House Democrats’ Gun Control Unenforceable Without Firearm Registry

The gun control currently being pushed by House Democrats is unenforceable without a national firearm registry.

On January 8, 2019, Breitbart News reported that House Democrats introduced legislation to criminalize private gun sales. They are using universal background checks as a means of criminalizing the sales, and they do not mention such checks are unenforceable without firearm registration.

Instead, the Democrats keep talking of how their bill will “prevent” or reduce “gun violence.”

Politico quoted Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) saying:

Since the shooting at Sandy Hook, the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force has been fighting for a chance to pass legislation that will help save lives. Finally, with our new majority that ran on helping to prevent gun violence, we will introduce a bipartisan, universal background checks bill. We will hold hearings, we will have a vote, and this legislation will finally pass the House.

But the reality is that universal background checks open the door to a gun registry inasmuch as the government has to know every gun owners’ name and the guns he or she owns in order for the checks to work.

Think about it — universal background checks require that Americans get permission from the government before buying a gun in any setting, retail or private. This means the government knows every time a gun changes hands, and this includes knowing the name of the buyer and the seller, of the make and caliber of the gun, etc. But the only way the government can know these things is to know exactly who owns guns — and what guns he or she owns — at every moment of every day.

Breitbart News reported the relationship between universal background checks and gun registration on April 14, 2013, when the Democrats were pushing the checks as a response to the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School. Breitbart News noted that “The government has to know where every gun is in order to know that [one neighbor] is not selling a gun to [another] neighbor.”

House Democrats are not currently pushing a firearm registry, but without a complete knowledge of the location of all firearms, universal background checks simply will not work. So registration will have to be added down the road if universal background checks are passed now. And California’s example teaches us that confiscation will follow the establishment of universal checks and firearm registration.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange