Gun Registration

Heres’s a bulletin: some Chicagoland Democrats look upon gun owners as scary, deplorable people. As such, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that here in the Land o’ Lincoln, we have gun owner registration. In other deep blue states, those same Democrats have passed legislation to register particularly scary types of guns. Especially those frightening modern sporting rifles sometimes referred to as police patrol rifles.

In reality, we all know that registration lists don’t prevent (or even solve) crimes. We also understand that registration lists too frequently become confiscation lists, as government agents come to collect those guns – by force if necessary.  If anyone doubts this, just look to California.

In a perfect world, gun registration – and gun owner registration – would never survive court scrutiny and be ruled unconstitutional. However, we don’t live in a perfect world. The Schumer wing of the Democrat party hates guns, gun owners and the part of the Constitution that impedes them. At the same time, of course, many of these same elitist politicians love their armed protective details.

To keep government agents from showing up at their door at un-Christian hours, some gun owners simply skip registration. Yes, this carries risks, but it also brings a certain peace of mind. I personally know of people who ignore gun owner registration in Illinois. Yes, that prevents them from getting a concealed carry license here. Then again, these same people have ignored prohibitions on concealed carry for decades without issue. “Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six,” they say.

Non-compliance runs far more common in states with gun registration laws. An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers simply ignored Governor Andrew Cuomo’s SAFE Act and refused to register their guns. NPR and many other news outlets have reported on the rampant non-compliance. Connecticut and California gun owners feel much the same way about inclusion on government lists.

California’s new laws give gun owners three choices on what to do with their freshly outlawed self-defense tools. They can surrender their guns – without compensation – to police. Alternately, they can sell them to a dealer or ship them out of state. The Golden State’s too-smart-by-half legislature seems to discount the possibility that gun owners will forgo the fourth, unwritten choice as articulated by the Sacramento Bee; “Keep your mouth shut and keep your magazines stashed.”

The question for the Armed Intelligentsia:  Do you know people who have explored this unwritten alternative option to state-mandated gun registration schemes? Tip for the day: don’t self-incriminate.

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71 COMMENTS

  1. Who’s going to admit to a crime, or knowledge of someone committing a crime, on a public blog? Stupid people?

    • Happens quite frequently. Along with folks that will detail their legal firearms collection, security setups and willingness to shoot in self-defense. Mind boggling, really…to an OPSEC dude such as myself.

      • What fight club? I know of no fight club!

        “I’m not supposed to dispense with any knowledge nor would I disperse with such if even if I were able.”

    • You can anonymously “admit” to knowing people who commit crimes all you want. It doesn’t inculpate you unless you’re an accessory.

      Folks, chill with the OMG OPSEC crap. You’re not spec ops. You’re not Jason Bourne. You’re some rando commenting on the internet. Insert Jurassic Park “See? No one cares.” meme here.

      As for me, I don’t know anyone, but that’s because I don’t care and don’t go around asking people I know if they have any unregistered guns. Given the laws here there’s probably someone I know who has an unregistered “assault weapon” (oooooh scary!).

      • Tell that to George Zimmerman, Brother.

        BTW, OPSEC to me means keep my shit to myself and off the Internets, not that I’m Jason Bourne or Special Ops. Do you move the goal posts frequently?

        • But you’re not off the net. You come to the most popular, and no doubt most monitored gun blog going to post your comments.

          That puts you, along with me and Hannibal, squarely in the list of gun owners needing to go on a list.

          Just your presence here is enough to violate your opsec.

          Unless, of course, you don’t believe in the big bad tyrannical .gov.

        • I agree. Though I just leave random unmemorable bullshit comments. Nothing a deep state anti-gunner would single me out for. Like the IRS and conservatives. Though I haven’t been shy about my Trump support…hmmm.

  2. If you do and you know you do, they suck at keeping secrets.

    If you do and you say so, you suck at keeping secrets.

    As it is, this article sucks at not sucking. Why would anyone with half a brain go blabbing around about what they may or may not know about who’s breaking stupid laws?

  3. I don’t personally have anecdotes, but I do know that when the Long Gun Registry was abandoned in Canada a whole lot of guns magically appeared. If the Liberal government wants to add more registration or prohibitions in future I suspect we will see a great deal of magical vanishing as well.

  4. I live in NC so that isn’t really a problem here. While I don’t know any “scofflaws” personally, I wholeheartedly lend them my moral support.

  6. How are Californians not winning seemingly easy ex post facto lawsuits? It seems the easiest way to get the standard capacity mag ban overturned would be to have someone who bought it legally go out and get arrested for it. Then win a lawsuit not even using the 2A as their defense but ex post facto as their defense.

    • I lived in California for 12 years. I can tell you with absolute certainty that in California that is a law suite you would loose. You and I both know that ex post facto law does not stand constitutional muster. The problem is that never stopped the political machine in California. I live in North Carolina now. I bet you can guess why.

    • A number of lawsuits have been filed, it will take a while for them to make their way through the system.

      • And if the state loses, they’ll just tweak the law and re-legislate it so that it restarts the legal clock.

        …the California way.

    • it’s not ex post facto. The State, using it’s police power, has declared the items to be contraband. The only thing they have to do to meet constitutional muster to avoid the ex post facto clause is to give some means for those currently in possession of contraband a way to dispose of their contraband in exchange for immunity.

    • It has a lot to do with the fact that these new laws are not “ex post facto” laws. So there goes the defense. An ex post facto law is one that criminalizes, after the fact, conduct that was legal when it was performed. For example, you consume a drug in year one which was legal at that time. In year three, the State makes consumption of that drug illegal at the time you consumed it two years earlier. That would violate the rule. However, if the law merely criminalizes the consumption of that drug in year three and thereafter, the rule is not violated. So it was legal to possess thirty round mags in the past; the new law does not make your possession then illegal, it makes your continued possession now illegal. This does not violate the rule. The same for MSRs. The configuration with a bullet button was legal and not a banned “assault weapon” until 1/1/17; now it is illegal unless the firearms is registered, sold, or converted to featureless. you are not prosecuted for owning a gun in 2016 with a BB, only for possessing it now without registering it by 1/1/2018. (There is a year grace period.)

      • I see.
        So the Federal rule that says if you were convicted of a Domestic Violence charge at any time, you are a “prohibited person.”
        Even if convicted before the “Gun Ban for Individuals Convicted of a Misdemeanor Crime of Domestic Violence” went into effect.
        That’s an ex post facto law if there ever was one, because it prescribes a punishment for behavior committed before the act went into effect.
        No possible way for the ‘victim’ of the law to surrender the conviction, or give it away, or ship it out of the country.
        Our legislators at work.

  7. Scofflaws?

    Like cops texting while driving?

    Like Senator Barney Frank housing a brothel.

    Like Hillary having an illegal server in her closet?

    Like . . .

  8. Bubba, the GOP sold off the internet to the highest bidder so there is no privacy. Who is going to answer this question now? Hell even before it would be dumb to answer as L/S/FLEOs are all over the internet waiting for some dumb Bubba to incriminate hisself.

    • Admitting to having something like child porn? Yeah, you might get someone interested in your crimes. Saying that you know SOMEONE ELSE who has an unregistered gun without providing their name, jurisdiction, or other information?

      lol. You greatly overestimate the resources of law enforcement and how much they care about what random anonymous people say on the internet.

  12. I have found that, generally speaking, lots of people ignore a variety of laws on a myriad of topics.

    Of course, I’ve never been one of them. Pure as the driven snow, I am.

  13. I’ve heard of cops in NJ that don’t follow the laws when it comes to firearms. They kind of think that they can get away with stuff. Well I guess they can.

  14. I see you archived that old woodpecker’s picture, the one holding the “evil” black gun, lol

  15. Maybe the “question of the day” posts don’t have to be every day. Some days, you just don’t have anything interesting or intelligent to ask. That’s when we get posts like this one.

  16. The US government ignores the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. Does that count?

  17. In CT, all guns which were purchased (from retail at least) in the last few decades were ALREADY registered, at both the state and town levels. So if you owned an MSR which was already registered, it would be pretty risky not to comply with the “double registration” requirement, since there was always a chance that the State might comb its records and start knocking on doors. And since the guns were already registered, registering them again (this time on the scary gun list) doesn’t really make much difference.

    Now if you had an MSR which was never in the system in the first place, the calculus might be somewhat different.

  18. “I personally know of people who ignore gun owner registration in Illinois.”

    That’s not hard to do if you never actually shoot guns. But since you can’t buy ammo in Illinois (or get it shipped to you from reputable vendors) without a FOID card, it gets difficult pretty quick unless you’re close to a state line and cross the border to replenish your ammo inventory.

    • You can have a FOID card while not owning anything. My wife has one…and how is a firearms owner ID registration? Does Illinois get notified when I buy a rifle or shotgun in Indiana? Or ammo???

      • They may be referring to the fact that transfers go through FFLs which go through the ISP for the 4473 check. I don’t think anything specific about a firearm is transmitted though and there’s no guarantee that the transfer actually occurred, I don’t see IL’s process as any different that any other State’s that requires a 4473 check for every transfer. Maybe I’m wrong now that I’m a FL resident and no longer an IL resident. I’m sure the ISP knows you likely own a gun if you possess a CCL or FOID. I’d hate to have a pile of guns and get caught without a FOID if I lived in IL. One person out to seek revenge could land you in pretty hot water by squealing to the authorities. And why have a gun if you can’t shoot it?

        • You’re NOT wrong. And giving ISP way too much credit. Everyone who uses a 4473 is “known”…

        • California requires all transfers to be done by an FFL, and further requires a DROS (dealer record of sale) be submitted that identifies the firearm by make, model and serial number. However, the requirement for a DROS on rifles and shotguns is only a few years old, so most long guns are not “registered” with the state, and handguns transferred prior to the registration law are often not registered either. Moreover, California does not purge an original transfer based on a subsequent transfer, so there could easily be two or more “registered owners” of any given handgun.

      • To clarify Mr. Boch’s original statement, Illinois does not have a gun registry, but it has a gun OWNER registry, a.k.a. FOID card. Common sense tells them that you wouldn’t spend the money to get that card and renew it every 10 years if you didn’t have guns. I’m sure there are plenty of gun owners’ spouses who have the card in case they happen to get stopped in a vehicle and hubby had left a gun in it or something.

        Point is, if they decide to come after the guns, they know where to look. Not much different from the position the Jews were in, in Nazi Germany.

      • You ask, “and how is a firearms owner ID registration?”
        What do you think it is – a Christmas card list?
        Of course it’s registration. It’s registration of the person as, at the very least, a potential gun owner, and usually of an actual gun owner. While it doesn’t make any mention of any specific guns, it certainly brands the holder of such an ID as a possible target if (when) guns are outlawed.
        House to house searches? Not likely. But when you die (and the state knows when you die) your will WILL go through probate, and any firearms will belong to the state. If someone rats you out (for a nice reward, of course), you will be picked up while you are out doing something away from home, and “questioned.”
        Person registration, when it goes to a certain type of behavior (like gun ownership) is an obvious result of paranoia on the part of the state. When person registration doesn’t do the trick, then further registrations are necessary; this time of things, like guns and magazines. Then of ammo purchases because the former registrations didn’t work.
        Our legislators at work.

  19. > In a perfect world, gun registration – and gun owner registration – would never survive court scrutiny and be ruled unconstitutional.

    So in a world where the country and its citizens actually obeyed their own laws? Isn’t that the left’s dream of a utopia in the first place?

    So if everyone obeyed the laws “prohibiting” violence and murder than it stands to reason that guns shouldn’t be scary because they’d never be used in any of the crimes that aren’t being committed

  20. This is truly one of the dumbest questions asked on this blog. Why would people self incriminate themselves or their friends?

    • “Why would people self incriminate themselves or their friends?”
      Good question.
      Good answer: Because a lot of people are just too stupid to be allowed to walk around without supervision.
      I know you’ve seen reports of people identified as perps because of their posts to social media bragging about their actions, even showing off their ill-gotten goods. These people are just too stupid for words. They would get less coverage of their actions if they went to the corner of Hollywood and Vine and shouted out that they had committed crimes.

  21. I’ve heard of people checking to see if handguns they sold years ago were re- registered in the new owner’s name here in Michigan, only to find that they had not. I don’t know if this is a failure of our registration system, or if the secondhand owners are failing to turn in their registration cards.

  22. I know of quite a few “gun scofflaws” in legislatures and administrations, from city to UN ( who think they are the world government.) Conveniently, they promote the fact … the shouldn’t be hard to find if any enterprising public prosecutor wants to take that up.

  23. I live in California, but I plan to move to a state governed by the sane in the future.

    I will comply with all the laws these folks who despise the legal residents pass.
    Why?
    Because a firearms violation bust here will affect my rights when I move in my new state.

  26. As a gunsmith, a lot of unknowing scoff laws bring things in that are less than legal and are quite suprised when they are told about it. In theory at least, I’ve seen a few unregistered NFA items, most of which were inherited, putting the new owner in a sticky spot.

  28. “California’s new laws give gun owners three choices on what to do with their freshly outlawed self-defense tools. They can surrender their guns – without compensation – to police. Alternately, they can sell them to a dealer or ship them out of state. The Golden State’s too-smart-by-half legislature seems to discount the possibility that gun owners will forgo the fourth, unwritten choice as articulated by the Sacramento Bee; “Keep your mouth shut and keep your magazines stashed.”

    I don’t know where you got this little gem, but it is definitely dead bang WRONG. You’ve mixed up a few things. California recently banned bullet buttons—going forward–and has mandated that owners of previously legal bullet button firearms do one of three things: 1. register the firearms with the state as an “assault weapon” (under regulations that have yet to be issued) by 12/31/17. [The practical consequence of registration is to render the gun nontransferrable in the State, such that it must be sold out of state or given to the state for destruction on the death of the owner.]; or 2. convert the gun to a “featureless” configuration, which means the gun is no longer an assault weapon and no longer subject to mandatory registration; or 3. transfer the nonconforming firearm out of state.

    California ALSO passed a law banning currently possessed 10+ round mags that had been grandfathered under prior law in 2000. Owners of such mags may turn them in to the police for destruction, sell them to an FFL who has the proper license for sale out of state, or take them out of state and sell/transfer them. (I have read that advertising them for sale even strictly for out of state sale may violate the law.)

  29. I imagine some people do not understand the law and will do as they always had. I told an old timer at a Halloween party that the revolver he had on his side was not legal to carry that way and he should put it in that trunk on his way home. His know it all wife said that loaded open carry is legal in Ca and he would not do that.

    It was a good thing he wasn’t stopped or had to get gas or something on the way home, because he would be looking at signing into the greybar hotel for the night.

    All of us that have firearms need to pay attention to the new laws, if someone wants to ignore it, fine by me, but you should realize there could be consequences.

    • And just like that old timer, there will be any number of MSR owners who are oblivious to the new registration requirement. If they bought from an FFL, they think they are already registered, and would scoff at the suggestion they need to reregister. And then of course there are tens of thousands of 80% builds in this state, most of which will not be registered and will slip through the cracks unless some federal park ranger decides to inspect them to see if they’ve been serialized and registered. (It has happened in the past with rangers checking rifles for compliance with the BB law.)

  31. Living in NY, I don’t know anyone, personally. But I see plenty of non-compliant rifles at the range. I don’t ever ask but I doubt they’re all either (a) registered, (b ) cops, or (c) oblivious to the SAFE Act.

  32. I’m not trying to be obtuse but I can’t talk about that and I can’t talk about why.

  33. In “Her Majesty’s colony of New South Wales” in the rural areas it is not unknown for unlicensed users to use unregistered firearms. And ammunition can be purchased No-Questions-Asked from government agencies. Particularly common calibers such as .243, .270, .308, and .30-06.

    Which is funny when you consider the processes licensed firearm owners have to follow.

    I have heard this anecdotally from too many sources to completely discount.

  34. Prior to Ohio passing a state firearms preemption law, local ordinances for owner ID cards/registrations were largely ignored. However, that’s most likely because of ignorance rather than willful disobedience.

    About the only one I know that complied with the City of Dayton’s registration ordinance was a city council member. We learned of his registration because he was proud of the “assault weapon ban” he wrote until the local paper asked him how he had disposed of his Beretta 92. He was somewhat surprised to learn that he had banned his own pistol.

  36. I know people in Chiraq who BOTH supported the handgun ban AND illegally owned handguns.

    You don’t have to be stupid to be a Chicago Democrat, but it’s certainly not an impediment.

  38. Someone confessed to me that they had a 30-round magazine in a state where such “large capacity magazines” are illegal. I’m very forgetful of names, so I’m sure I won’t remember their name if asked. Also, I have no way of knowing whether that person still possesses the magazine, so I have no way of knowing if they are currently in compliance with their state’s laws. Maybe that “large capacity magazine” was lost in a tragic boating accident right after they told me about it. After all, it seems there are an awful lot of boating accidents happening in AWB states!
    I’m guessing California is having more boating accidents this year than ever before!

  39. Years ago when I lived in Maine, the late annual Hiram Maxim machine gun festival was a wonderful demonstration of the disregard that otherwise law-abiding citizens have for the BATF by shooting their home-made/modified submachine guns, improvised explosives and anti-aircraft guns. Hundreds of free-thinkers exercising their rights (as the Founders envisioned them) and demonstrating their ingenuity and engineering skills along with their disdain for government control. These people freely allowed perfect strangers to fire these weapons for the cost of ammunition, all grinning wildly well into the night, lighting up the sky with tracers, incendiary and explosive rounds.

    The challenge of the day was answering polls that posed the question “would you register your SMGs and auto-pistols if the BATF opened up the machine gun registry?”, and the opposing answers offered in reply. I miss those days.

  40. Reminds me of something I read long ago. Way back at some point when Class III firearms were registered, at some point the Feds decided to have a one-year grace period when anyone owning an unregistered automatic firearm could register it without being charged with anything.

    At that time there were supposedly about 100,000 registered automatic firearms.

    During the grace period, ANOTHER 100,000 automatic firearms were registered.

    So we can assume that at LEAST ANOTHER 100,000 automatic firearms were and never will be registered. 🙂

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