How can anyone object to that? Firearms that are currently illegal by fiat will be brought into the legal system and have the safeguards associated with that system. They will be registered and required to be transfered only to people who have a background check and are fingerprinted.
The anti-freedom types don't want even this mild reform of the system. They would prefer that the firearms remain illegal. It is a travesty that even if someone wishes to make an illegal firearm legal, he or she is not allowed to do so under the current law.
If one of the landmark decisions regarding the second amendment was based on the inapropriateness of the weapon in question (short barreled shotgun) as a military firearm, there should be no question of the appropriateness of a machine gun, captured or otherwise.
Even under that lame decision, the Second Amendment should apply, and sans infringement, there should be no registration.
As for veterans, we trusted these individuals with tanks, warplanes, combat ships, even nuclear weapons. What? we can't trust them with a rifle when they get home? If anyone has earned the right, they have.
Or is registration simply a precursor to rounding up the weapons in question? As for demilling the weapons, phooey! It is already legal to own a demilled machine gun. It is a display piece only, incapable of firing or being made to fire. (Useless sculpture.)
Just repeal the NFA and let these guys keep their stuff.
How can anyone object to that? Firearms that are currently illegal by fiat will be brought into the legal system and have the safeguards associated with that system. They will be registered and required to be transfered only to people who have a background check and are fingerprinted.
Marktwain, I object. Registration is a prelude to confiscation - always has been, always will be. The only question is how long it takes those with registration lists to demand that the weapon in question be surrendered. If you doubt that, try asking the people who registered long guns in NYC in 1966, or the suckers that registered "assault rifles" in California. Try asking those in foreign countries (Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Uganda, Cambodia, etc. ) that had to register their guns how they feel about it - if, that is, you can find any survivors of the subsequent actions of their benevolent governments.
You make the faulty assumption that the government will obey the law as rigorously as it expects us, on pain of prison, to do. If you truly believe that no future government, esp. of the Clinton-type, will use these registration lists as tools of confiscation, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Registration is somehow considered OK for guns, but not for other Constitutionally-protected items like Bibles. You should think about that. Would you register your Bible if a law said you had to? Would you permit the government to limit the design of your Bible, the number you own, etc.? Would you apply for a permit to attend church? How would you feel about a law that limited the type or number of printing presses (or ink-jet printers, copiers, fax machines, etc) that you owned, and required that you register all of them?
You should also think about what your response would be if the government repealed (according to all of the legalities set forth in the Constitution) the 1st Amendment (that's right, the 1st) - do you think that such an act would enable it to outlaw the possession of Bibles, attendance at a house of worship, etc.? If not (and I certainly hope not), then you should consider the effect of the laws that outlaw or restrict the possession of certain firearms, much less the repeal of the 2nd Amendment that the gun-grabbers so desparately hope for at some point in the future. These existing laws are as repugnant to our way of life as a law that would ban Bibles. Registration of guns is as repugnant as registration of Bibles.
Try to think outside of the box. Don't be too caught up in thinking that if there's a law that says something, that it is somehow OK. The Nazis were masters at legally implementing the most repugnant and odious laws in the history of mankind, and their judges obediently said that it was all legal. No one, however, bothered to stand up and say that the whole idea of government legislating about certain things was impermissable (maybe, perhaps, because guns had already been confiscated from all opponents of the Nazis - how's that for a tie-in?).