convenient excuse for doing nothing while good citizens defend their rights for them. When confronted, it's not unusual for the apathetic type to rationalize:

"I'm afraid to join 'cause they might take my guns, but don't worry: I'll be there in the trenches when they come for yours."

Yeah, right. He's afraid of non-violent political action, but he's got our backs! And they can have his Parker Double when they pry it from his cold dead hands, like Charlaton Heston...

Actually, I have no doubt lots of folks who make that argument (more so those who quietly believe it and don't discuss it) will indeed do the right thing if things get really ugly. But tyranny will likely arrive gradually; different folks will see it as intolerable at different times, and many won't see it at all. I hope that if and when that time comes for most of us, there will still be millions of unregistered people with unregistered guns, who will thus be able to stand up.

It's not much of a bright side, but if the fact of pervasive registration gets widely acknowledged, the gun rights movement will no longer be in denial, the phonies will no longer have plausible deniability, and we can get on with the business of reversing registration.

Still, as another former NRA Director recently pointed out to me, if gun owners believe they're registered, they're way more likely to comply with gun confiscation laws. But the longer we deny the problem and allow creeping registration to progress, the greater the temptation to begin widespread confiscation, and the more effective such confiscation efforts will be. Ignoring the problem will only make the day of reckoning worse. So it's critical for the gun rights movement to acknowledge NRA management's registration paradigm and begin working to destroy it as soon as possible.

Stephen Halbrook's Registration: The Nazi Paradigm is a compelling introduction to the evils of gun registration. So it's perplexing that Dr. Halbrook, one of our most accomplished and respected gun rights defenders, fails to sound the alarm over our already pervasive registration.

The answer may be "its the money." Mr. Howard's arguments have a lot of merit; there is no doubt that since the 1968 GCA the government through its ATF and many states have been compiling lists of gun buyers/owners. The silver lining is that there are currently MILLIONS of people who have exercised their RKBA since 1968 and perhaps MILLIONS more who have inherited arms which are not on any list at all. I have no doubt that confiscation will be attempted sometime in the future. Its clear that states like California are already doing so on a very limited basis. Not all the law is in place which would allow this yet. But in the Golden State, the legislature is working at an increased pace to put these laws in place before they lose the governorship. If Assemblyman Simitian's bill, AB2580, becomes law, the Cal DOJ (through local law enforcement agencies) will have the authority to inspect private residences/guns of registered AW owners on a yearly basis. This is one step away from confiscation. Is this unconstitutional? Of course it is. But when did the bastards ever allow that old piece of paper to interfere with "Those in Authority"?

That echoes the official NRA management spin. But over the years, while opposing overt registration, NRA staff has supported a number of insidious de facto registration schemes.

That's a lie. What typically happens is someone proposes a really bad bill like background checks and waiting periods. The NRA fights it. Eventually it becomes obvious that the bill is going to pass, so the NRA gets the worst parts changed, like mandating instant checks instead of waiting periods, and outlawing the keeping of the information from the background checks. Then these politically innefectual anti-gun groups who have never accomplished anything in the real world claim the NRA "supports background checks". Then they twist that into "the NRA supports registration".

The bottom line is, if you want to know who is thawarting the gun-grabbers agenda, look at who they attack. They never mention the GOA and JPFO because they know they have no political clout and are no threat to their agenda. The NRA is, that's why they spend so much time demonizing them.

First, the 1968 NRA is NOT today's NRA. The Cinci revolt changed it.

Do you want NO CARRY? Anyone that advocates VERMONT OR NOTHING is a GUN GRABBER in my book. Why? Since they sabotage any efforts at NO CARRY which is what was in those states beforehand.

I want Vermont carry too, but any GAIN for freedom is worth it. Once shall issue is working, we can eliminate the gun free zones, and then EVENTUALLY, SUCCEED in Vermont carry. Who helped us in Michigan. The NRA did.

It's a START and something to BUILD on. Too many people don't understand that.

What a load. There's not a single gun law for which they prescribe civil disobedience. In fact, they urge full enforcement of all existing gun controls, including those that are illegal, immoral, inhumane, unfair, and unconstitutional.

One word. COURTS

Citizens of America.
Puckett doesn't do anything but bash the NRA.

They say you're better off helping NRA's "Winning" Team and its "grassroots" members councils rather than helping independent efforts

The NRA hasn't hurt us(MCRGO). We are affiliated with them. Maybe if these 'independent' groups quit bashing the NRA all the time and works with them, something effective can happen besides a lot of noise.

And according to Fairfield-Suison council founder Pete Nesbitt, LaPierre "special assistant" Paul Payne threatened to come to Nesbitt's home and beat him — in front of his family

Any proof?

DAvid Brock? WTF kind of a source is that?

suppressing Vermont Carry,
Get a state legislature to pass it. It ain't gonna happen yet.

NRA management has doomed American gun owners to systematic, gradually increasing registration -- that is, unless the gun rights movement wakes up and puts a stop to it.

BULL. The NRA has gone to bat time and time again here.

Moreover, given NRA management's political corruption, its insidious support for gun control, and its paragon of submission to "authority", NRA's membership lists should be presumed compromised, and therefore effectively equivalent to registration lists.

WTF is this horsecrap? Any proof. What 'insidious support for gun control'? Where is the proof. HEY RUSS HOWARD, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR GUN RIGHTS

This is nothing but another hatchet job, on the most EFFECTIVE civil rights organazation in the county. It's the NRA that has stopped the gun grabbers. It is the NRA that congress listens too. It's the NRA that is respected and hated election time. The NRA board is also ELECTED by the MEMBERS.

I'm sticking with the NRA. I have seen their results firsthand in my state. The Russ Howards of this state do nothing but complain. The NRA was in the captiol fighing for CCW here, and before CCW, it was NO CARRY. NONE. ZIP. ZILCH. ZERO. Now we are CCW, and are also GAINING MOMENTUM. We're looking at other reforms now. We're moving on. Russ Howard can lead, follow, or preferably - get the hell out of my way.

The NRA had lobbied for a law like GCA '68 as far back as August 1962. In that month's edition of "The American Rifleman," the NRA voiced support for such a measure that came to pass as GCA '68 some six years later, doing so in "the interests of national security."

Ostensibly, in the NRA's editorial view, the USA was being "flooded" with lower-priced (but not cheap) imported sporting firearms as well as plentiful and inexpensive surplus military ones; US firearms makers were in turn seeing losses in their domestic market share (much like US automakers would in the 1970s and '80s--hence their clamor for similar import restrictions and "domestic content legislation.") The 1967 Stoeger Arms catalog strenuously advocated (ostensibly for "safety reasons) against any attempt to "sporterize" surplus military small arms.

The NRA claimed at that time such continued imports would harm the domestic firearms industry, supposedly doing so to the point that we in the USA would no longer have the productive capacity to produce our own arms in time of war. Defense Secretary McNamara soon backed such a law as well, and all that may in part explain why so many "celebrities" (among them Heston, Kirk Douglas and Jimmy Stewart) as well as Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin and his lobbying group "Citizens For Reasonable Gun Control" backed GCA '68.

Moreover, by 1968, groups like the Black Panthers (who had lawfully acquired numerous surplus M1 Garand rifles and M1 carbines through the government's Civilian Marksmanship Program) were being used as bogeys to further push GCA '68--in fact, at the time, Eldridge Cleaver called GCA '68 "not a gun control law, but a ni--er control law."

History may have repeated itself in this vein somewhat beginning in the 1990s, ironically with the collapse of the USSR. With Russia and the former East Bloc nations entering the US commercial arms market with a wide variety of good quality, lower priced firearms, a string of more gun control laws magically worked its way through Congress, after a near two decade hiatus in such measures; mostly notable being the baffling "assault rifle ban," one that copied some aspects of the aforementioned "domestic content legislation" previously sought by US automakers.

Hey Dan, I was just in your so called great State, where the the second amendment does NOT APPLY! You have complete gun registration in your state. You have to register every hand gun with the POLICE. Where was the NRA in your state. When asked what the NRA's position was on the so called gun show loophole, NRA WAyne La'pierre (Canadian) said, "The NRA's position on gun shows is that WE support background checks on ALL guns sold at gun shows." GEE, that sounds like gun registration to me. Where in the 2nd Amendment does it say we have to get PERMISSION from the government to buy a gun? Where in the 2nd Amendment does it say we have to get preappoval from the US GOVERNMENT before we can buy a gun? The NRA agrees with the GOVERNMENT!! WhAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE THE WORDS, "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED", Oh , we must have forgot about THAT! Never in the history of our great country have WE the People, had to get permission to buy a gun and we owe our thanks to the NIC"s system invented by, guess who, The NRA!

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