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Several people have reported this and I’ve run across it myself: many people, (gun owners included) think there ALREADY is a national database of who owns what. After all when you buy a gun at a dealer you fill out all that information. It doesn’t seem ‘logical’ or efficient, (in fact it seems down right stupid) to take all that information and then NOT create such a database.
When the cops show up at a crime scene where there is a body and a gun you’d like the cops to be able to check the serial number on the gun and then cruise over and arrest the killer. Most LEOs will attest to the fact things don’t work like this in real life and Canada IIRC has given up on a national database of guns, serial numbers and owners just because it was ineffective.
IMhO most gun owners have quite a bit of common sense and realize that if universal background checks are implemented WITHOUT the database the checks are almost worthless. That is, you could sell a gun to a nut case bent on mass murder and the sale would go through just fine because the nut case doesn’t have a record because he hasn’t had a gun to commit the murders. After he’s killed some folk and the police recover the gun, without the database they don’t know who the owner is and can’t go get him. With the database they could. Once again, and I’ll let the LEOs say yea or nay to this, real crime doesn’t work this smoothly and again, IMhO a database is more of a threat to law abiding gun owners then it would be a help to law enforcement officials.
I thank the folk that have prevented this step, the database, from being created but it is such a small step to go from what we have to creating a database, and such a logical thing to do, I wonder if some slip, some late night amendment or some compromise might see its creation.
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