“I’m ok with background checks to buy guns. I don’t think you can really argue against that. However, I am absolutely opposed to a federal database for the purpose of background checks. This gives the government information on who bought a gun, where they live, and what they bought.”
There is a huge leap there from “info in a database” to “info in a database about gun ownership”. The info in the database could (and should) be nothing more than things that would be useful in a background check, like records of committing violent crimes or hanging out with Charlie Sheen.
I’m not saying I trust the (make that ANY) administration not to be doing things they shouldn’t be (either now or in the future), just that the article needs some evidence before making such a leap.
I'll argue against it simply because every time a liberal gets in power they try to turn that “background check” system into a defacto registration scheme. The left was apoplectic when John Ashcroft took the ATF to the woodshed for not destroying background check records, even though the law that established the “instant check” system specifically requires that no records of who the checks are run on is maintained.
You can't trust them, ever.
“There is a huge leap there from “info in a database” to “info in a database about gun ownership”.”
You are being naive if you think the purpose of this legislation is anything other than to create a national registration database.
The concept that the government could or should only “allow” certain people to have guns stands the very concept of American jurisprudence on its head. It presumes that the government knows all, controls all, and should be doing so. It is wrong and ineffective.
It is crazy to set up a huge expensive bureaucratic system, require everyone to jump though hoops and prove that they are *not* criminals in order to try, ineffectively, to prevent the few individuals who are not responsible, from having legal access to guns. This is a failed paradigm, and it should be abandoned. To accept the idea that the all gun sales should be monitored by the government, and only allowed to those it deems satisfactory is fundamentally wrong.
The entire idea of the enterprise has always been the death of a thousand cuts, where the restrictions on who can buy, and where, and how and what are continually increased until the number of gun owners is reduced to political insignificance.