> Hiya, Kelley,
>
> >gun control will demand this stupe registration of guns firstly. and that
> >kind of crap will follow. not the nazi dissolution into madnesss, but
> >this peculiarly foucauldian/althusserian one.
>
> Better abolish dog and car registration while you're at it. Never know
> WHAT sorta foucauldian/althusseriann hole they could drop you into.
The US has Federal dog and car registration? Uh oh, I'm not in compliance. Please pass along the numbers for the Federal Bureau of Pets and the Federal Bureau of Automobiles because I can't seem to find them in the phone book.
Ask the good people of California what happens when your government asks you to register your guns (SKS rifles) and promises this registration will never result in confiscation.
And finally, criminals, being criminals, won't register their guns. And the Supreme Court in US v. Haynes (1968) says criminals don't have to register their guns anyway, because that would be self-incrimination:
"We hold that a proper claim of the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination provides a full defense to prosecutions either for failure to register a firearm under sec.5841 or for possession of an unregistered firearm under sec.5851."
The relevant case was about a short-barreled shotgun, which falls into the category of weapons that already require registration with the BATF (automatics, non black-powder calibres larger than .50, short barreled rifles/shotguns, destructive devices). Under this decision a criminal (convicted felon) who is breaking the law by having the gun couldn't be charged with not registering it, since trying to register it would be self-incrimination. The only people who could be charged with failure to register their guns would be people who haven't been convicted of a crime.
There has been legislature introduced (S.2099) that would add handguns into the class of weapons listed above: the one covered by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Too bad the only people that would register, and the only people that could be required to register, their handguns would be people that aren't going to use them for crime.
But these are facts, and facts have no place in the gun control debate. Because if it saves just one child....
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence.
-4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969