@LauraTXNM , thanks for the information you provided. I hadn't been aware of the Czech example; it is interesting to see a nation with a history of gun bans under totalitarian regimes embrace a gun-friendly regime that still incorporates licensure and registration. Without confiscation.
But I knew from the start what the reaction would be to @Smokin Joe 's invitation to go snipe hunting. If you provide examples of registration without confiscation, it is never enough, and besides, there's no confiscation "yet". And if you provide European examples, they're invalid because, after all, we're special and different. 
We are special and different, in case you didn't notice.
Most Conservative Americans believe that, and History bears it out. I believe in American Exceptionalism, born of our inherent love for freedom from unnecessary government meddling in our lives, and the freedom to innovate, secure in our person, papers, and effects (including the means to defend them). Unlike other countries which have had 50 or fewer years of domestic peace, despite our little civil incidents we haven't been invaded since the Mexicans did in the early 1900s. Few nations on Earth can claim that century of relative security. The Swiss can, but they are armed to the teeth, with full-auto capable rifles stored by legal mandate in the homes along with enough ammo to fight their way to the local armory---something we don't even have. Other nations are rediscovering the RKBA, but following a generally more American model, yet in the UK they are discussing
knife control....I guess there is no real threat there of bringing one to a gun fight.
We saved Europe's bacon twice, in WWI AND WWII--not only the breadbasket of the free world, but the 'Arsenal of Democracy' as well. Part of that arsenal was effective enough during that era, for 'behind every blade of grass' there would be a rifle waiting for any invading force. We exist, as a nation by force of arms and preserved that union through the same force, whatever one makes of that event. Yet it has remained fundamental from the Battles of Lexington and Concord (instigated by British troops moving to confiscate arms and ammunition from the colonists) that Americans are, and will remain so long as there is a recognizable America, Armed.
As for registration schemes, we have laws which usurp power as it is: One administration stops a pipeline, one lets it be completed, the political winds blow spuriously and from different directions depending on which Party is in control, and sometimes they do not blow nearly hard enough along the reciprocal course.
On the issue of firearms, though, the list of infringements on the Right is long, has ever grown, each time with yet another scheme which will make the world safe, the birds sing, the sun shine and enable your children to walk through the worst part of town at night safely. Only that fiction that was used to justify yet another layer of onerous infringements on the Rights of firearm owners still fails to be realized, and yet another proposed. Note, if you will, the Clinton Era "Assault Weapons Ban" which had little to no effect on crime.
Note that the NFA of 1934 was going to make everyone safe by limiting access to entire classes of firearms and devices. Well, that didn't work, so double down, and after a significant war, a couple of assassinations, and a good dose of the 'red scare' another act was passed in 1968 which reqired a bunch of paperwork to get a firearm. Then NICS checks and th prohibition of newly manufactured fully automatic arms being acquired by any but military, LEOs, or licensed dealers of machine and submachine guns. (The effect of that, while technically not keeping someone from the general public who went through the paperwork, background checks, paid the transfer tax, etc. was that the AK-47, the select fire most common combat rifle in the world went in price from the $300 it costs elsewhere in the world to nearly 10K--if you can find one which has not been worn out, because if it was manufactured after 1982, you, average person, can't have it.
Did that make the streets any safer? No. Because criminals won't comply with that law either. Breaking laws is how they roll, and one more doesn't mean jack to them.
Those NICS provisions (and other, later ones) were thwarted, most notoriously, not by hardened criminals, but BY THE VERY AGENCIES TASKED WITH ENFORCING THEM in a scheme known as "Fast and Furious" or
operation gunwalker, which effectively facilitated the transfer of semiautomatic firearms to street gangs and drug cartel straw buyers, in quantities which would have tripped flags for the average person (take delivery on two identical firearms in one day and you may well get a 'visit' to verify you bought them for you, if the purchase isn't denied, too).
At least according to some sources, the purpose of that operation (which had no chance of tracing those firearms until they were recovered from crime scenes or as a result of searches after an arrest) was to flood the Mexican market with 'legally' purchased weapons which would be likely to be used in crimes so the statistics could come a little closer to reflecting the media meme that American sold firearms were part and parcel of the Cartel crime wave in Mexico, for the further purpose of imposing further restrictions on the RKBA of American gun owners, done by the Obama Administration.
It isn't just the Obama Administration at play, here but Federal Agency bureaucratic mindsets which have persisted for decades and are easily revived when the Administration is favorable to such.
You want me to trust the architects and purveyors of such incidents as the M.O.V.E. fire bombing in Philadelphia, the Ruby Ridge incident, the Waco Massacre (parts I and II), and numerous other incidents which indicate a fundamental distrust of the government agencies which are supposed to be holding our Rights inviolate is a good thing. Under the Clintons, after the passage of the act requiring background checks through the NICS system, the BATF was compiling a database (registry) of background checks, rather than disposing of that information within 24 hours
as required by law.
With the amount of surveillance being conducted on telecommunications, who knows what the government has illegally compiled using the destination numbers of the NICS system to do so?
When a government has proven itself to be less than trustworthy with such information, I, for one, am not about to sanction it collecting such data--nor the fees which it will inevitably charge for the 'service'. As a taxpayer, you, too, will have to shell out for the staff and equipment to keep such a scheme going, and there is no guarantee that that information would be secure. For the enterprising, databases of who owns what sorts of firearms in a given area could be marketable information for those interested in making a living off of larceny, not just the Government agencies who want to kick some doors and ass to work off their roid rage.
I have a solution. Just say "No.". Save the money, the incidents, the hostility, and the creation of a huge criminal class of non compliant but otherwise law abiding firearm owners. Save the lives lost or destroyed by inevitable conflict.
Note, too, that none of the above measures have really been credited for reducing crime so much as the continuing increase in the number of Americans who carry concealed. Rules on paper don't matter to a criminal, but the general uncertainty of confronting a target who might well be carrying the lethal means of self-defense is a consideration that is up close and personal, and a true deterrent.
