Gun Control That Kind Of Works

I’m a constitutional purist myself. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” strikes me as fairly unambiguous. I have two close friends who gave their lives for that document. I feel that we should take it seriously as a result.

Willsworld

The problem is that many of our countrymen are not terribly durable these days. Decades of plenty and excess have rendered us soft. With distressing frequency, folks grow ever more willing to give up rights and freedoms in exchange for a pyrrhic false sense of security.

In my world, firearms would be available cash-and-carry most anywhere in the country. If I were King, you could order a belt-fed machinegun over the Internet. Now take a deep breath and appreciate the world in which we do currently live.

Ballistic Reality

We 340 million corn-fed Americans already own half a billion serviceable firearms. That admittedly astronomical number climbs with each passing day. Let’s put that in perspective.

A GLOCK 17 is about eight inches long. An AR-15 with a 16-inch barrel and collapsible stock is about 33 inches. Some guns are longer. Others are shorter. However, if we take these two weapons as representative examples, that would imply that the average gun is about 20 inches long.

If you took every operational firearm in the United States of America and placed them muzzle to butt, that unbroken line of guns would circle the globe six and a half times. We are indeed one heavily-armed mob of rednecks. A determined criminal in America can already readily source absolutely anything his shriveled black heart desires. Gun laws clearly only affect the good guys, so why bother, really?

You might talk me into reasonable age limits. However, even then, you’d have to make a fairly compelling argument. If 18 is old enough to fight for your country, it is also old enough to own any imaginable firearm, at least in my awesome liberty-loving world.

There are around 20,000 gun laws currently on the books. And this is despite that pesky “Shall not be infringed” verbiage. Modern-day Americans have become remarkably adroit at ignoring the obvious fundamental tenets of the U.S. Constitution.

While I still fundamentally disagree with it, the current system of nationwide federal firearms dealers is an admittedly elegant way to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights while tapping the brakes just a hair. Thinking folk rightfully fear a national gun registry. The only reason to maintain a gun registry is future confiscation. Lawmakers once actually appreciated that fact.

Gun History

Back in 1968, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed, the Gun Control Act. This was the second major piece of gun control legislation in America. The first was the 1934 National Firearms Act that unconstitutionally regulated such stuff as machine guns, sound suppressors, and short-barreled weapons. Pistol stabilizing braces and forced reset triggers have rendered most of that obsolete, but we are still coping with the fallout from that fetid piece of legislative offal even today.

Prior to 1968, firearms need not be equipped with serial numbers. They could also be bought pretty much anywhere, including through the mail. It was by this means that Lee Harvey Oswald obtained the GI-surplus 6.5x52mm Carcano Model 38 bolt-action rifle he used to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

Don’t get too hung up on that. Had Oswald lived today, he would not have been unduly challenged sourcing his iron. Regardless, in response to this egregious crime, Congress determined that something simply must be done. That something was the 1968 GCA.

Particulars

The Gun Control Act established and expanded the definition of a prohibited person who could not lawfully purchase a firearm. It banned the interstate sale of firearms and ammunition between individuals. The GCA mandated that all operational firearms be equipped with serial numbers. It also established some onerous restrictions on the importation of small concealable handguns while adding “Destructive Devices” like hand grenades and mortars to the NFA. The GCA outlawed straw purchasers and established the current framework of Federal Firearms Licenses. Once again, all that stuff only applies to those of us who choose to obey the law.

I think we’d be better off without any of that. However, the FFL system is at the very least intriguing. I have maintained an FFL myself for the better part of 20 years. Many people don’t understand how that actually works.

A Registry Without a Registry … Sort-Of

In the free states at least, there really is no gun registry per se. When you buy a firearm at a dealer and fill out the Form 4473, the dealer retains the form, but it doesn’t actually go anywhere else. In theory, if that gun is later recovered from a crime scene, law enforcement officers can use the make and serial number to track it back to the manufacturer, who then identifies the distributor. From there, the gun is traced to an individual dealer. The dealer then roots around in his stash of old 4473s and presents the form to the investigating BATF official.

The system is cumbersome and inefficient. It also doesn’t solve many crimes. However, it transforms the nation’s collected individual firearms dealers into a de facto coast-to-coast registry of sorts. That’s not the way I’d do it, but it is an admittedly elegant solution.

When you give up your license, those 4473s end up with the government. While they aren’t supposed to, it would not surprise me at all to find that BATF digitizes all of those things just in case they feel they might need them later. However, the current system of Federal Firearms Licensees really does at least sort of pay lip service to the right to keep and bear arms.

So, the next time some keyboard commando claims that buying a gun at your local gun shop puts him on some kind of list, gently point out that this is not technically the case. That information goes no further than the local shop. Use that gun in a crime, and Uncle Sam gets all up into your business. However, normal folks like us remain relatively anonymous. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it could certainly be worse.

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