Nevertheless, the precedent exists. That Canada hasn't taken registration to the next level is admirable. Three American cities have, after (in New York's case) explicitly promising that they would never use registration lists for confiscation. The most vocal advocates for registration happen to be the most vocal advocates for gun prohibition. It is, as I said, perfectly possible to have registration, to have very strict gun control, without outlawing the private ownership of a single type of gun, but I think we have a very good reason not to trust the good intentions of the American gun control movement.Darth Wong wrote:It is a slippery slope nonetheless. Canada has had extremely strict gun regulation for decades, with no confiscation anywhere in sight. And the fact that some extremists on the other side think something does not mean that it will actually happen. NRA extremists such as Shep think that private individuals should be able to own fucking rocket launchers.
I was addressing Stormbinger's point, "Why shouldn't all gun sales be documented". Later I moved on to the specific topic of the gun show loophole.You and Shep have gone from "closing the gun show loophole" to "gun registration" to "total gun confiscation". Perhaps you will mention the Nazis next? I find it's usually only a dozen posts or so before someone does.
If anyone else wants to mention the Nazis, they can feel free.
I should have strengthened my argument in my initial post. As I said in my reply to Stormbringer, if you could prove registration would reduce crime rates or make crimes easier to solve, then registration would make sense in spite of the risk of abuse, and also in spite of the costs of either creating a new bureaucracy to administer it or expanding the missions of existing agencies. But the majority of gun crime in this country--and everywhere else, for that matter--is committed with illegally owned weapons. Gun registration, like car registration, could make it easier to track down stolen firearms, but it's much easier to conceal and transport a stolen gun than a stolen car, and the majority of stolen cars are never tracked down, either. This isn't a matter of trading liberty for secutiry--it's trading liberty for the illusion of security.You are conjoining the notion of rejecting a slippery slope fallacy and blindly trusting gun-control advocates to have complete unfettered control of national policy and not abuse it. That is yet another fallacy. Is there some allergy to basic logic which is universal to the anti-registration people? If you want to find a problem with registration, fine. I think there are legitimate arguments to be made, but NOT when you resort to the stupidity of the slippery slope. Is that the ONLY thing you can find wrong with the scheme? Is your imagination that limited?
Part of the fear about registration, the one that leads to the slippery slope argument (besides precedent), is the widespread knowledge that once a right is lost, it generally never comes back (the only example I can think of a major right being taken away and then given back is the right to drink alcohol, and it took more than a decade of what amounted to nationwide civil disobedience and gang warfare to do it). It's not a matter of "gun control advocates having complete unfettered control over national policy". It's knowing that one maniac shooting up a McDonald's could prompt a hysterical public and opportunistic legislators to outlaw private ownership (which is precisely what happened in England and Australia). It's more likely than not that it will never be legal to own a firearm in England ever again (save for liscensed collectors and sport shooters).
It's outlawing the selling of a certain type of private property without a liscense. That's restricting property rights. You might think it's justified, the same way it's justified that I'm not allowed to open a whorehouse in my garage, but nevertheless, it is a restriction. I never argued anything more than that. In case it's not been made clear in some of my other posts on this board, I'm not inclined to favor property rights restrictions without a good reason, and I don't feel that closing the gun show loophole constitutes a good reason.No, it would only make it illegal to sell certain types of products without a government license. Do not engage in yet another slippery slope.
(Note that I'm not aruging that one ought to be able to be a gun dealer without a liscense, just in case that was the impression.)
See my first reply to Stormbringer. The gun shows are doing it for insurance reasons. It's perfectly within their rights to do so, just like it would be within their rights to toss out the unliscensed sellers to protect the sales of the liscensed sellers, because they want a cut of all revenue and they can't track unliscensed gun sales, or because they don't like the color of the unliscensed sellers' socks. There's a difference between the shows banning unliscensed sales and the government doing it--the former are exercising their rights, the latter is restricting others'.Then it won't make a difference, will it? So what's the big deal?At any rate, using Federal legislation to close this "loophole" is equivilant to using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. Most sellers are liscensed, and most shows are kicking out the unliscensed sellers, and most crimes are committed with illegal handguns anyway.
