Criminals will not register anyways.
I dont think the fear of possessing an unregistered gun by a felon already prohibited form owning it in the first place is what will suddenly bring about compliance by the adding of one more law.
Presently, a gun is sold and it is lost in society. If the gun ever shows up connected to a crime and they trace the person who purchased the gun, the person just says they sold it and they don't even have to know who they sold it to. The system is designed to put guns in the hands of criminals. If all guns require registration, then unregistered guns can be confiscated. The cops in NYC were profiling people they suspected to have guns and would stop and search them. That is what caused the homicide rate to decline so much.
Criminals run foul of the law and opportunities come to search their residences. The supply of guns in the hands of criminals would decline and only a criminal who could pass a background check could buy a gun. If he uses the gun, the ballistics test can trace it to him. If a burglar steals a gun and sells it to someone who will rat him out, the burglar gets a trafficing charge, so he's going to jail for awhile. It isn't like the old days when a criminal can find a crack whore who can pass a background check, go to a gun show and buy all the weapons he wants. The weapons can't be sold or given away without getting a background check on the buyer/new owner. Every year the guns have to have their registration renewed and a ballistics test sent to the FBI.
The one thing you left out of your commentary was that criminals who could not pass a background check would not be able to buy guns
legally. Do not be so naive to think they would not be able to buy guns. It is completely illegal for us to sell guns to members of the Mexican drug cartels and Mexico has some of the toughest gun laws anywhere in the world including all that our President wants plus a whole lot more restrictions and rules. And yet the drug cartels have no problem whatsoever acquiring however many guns, including so called fully automatic assault rifles, they want. Mexico's gun death ratio per capita is two and half times more than ours.
Making recrational addictive drugs illegal has not kept them off the street and/or inaccessible to anybody determined to have them.
When you ban something that is important to people, invariably a lucrative black market will be put into place to furnish the product illegally. But legal or illegal, it will still be available.
You've only caught part of what I said. All guns in the country require renewing the registration each year and they can only be sold with a background check on the buyer. Guns purchased at a gun show are sent to a place near your residence where you get your registrations renewed. A gun shop would be the best choice. Since you have passed your background check, you can pick that weapon up after a cooling off period. If it's a new weapon, the ballistics test may have been done at the manufacturers, but every registered gun in the country has the ballistics examination of it's bullets in an FBI data base. Unregistered weapons are confiscated and the possessor is fined/jailed and loses his ability to pass a background check for a period of time determined by the case. To make it easy on the person owning multiple guns, they can all have their registration renewed at the same time each year or in more than a single visit, if the person chooses. The fees would be minor, but they would be a steady stream of income for a gun store. Photos are also taken during renewal and registrations.
It boils down to, we aren't going to be supplying the Mexican Drug Cartel with weapons from our gun shows and stores and we aren't going to be supplying street gangs. Patterns of trafficing are going to be easy to spot and people are going to have to answer to a gun going missing at the registration renewal time. These times would be spread throughout the year, so an initial purchase would require renewal in less than a year. The information of the buyer and background check is kept on file and isn't destroyed like it is now, within 24 hours. Every weapon leaving a manufacturer is registered to someone, even if it's the owner of the gun store and there are ballistic tests on file.
I can add more, but I think you get the picture. Every tool will be used to assist law enforcement and stop illegal trafficing of firearms. The inventory of any gun store is known. A serial number can be instantly traced from manufacturer to where it was sold, who bought it and their picture.
As unregistered firearms fade from the streets, it's not going to be smart to shoot someone without good reason. Cops in our cities are going to be on the lookout for people suspected of carrying weapons to remove them from their streets. Under a system like that, people could have weapons such as assault weapons and if society thought it was becoming a problem, they could make them Title II weapons, which people are still allowed to buy. The manufacturers have lists of guns sold in this country, so a good idea of how many weapons haven't been registered can be made. Yes, some are destroyed and some are exported, but there is information there useful for law enforcement.
As far as the drug problems go, it probably needs it's own thread. I've heard the arguments and I think the best solution is for the world to stand up to countries exporting drugs and stop it at the source. If that happened, Mexico would return to the jolly country it used to be.
