I am relying on the Constitution to rein in the sort of tyranny you fear. It's worked well for over two centuries now.
Don't make me laugh! Are you referring to the "law-abiding" folks on this forum who vow not to comply and even to shoot dead peace officers who try to enforce the law? Licensure is an effective tool against criminals; the lack of licensure provides the basis for taking a criminal's gun away from him.
There is no constitutional right to keep an arsenal of guns in secret. The 2A itself is predicated on the need for a "well-regulated" militia. Licensure and registration is compatible with the Constitution, arbitrary confiscation isn't.
OH, bullshit. Evewr hear of this?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I will not provide a shopping list for anyone.
Credit card information is worth a mint. People hack it and steal it daily. Entire identities are 'stolen' and people ruined
because those who are supposed to keep that information secure FAIL. An entire industry has sprung up around data protection and mitigation of the results when those protections fail.
So what is to stop really dedicated criminal elements from hacking that information in government hands and selling neighborhood specific shopping lists to those who would use them to select robbery/burglary/home invasion targets? That information would be worth a lot to thieves. Few people are home 24/7/365 to deter such theft, and some more motivated thieves don't care if they are or not.
NOTHING. But you think we should trust our well being and security to people who can hide behind a sovereign immunity clause and suffer none of the depredations, injury (economic or physical) or even death because they failed to secure that information and it fell into the wrong hands. No effing way.
I know how many people it takes to keep a secret: one. Beyond that, it isn't a secret any more.
The less information is out there, the less can be stolen. It's the reason people try to keep their financial data, addresses, use avatars online, don't post their picture on political forums, etc. Why would anyone want a list of items they own, often worth thousands of dollars, in the hands of those who have no real incentive to keep that information secure, who have no personal downside to it being 'lost' or hacked, and who, in the event of misuse of that information will suffer no penalty?
It really is no one's business what I have or don't so long as it poses no imminent hazard to you. If it's mere presence poses no hazard, and none of my firearms have ever left the place I have stored them and gone off on some shooting spree or even threatened another person.
My mere possession of a firearm poses no hazard to anyone who is conducting themselves in a moral and lawful fashion-- those rules of behaviour and respect for property we as a culture have settled on.
I reserve the Right to defend me and mine, my family, life, and property, with lethal force if necessary, under It is only when people step outside those bounds that my firearm may become a threatening piece of hardware, that its mere presence may pose a threat to those who neither respect my rights nor the law.
How about:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I am not going to give you that information. Nor will you deprive me of my property because someone might wet themselves over the thought that I might merely own something.
I am not responsible for the ability of others to conjure violent fantasies which simply do not conform to reality, nor am I responsible for the promotion of such images, be they fictional or even occasionally real in the various forms of media out there from television to video games and movies. Perhaps if those images are disturbing people that much that they want to make me give up my property, people should watch something else, or we should make horror movies (splatterflicks) which use ordinary household items as weapons and promote registration of kitchen gadgets and power tools. Or not. Maybe liberals would be howling for the registration of melon ballers and hand blenders.
So tell me, what difference does it make if your neighbor has a Ma Deuce in his basement if he isn't threatening others? None whatsoever. No more than a Picasso on your wall, or Hummel figurines, or porn DVDs on your shelf, the knives in your kitchen, or the chainsaw or axe in your garage.. It isn't having the object, it is how you use it.
As for "potential this that or the other, blah, blah,blah...." Wrap your pointy head around this thought. The Wiemar gun registration wasn't for confiscation purposes. BUT
once that information was available, within two decades it had been used to confiscate firearms by another iteration of German leadership.
It doesn't matter one damned bit what good intentions you wave when you say "Licensing, yadda, yadda, yadda..."
ad infinitum. THAT isn't the sole issue, albeit an infringement on my 2nd Amendment rights, the issue is one of there being no guarantee that the information would not be used in exactly the manner we have observed that information being used in other countries, and indeed, even in some states in the US.
With the overwhelming number of instances where registration exactly led to confiscation, either by the registering authority or by subsequent administrations, the government has no compelling reason to know what firearms I may or may not have. I am not operating them on the highway, they were lawfully obtained through purchase or trade, and are not stolen, they are not a public threat. Trust
ME. I have lived over half a century without misusing a firearm, so TRUST ME. I could conceivably be just as destructive to a public without firearms, should I be so inclined, and if you look around the world, there are serious incidents which cause loss of lives and injury to even more people without a firearm even being involved. Ultimately, it isn't the firearm which is the source of your fear, it is the fear that others will resist, with every fiber of their being, the attempt to use government to micromanage the affairs of the individual.
It is almost amusing to me and doubtless others that as you champion the rights of the group who brought AIDS to the forefront as a disease, and all their rights, right down to having cakes baked for them, that you think gun owners should be subjected to registration schemes. What if the call was to register homosexuals?--just for public health purposes, mind you, after all, 1 in 5 homosexual males have HIV, and nearly 2/3 of new infections occur within that group. What would you say to that? Would you object? Those numbers look a lot worse than the percentage of guns (>ahem<
firearms) involved in crime.
We know how that worked out in the 30s, don't we?
Historically, such databases have only facilitated the eventual loss of life, property, and liberty, either taken by the very supposedly benevolent governments which gathered that information, or subsequent authorities who were not so benevolent.
I do not trust any administration, even with Constitutional protections, to have information about what firearms I may own, because the potential for the abuse of that information, and the possible consequences of that, whether by authorities or others is so profound. In the post semantic era, where words no longer seem to have the meanings they did have (how Roberts ruled the penalty was a tax), I don't trust the SCOTUS to clean up the mess, either.
