Hmm, do you have any empirical evidence to support that? They already have a national registration database for motor vehicles, and I am yet to see any signs of massive confiscation for automobiles. Ditto for small businesses.
methinks, the uncompromising opposition ot any gun regulation rests, for the most part, in the fact gun in th ethis culture is a symbol of male ego and sexuality. i do not want to sound too freudian, but the fear of confiscation seems to be thinly sublimed fear of castration.
i do not mean to imply that these are the motives behind your position, jordan. your arguments seem quite measured and rational (even though i do not necessarily agree with all what you say).
instead, i posit that - as it has often been the case - male sexual fears became a part of popular mythology that is taken for granted without even realising its sexual origins. for example, hostility toward gay mean (but not lesbians) can easily be linked to male fear of being penetrated; ditto for witchhunting - a gruesome exorcism to fight the perceived and feared female powers.
guns - which incarnate the idea of ejaculation and bodily penetration -- are well suited for the primordial sybmolism of male power and sexuality. in other words, gun is the modern hierophany of male sexuality (in sociology of religion, hierophany is the term that denotes a special kind of symbol whose very physical shape represents, or rather incarnates the abstract property of the sacred, for a discussion see Mircea Eliade, _Patterns in Comparative Religion_, New York: New American Library, 1958).
the connection between gun and male sexuality in this culture is difficult to miss, especially when one visits a local video outlet. most covers show a male-female interaction with a gun prominently featuring as the main prop. some more popular flicks are even more graphic, showing for example defeated males forced to perfom fellatio on the barrel of the victorious male's gun.
the connection between sexual inadequacy (i.e. failed or failing intimate relationhip with a woman) and using a gun as a remedy is also difficult to miss. this was clearly a motive in the school shootings we saw during the past few years - when frustrated males used guns as a symbolic exorcism agains their apparent sexual failures. that connection would be even stronger when we examine the actual motives of many violent crimes, especially those that offer little or no material incentives.
to summarise, gun is not just a tool or weapon in this society, but a powerful symbol of male power and sexuality. i dare to add, the last bastion of such unrestrained power and sexuality, in the eyes of many. hence, the debate over gun ownership and gun control often lacks rationality, because it involves powerful emotions - the fear of emasculation on the one side, and the aversion toward male dominance on the other.
wojtek