Registration Will Lead to Confiscation

According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is considering a “national database” of all firearms in the United States to “track the movement and sale of weapons.” If such a database comes to fruition the database will lead to confiscation.

Last year Canada ended its national long gun registry, a national database of every rifle and shotgun in the country that was supposed to help police track the movement of and sale of weapons. When it was introduced twenty years ago critics said the registration of firearms would eventually lead to confiscation, a criticism dismissed as ridiculous, yet that’s what happened and more right up until its dismantling.

As recently as last winter law abiding gun owners who had complied with the registry were having their rifles confiscated. In late 2011 hundreds if not thousands of people who had legally purchased the Armi Jager AP80, a .22 calibre variant of the AK47, were informed that their rifles had been deemed illegal and must be surrendered .

“You are required by law to return your firearm registration certificates, without delay, either by mail to the address shown in the top left corner of this page or in person to a peace officer or firearms officers. You have 30 days to deliver your firearms to a peace officer, firearms officer of Chief Firearms Officer or to otherwise lawfully dispose of them,” read the letter sent by the Canadian Firearms Centre.

The reason for the need to surrender what had been legal firearms was simply cosmetic, the AP 80 looked too similar to the AK47. There were no interchangeable parts between the two rifles, the rifles used vastly different ammunition, had vastly different uses but they looked the same.

What was more worrisome was that the decision to reclassify what for years had been a legal rifle was made by a bureaucrat not by elected officials. There was no debate, no vote just a decision by a bureaucrat who felt the AP80, legally owned for decades, was too dangerous to be privately owned by Canadians.

Of course confiscation of firearms could just be the start, confiscation of homes and cars could also come to the USA.

Former Marine Joshua Boston recently wrote a scathing response to Senator Diane Feinstein’s gun control proposals saying that he would not register his guns. That could cost him everything.

Bruce Montague, a gunsmith from Dryden, Ontario faces the possibility of having his home seized for failure to register his firearms. Montague’s decision not to register was purely political, he wanted to challenge the constitutionality of the gun registry. When his constitutional challenge failed and Montague was convicted the government of Ontario moved to seize his home under its proceeds of crime legislation. They were treating a paperwork criminal as if he were a drug lord, the kind of person the law was intended to prosecute.

If the United States follows Canada’s lead in registering all guns into a national database then the confiscation of rifles and shotguns won’t be far behind.

Brian Lilley is the host of Byline on Sun News Network