Reply #52: Start with the core fallacy that any regulation is an attempt at a total ban. [View All]

[DirkGently]

And the notion that registration is only to "tax 'em or take 'em."

The ATF, which the NRA consistently propagandizes as a group of "jackbooted thugs," has been eviscerated by NRA money and NRA lies. Apparently the Second Amendment also means that law enforcement must be prevented from even effectively tracing weapons sold illegally. Pro Publica reported recently that some 60,000 American long guns made their way to the Mexican drug wars, but, thanks to the NRA, we can't even determine which gun shops are selling them, because the NRA (dishonestly) equates registration with confiscation and blocks it.

For decades, the National Rifle Association has lobbied successfully to block all attempts at such computerization, arguing against any national registry of firearm ownership.

"Those who wonder what motivates American gun owners should understand that perhaps only one word in the English language so boils their blood as 'registration,' and that word is 'confiscation,' " according to an NRA fact sheet.


I was absolutely appalled and depressed at what they are going through out there," Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, told ATF officials at a hearing this year. "Literally you see pallets of these records come in, and they're just absolutely overwhelmed."

ATF employees, many of them hunkered over folding tables, go through a tedious process of sorting, stacking, cataloguing and deciphering. From the boxes, they pull out gun-sales records on ink-smeared, yellowed index cards and dog-eared ledger books filled with faded pencil. If they are lucky, they find 4473s written in clear, legible handwriting. Inside the dealer's boxes, workers sometimes find ammunition, the odd gun part - or rat feces. Some records have languished in attics for decades. Others have been underwater.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823_2.html


editted for speling.