On Thursday, January 31, 2013 6:26:44 PM UTC-5, Delvin Benet wrote:
On 1/31/2013 2:48 PM, rangerssuck wrote:

On Thursday, January 31, 2013 5:16:56 PM UTC-5, Ed Huntress wrote:

Sorry, Chris, that this is a mess. I'm rusty and I messed it up.



Hey, Ed -



Welcome back. I *thought* this might draw you out from under your rock. Thanks for responding to Chris - even at your rustiest, your writing is very well thought out and to the point.



What you said about registration is exactly what I meant. If you can't keep track of the guns, how can you know how they are getting into the hands of the criminals? I fail to see how this places any restrictions on any law-abiding person to bear arms.



You *don't* know how the guns got into the hands of the bad guys, even

*with* registration. You don't know if it was stolen, borrowed, sold

outside dealer channels, or anything else. Besides, a gun first has to

be recovered from a criminal, but frequently they aren't - if the gun is

stolen, it will often be simply discarded or passed on to some other

criminal.



The only rationale you've given for registration is unsound.

What you DO know (with registration) is who the last registered owner was. If he loaned it to someone, it would still be his property and his responsibility. If it was stolen, it would be the owners responsibility to report it as such. If it was sold outside dealer channels, well, isn't that EXACTLY what we're talking about? The registration would have to be transferred, just as it is for a motor vehicle. What's so difficult about that?

Guns are frequently not recovered from criminals, but they sometimes are. It is, with the NRA's help damn near impossible to trace those guns back to determine how they got into the hands of the criminals. A registration mechanism would help with that. Obviously, it's not going to eliminate all crime, but it's a significant step in the right direction.]

As Ed said, registration has been a FACT in New Jersey for many years. Nobody - neither Republican nor Democrat - is going door-to-door confiscating firearms.