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Yakk · 03-20-2006, 06:36 PM

A theoretical benefit from a gun registry:
If a criminal registers her firearm, then you might be able to track a firearm to the criminal when it is used.
If a criminal does not register her firearm, then you can put the criminal in jail if you catch them with an unregistered firearm. At the least, the gun can be taken away from the criminal.

Practically, this would require a constant ramping up of the punishment for owning an unregistered firearm. From a fine to an eventual jail sentence for owning an unregistered firearm as a larger and larger percentage of the unregistered firearms belong to criminals.

Now one could argue that this is a dumb idea, and not worth the cost.

For my part, I see little difference between registering handguns and registering long arms. They are both devices designed to kill the target you are aiming at, and they both have non-lethal sporting uses. Why the distinction?

Cost overruns:
From what I can tell (based off some slightly insider knowledge), one large reason why the costs ballooned was a bunch of poor amendments tacked onto the bill that ended up causing huge implementation difficulties. The data in the long arm registry had to be secret, shared nationally by police, yet completely seperate from any other network that the police used. This required building a national physically secure network. Then the first attempt (or two) failed to work because of the scale of the problem.

We had politicians designing the specs for an IT network.

03-20-2006, 06:36 PM	#18 (permalink)
Yakk Wehret Den Anfängen! Location: Ontario, Canada	A theoretical benefit from a gun registry: If a criminal registers her firearm, then you might be able to track a firearm to the criminal when it is used. If a criminal does not register her firearm, then you can put the criminal in jail if you catch them with an unregistered firearm. At the least, the gun can be taken away from the criminal. Practically, this would require a constant ramping up of the punishment for owning an unregistered firearm. From a fine to an eventual jail sentence for owning an unregistered firearm as a larger and larger percentage of the unregistered firearms belong to criminals. Now one could argue that this is a dumb idea, and not worth the cost. For my part, I see little difference between registering handguns and registering long arms. They are both devices designed to kill the target you are aiming at, and they both have non-lethal sporting uses. Why the distinction? Cost overruns: From what I can tell (based off some slightly insider knowledge), one large reason why the costs ballooned was a bunch of poor amendments tacked onto the bill that ended up causing huge implementation difficulties. The data in the long arm registry had to be secret, shared nationally by police, yet completely seperate from any other network that the police used. This required building a national physically secure network. Then the first attempt (or two) failed to work because of the scale of the problem. We had politicians designing the specs for an IT network. __________________ Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.