I don't see the big deal with registering firearms...Where I live you have to wait 6 months just to get approved for a permit to buy a long gun (That I feel is extreme) but having an official record of who has what...that makes sense I know alot of people who want firearms...who I wouldn't even let hold one..I'm sure as many of the people on this forum know firearms are great responsibility, and just because somone can meet the basic requirements needed to drive to the closest walmart doesnt, that necesarily qualify them to have the scruples to know how to deal with a firearms as part of everyday life.
There are several problems with it.
1) As ashtxsniper pointed out, registration costs money. Even if it's free to the end user, it costs money to set up the bureaucratic engine to deal with all those registrations - tax dollars that come out of your pocket. It also gives cops yet another thing to have to deal with that doesn't actually involve a crime being committed, thus using up time that could otherwise be used stopping real crime.
If it's not free, you're basically making it more difficult for the poor to own firearms. Some states want to ban 'Saturday night specials' because they're 'easily obtained' and 'lack safety features.' Newsflash, lots of handguns 'lack safety features' - such as a lot of Glock pistols that are specifically chosen by LEOs because there is not a safety in the way if they have to draw and fire quickly. And those Saturday night specials are often the only guns for self-defense that the poor can afford.
2) In most states that have or have tried registration, it's not meant to ensure that the owner knows how to use the gun - it's meant to reduce crime. The problem is, it doesn't work. Why?
Because criminals, being the sort who don't care about laws, aren't going to register their firearms. Here's a link to a .pdf by the Maryland State Police on the myriad failures of their attempt to set up a ballistic fingerprinting registration/database and use it to reduce crime:
http://doubletap.cs.umd.edu/~purtilo/ibis.pdf
3) Waiting periods - registration takes time, even if there are no mandatory waiting periods implemented because lawmakers want to have a cooling-off period to prevent crimes of passion. The problem is, what if the person who wants to commit said crime of passion already owns a gun? Or knows someone from whom they can borrow/steal a gun? Then the victim is screwed, because they can't just go to a gun store and pick up a piece with which to defend themselves. They have to struggle through the red tape of registration, or endure the waiting period that's supposed to be saving their life.
4) As I already mentioned, there are no real requirements to demonstrate that you know how to use a gun before you buy one, at least in most states. So the stupid people who would mis-use firearms already have access to them... yet accidental firearm deaths make for a tiny, tiny percentage of deaths in the US each year. We're talking about 1,000 people out of however many millions live here. More people drown each year, but you don't see lawmakers talking about safety locks on bathtubs and swimming pools, or mandatory swimming certification laws. I looked up the stats in a Federal database somewhere, and I can find them again if need be.
If you wanted to address the issue of lack of respect and basic safety skills for firearms use in the public at large (and I do as well), that's easy - put something useful in our public education cirriculum, like a gun safety class, geared towards each grade. Start with the kindergartners, teach them that if they can't tell if it's real or a toy, to not touch it, etc. Then you drill the four rules into their heads until they can recite them like the Pledge by the time they hit high school.
5) Registration leads to confiscation. It already has in England and Australia, and lawmakers here in our own country are trying to do the same thing. For example, in the state of Illinois:
"If passed, HB 2414 would ban the possession of a wide variety of semiautomatic sporting firearms owned by hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Illinois citizens. Under HB 2414, gun owners would have 90 days to surrender their firearms to the police, or face felony prosecution and stiff jail sentences. Any such firearms they surrender would be forfeited without compensation."
The government knows who the gun owners are, presumably because they're required by law to register such arms. To avoid having your firearm(s) taken away
without compensation, you'd have to break the law.
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ful...um=2414&GAID=8&LegID=17433&SpecSess=&Session=
To sum up, there are a lot of people who are afraid of guns. They wouldn't touch one, but the thing is, they don't want anyone else touching one either. And they will stop at nothing, including cherry-picking statistics and outright lying (you'd be suprised at all the myths surrounding the capabilities of the fifty-calibur rifle that the media and lawmakers like to bandy about in order to scare people), to get laws passed that make it impossible to own a gun.
