Pardon me if this is obvious and I somehow missed it, but: In all the recent talk about guns in the past few weeks (and especially in the past few days), two themes have come up repeatedly and have met with rather fierce opposition from the NRA. They are 1) universal background checks and 2) gun registration.

The only objections I have heard to either of those proposals is that the "bad guys" won't follow the rules and will have their guns anyway, and that neither of those proposals would have prevented the Newtown shootings.

Perhaps that is all true, but I heard this morning that, in cases where background checks were performed, some not-insignificant number of applicants were denied a permit because of prior criminal activity. OK, that doesn't get all the guns out of the hands of all the criminals, but it's at least preventing some more guns from getting in the hands of some more criminals.

I also don't see a problem with registration. Being able to trace the ownership of a weapon from the time of its manufacture doesn't seem to me to be a bad thing. At worst, it's a bit of paperwork. At best, it can help track how a gun got into the hands of a criminal.

So, other than "it wouldn't stop bad guys from breaking the rules" and "it wouldn't have prevented Newtown" (and, I might as well throw in the inevitable jabs at me for being a gun-grabbing liberal), what are the objections to these two measures? How do you, as presumably law-abiding gun owners, see these actions affecting you personally?

And please, let's try to keep this civil.

Just askin'