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.

Can you document that OUTRAGEOUS claim? Wayne and the NRA has consistantly oppossed any any background checks on sales between private citizens at gun shows or anywhere else. What he has said is that sales by licensed dealers at gun shows are already subject to background checks, so there is no "gunshow loophole".

It's bad enough that some pro-gun groups slander the NRA to try to increase their membership and fund raising, but making up LIES goes too far.

You bet I can! NRA Wayne, your buddy, was on CNBC, Chis Mathews, Hardball proram for two nights in a row. He said both times, "The NRA position on gun shows is that WE support background checks on ALL guns sold at gun shows and we still support the Dingell Amendment." This program aired the last week of May or the first week of June, 2001. Don't call me a liar when you don't know what you are talking about. You want to believe everything the NRS says. The NRA is responsible for the worst law we have ever had, the NICS system. The brady bill was due to sunset,which was only on HANDGUNS until the NRA came up with the NICS and they said they would do background checks on all guns including LONG GUNS. Thanks to the NRA we have to get permission from the US Government everytime we buy any gun. I don't remember anywhere in the 2nd Amendment where it says we have to get preapproval from the GOVERNMENT before we can buy a gun. The NRA must be reading a different CONSTITUTION than the one I have read. I"ve got more than my nose in this business as I am a gun show promoter and a former candidate for the US Senate and you can take what I just said to the BANK!

You bet I can! NRA Wayne, your buddy, was on CNBC, Chis Mathews, Hardball program for two nights in a row. He said both times, "The NRA position on gun shows is that WE support background checks on ALL guns sold at gun shows and we still support the Dingell Amendment." This program aired the last week of May or the first week of June, 2001. Don't call me a liar when you don't know what you are talking about. You want to believe everything the NRA says. The NRA is responsible for the worst law we have ever had, the NICS system. The brady bill was due to sunset,which was only on HANDGUNS until the NRA came up with the NICS and they said they would do background checks on all guns including LONG GUNS. Thanks to the NRA we have to get permission from the US Government everytime we buy any gun. I don't remember anywhere in the 2nd Amendment where it says we have to get preapproval from the GOVERNMENT before we can buy a gun. The NRA must be reading a different CONSTITUTION than the one I have read. I"ve got more than my nose in this business as I am a gun show promoter and a former candidate for the US Senate and you can take what I just said to the BANK!

Wayne LaPierre in the April's column which is very close to the last article he wrote for the last couple months shows this as the last couple of paragraphs:
And this is what "closing the gun-show loophole" really is: making innocent people-who transfer guns without background checks as part of a permanent national registration system-into criminals.

Today's "gun-show loophole" will be tomorrow's "gun-owner's loophole". And that will be followed by what Bill Clinton once promised as "buybacks-confiscation. Each will be called by our enemies " sensible steps".

Only you and I, acting as individuals, can stop this.

In short if you are trying to claim that the NRA and Wayne LaPierre is for the gunshow loophole, you are either mistaken or a liar.

So what you are saying is you remember hearing him say that. Sorry, but unless you have a transcript of the show, that's not documentation, and frankly I don't believe it. I have heard him say the opposite many times during that period, and read it numerous times in official NRA publications. The NRA's position was and is that we oppose any background checks on transfers between private citizens.

I know he said that, the NRA supports background checks on all guns sold at gun shows. My wife watched the same program with me two nights in a row, are you calling her a liar also. Call CNBC Chis Matthews Hardball program and ask for the transscripts. You with your head in the sand probably won't believe the transcripts either. Better yet call NRA Wayne at (703)267-1050 or fax him at (703)267-3989. I said background checks of all guns sold at GUN SHOWS. Don't confuse that with private sales anywhere else. Get a copy of the Dingell Amendment from the House of Representatives, which the NRA supported, it says the same thing. Do your homework, Nowhere in the NRA magazine does it say they are not for background checks for all guns sold at GUN SHOWS. They talk about private sales elsewhere but not at gun shows. They shirt around this issue. Read it very closely. I want the NRA to standup against the Gun show loophole, but they say they don't have the votes so they need to compromise!!! I'm a gun show promoter, I make my living putting on gun shows. Background checks on private sales at gun shows will kill the gun shows. 20,000,000 people attend gun shows in US, 400,000 every weekend, that's more than the Super Bowl and a World Series game EVERY WEEKEND! I wonder why they want to shut us DOWN? Gun Shows are Town Hall Meetings where people with like interest meet and talk about, buy , sale, and trade guns and also talk about POLITICS. That's why they want to shut us down. We are asking every gun show promoter in US to raise their price of admission by one dollar. We can raise $20,000,000 in one year and have the largest and most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. The problem is getting everybody to do it! ONE DOLLAR is what is holding us back! Join US. www.gspu.org

I wasn't very clear. I meant that I read your post, now read my post that has the quotes form LaPierre's column. He and the NRA are fighting the "Gunshow Loophole Bill". If you're still trying to claim that the NRA isn't fighting it. Prove it with a quote from him.

" We can raise $20,000,000 in one year and have the largest and most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill."

You sound like you're doing this for the money and only that. We don't need money. We need 80,000 members that will vote the Second Amendment, vote the anti-gun dems out and they can take mccain with them. You don't do that by trashing the NRA.

It is all about money. Politicians only understand two things, money and numbers. I got this idea from Senator Orin Hatch one day at breakfast with him, at 8am in the morning in a little resturant off Captiol Hill. He asked how many people attend gun shows every year? I told him that 20,000,000 people attend gun shows every year in the US. He said without a blick of the eye, "Do you know if all the gun show promoters would raise their admission price by just one dollar, that you could raise $20,000,000 in one year and have the largest and most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill." Numbers, 20,000,000 people + $20,000,000= POWER!! All for just ONE DOLLAR. The money raised by the Gun Show Protection Union will be used to hire as many lobbyist as we have money. Our only goal is to protect and save one of America's greatest passtimes called GUN SHOWS. Sure the NRA and everybody else that is pro-gun is fighting the McCain bill,the difference is we will not compromise.

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