Registration Gone Wrong

Apparently criminals can get a hold of gun owner registries, and use them to target residences for theft. This is one thing that’s always kind of annoyed me about our opponents proposals. If you enacted drastic measures to cut down on criminal access to firearms from the primary, legal market (by limiting or frustrating everyone’s access to firearms, like Chicago or D.C.), there would be a greater incentive to engage in theft of firearms to keep the black market supplied. Especially if, as many of our opponents want, the registries were made public information. I don’t see that shifting criminal sources of guns more heavily to theft is a net public good.

6 thoughts on “Registration Gone Wrong”

  1. The Gun Control Act of 1968 initially required “ammunition registration.” Anyone who wanted to buy a box of ammo had to write his or her name and address in a “bound book.” Criminals quickly caught on, and started stealing the ammo book. Naturally, the incidence of gun thefts went sky high. And that provision was quickly repealed.

    But there is no need of any increase in gun theft to meet criminals demands. With “consumption” estimated to be between 50 and 100,000 per year, and the total number of guns available to the underworld estimated at sixteen million, the dark side has at least a 160 year supply. Of course, after forty or fifty years the price would increase.

    Stranger

  2. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to make the “unintended consequences” argument to them. Why is it better to shift “gun flow” from straw purchases to theft? Why is it better to shift thefts from unoccupied burglaries to armed robbery while they hold a gun to your kids head while you open the safe to retrieve your safely stored unloaded gun?

  3. Three bills are up for vote in the Michigan House next week that repeal our pistol registration scheme and mandate the state police to destroy their registry.

    I’m doing everything I can to help but NRA ILA sure seems to not want to respond to my emails.

  4. And this is exactly why we barely dodged the bullet in OR recently. A local paper was seeking to publish all CCW holder’s names and info. Would have had me in my living room, 12ga on my lap, not daring to leave my kids out of sight.

    This kind of crap HAS to wake ‘them’ up to the folly of registration and disclosure of said registrants.

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