"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

A solution that also generates a revenue stream is obvious.

License all fire arms that get renewed annualy, much like hunting
licenses.

License renewal could be as low as $25/yr/weapon; however, failure to
renew would be a $5K fine and 6 months in jail.

Every body gets to keep their pacifiers and a few $ get generated to pay
for weapons investigation related issues.

Great plan, just have to get that pesky Constitution out of the way first.
Oh sure, people will raise the example of New Zealand where a law requiring
periodic license renewals (with fees) resulted in what the authorities there
dryly described as "poor compliance". They even admitted that the majority
of guns used by criminals were illegally owned and that the pool of weapons
available to the criminal community was refreshed by illegally imported
weapons--gosh, who could have foreseen that? And then there is Canada,
where license and registration fees would make the system
self-financing--well, unless you count the umpteen million taxpayer dollars
poured in trying to make a badly broken system function. The govt. said it
would cost $119 million to set up a registration system, almost all paid by
fees. The actual cost has topped a billion dollars only a tenth of which
was covered by fees, and the system is still a mess. And then it came out
that the govt. hired a lobbyist to lobby the govt. for more money for the
registration system--it's like Alice In Wonderland....