Bursting the
Registration Bubble
by Russ Howard
Russ.Howard@USA.net
Former NRA Director
Hate to burst the bubble, folks, but let's face it:
We already have registration, and NRA management supports it. The Clinton plan, by making registration official, extending it, and actually calling it registration, serves to conceal the fact that we already have it.
- We already have gun registration under the Gun Control Act of 1968,
supported
by Charlton Heston
& NRA management. Under GCA68, dealers who go out of business must turn over their lists to the government.
- GCA68 created a dangerous system of registration lists kept locally across the nation. The government knows the location of each of these lists, and they know who's responsible for them. Once the government decides to do so, it can simply go to the gun stores and confiscate or copy the lists, which to some extent it has already been doing. Who will stop them? Who will punish them? Sed quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?
- We have registration through NRA management's InstaCheck program. Is it really likely that the people who murdered Vicky & Sammy Weaver and 24 children at Waco and then covered up the evidence, who not only were never punished for it but arranged to give each other national standing ovations, who work for a government that practices a religion of secrecy, lies, oathbreaking, lawbreaking, and invasion of privacy - is it really likely that they're afraid to keep some stinking records? Get real. A prudent man must assume they're keeping the records already.
- NRA management refused to consider viable alternatives to InstaCheck whereby dealers could check backgrounds without the government knowing who's buying a gun, even after its Board of Directors - that great model of decisiveness, strength, intelligence, independence, and voluntarism - asked it to.
- We have registration through NRA management's "Shall Issue" concealed carry programs.
- NRA management has fought to quarantine Vermont carry in Vermont. Vermont carry does not involve registration.
NRA management refuses to back, and threatens to punish, legislators who introduce or support Vermont carry in other states.
Is this "great struggle" against registration yet another grand Beltway Kabuki, a good cop/bad cop play acted out on a national scale, choreographed to wow and pacify natives who've been stuck in NRA management's version of Plato's Cave for so long they've lost the ability to distinguish the play, in which they all have a part, from reality? What better way to help us avoid facing the painful truth that we already have registration, which our "leaders" signed off on, than to stage an epic battle where we "fight" and "kill" registration?
We now have an NRA management that holds joint press conferences with Jim & Sarah Brady to introduce laws promoting "zero tolerance full enforcement of existing gun controls", an NRA management that proudly promotes Soviet style snitch-on-your-neighbor billboards proclaiming "Report Illegal Guns. Call 1-800...", an NRA management that openly supports a law that provides for 10-year prison sentences for teachers who carry concealed to defend themselves and their students.
Meanwhile, NRA members continue to send money. Be sure to send yours so LaPierre, Beltway & Co. can keep their $20,000-a-month salaries, $15,000-a-month "expense" accounts, and who-knows-what other perks; so they can keep flushing your money over to anti-gun politicians and sweetheart vendors. In fact, it's time the "Winning" Team got another raise, don't you think? They sure do.
Registration is Dead!
Long Live Registration!
Russ Howard
