Sign Me Up—or Maybe Not

And so, after all the hoo-hah and the shouting, Obamacare rolled out with the thunderous success of the Edsel, or the Titanic. Watching this debacle is not only amusing in its own right, but puts me in mind of one of the fondest dreams of those who do not like guns in private hands, a national firearms registry. The two have much in common.

First is the clusterf**k factor. Even with the full resources of the government behind it (or maybe because the full resources of the government were behind it) the Obamacare website is a wretched failure. Even assuming they get it fixed, a number of people, probably a large number, will either have been scared away or will not want to aggravate themselves again.

Now, consider what would happen if the government were to set up a national firearms registry so that it would know who had what. You don’t have to use your imagination for this; merely turn your gaze to the north and behold the Canadian government’s attempt at the same thing, which was begun in 1993 and euthanized last year. The Canadian Firearms Registry was administered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and was projected to cost $2 million a year. In 2010-2011, its last full year of operation, the cost of running the Registry was $66.4 million a year.

Nor did it crush any crime. It was observed in the cities and largely ignored in the countryside, which is a lot of Canada. And bear in mind that there are far fewer people in Canada than in the U.S., and far fewer guns. A great many Canadians, and from what I know a great many Canadian police, simply ignored it.

Obamacare is based on the assumption that young, healthy people will enroll in their millions to support old, unhealthy people. In reality, young healthy people assume that they will always be young and healthy, and will put off getting health care until they cough up a lung, fine or no fine. Also, in our present economy, many young people are barely able to scrape by and do not have the money for health care. (Or, if they do, they will sooner spend it on hand-held devices and buffalo wings.)

The gun registry is based on the assumption that American gun owners will go meekly on line, or to the local police station, and register everything they have. Now: there are 300 million firearms in the United States, and this number increases by 4 million annually. How well do you think the Treasury Department, or whoever gets the job, will be able to keep track of all this hardware? My guess is that a great many gun owners will bank on the government’s incompetence and not register, or will refuse to register out of sheer detestation, or out of the firm belief, probably justified, that registration is the prelude to confiscation.

If you would like a dire portent of what registration can mean, consider Connecticut, which got an AR-registration law after the shootings at Newtown. The Nutmeg State was, and is, gun country, and its shooters probably considered it unlikely that this could happen (as did gun owners in Colorado) but now they must register their ARs and their magazines by the end of the year.

I used to hang out in a Connecticut gun store that did a lot of business in ARs and tactical rifles, and am aware that some shooters in that state have a great deal of money tied up in multiple ARs (some of which are expensive match and varmint rifles), many, many magazines, lots of ammo, and all sorts of accessories. They are now in a hell of a spot. For most of them it’s economically impossible to pull up stakes and move to a civilized state, so they have a choice of following the law and registering, or ignoring it and hiding the guns. If they choose the former, they have to hope the day does not come when there is another massacre and the governor says, all right, that’s it, turn them all in. If they hide their armament and don’t register, they can’t take their guns out to shoot, and if they’re caught they’re guilty of a class D felony which carries with it a year in jail and undoubtedly having everything confiscated.

Since Congress can easily be mistaken for one of the Jackass movies, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a national registry enacted into law any time soon, but the states are a different story. In the meanwhile, good luck buying health insurance.