A bit ago I posted about how gun rights advocates have tried to argue that passing a law they disagreed with would result in massive non-compliace so the government should not bother passing it. That the average gun owner would never allow gun registration to happen and if it did happen they would refuse in large numbers.
But when the law was passed, and the deadline came, they lined up and registered their guns. That "line in the sand" that would result in needing to "pry the gun from their cold dead fingers" was crossed and complied with.
Which brought out the negative nellies (and posable RBKA Lurkers) to announce in the comments "well, we don't know how many unregistered there are" and "a few lines on the last day does not show compliance".
More after the squiggle.
They refused to even look on the positive side that at the very least, some gun owners were doing the responsible thing and -GASP- following the law. The right wing New American mag (the John Birch flagship propaganda publication) that I linked to, was wringing its hands that so many law abiding gun owners were, well, abiding the law.
My point was that instead of claiming these were just a few of the gun owners in Conn. and pushing the lie that thousands were resisting the registration law, the right wing mag complained that a vast majority of gun owners were jumping to comply with the law. (and that some people might accidentally break the law by not getting their guns registered.)
The Negative Nellie posters went on and on about how no place that has done a registration has had compliance and "proved" this by pointing to a study of the number of small arms in European nations…that count the police and military weapons, looked at civilian ownership registration compared the the total number and "estimated" a non-registered amount. (Which if it was true, would result in regular arrests from unregistered guns as the police ran across them on a regular basis with the number of non-registered they estimated…which is not happening.)
They refused to see what the right wing reporter saw and reported: Gun owners will register their guns. They will obey the law, any law. (Yes, they will also go to court to fight the law and try to elect people who would change the law, but that is how things are suppose to be done. Not refusing to follow the law.)
Well, now we have better numbers: Connecticut reports that nearly 30,000 new gun owners have registered their guns, and that number is getting bigger. http://courantblogs.com/...
Now, Conn. has about 3.5 million residents living in it. According to USA Carry - a pro-gun toting group - Conn has a gun ownership of 17%. So the gun ownership should be around 590,000. 30,000+ have registered their guns (so far with more in the mail). Gosh, does that prove the pro-gun's right that there is massive refusal?
No. First off, the registration only applies to a small subset of guns. Assault rifles that are semi-automatic and have military looking features (and mags that hold more than 10 rounds - of which 17,000 people have registered as owning those). All handguns have had to be registered since 1994. This is on top of the "assault rifles" as defined in 1993 that had to be registered.
The Conn. law makes it illegal to sell or buy any gun with out a background check and register the gun. Even with private sales. It also changed the 1993 law's level of punishment for not registering the gun from a misdemeanor to a felony. (which might be part of the reason only a few thousand "assault rifles" were registered in 1993, it was a slap on the wrist punishment.)
Because this is now a felony crime to not register the newly expanded definition assault rifles, there is better compliance. I would guess because getting a felony bars you from ever owning any gun - assault rifle or not.
So, since handguns make up about 60% of guns in Conn, and have been required to be 100% registered since 1994, the original version of assault rifles had to be registered since 1993, it seems logical that 30,000 new registrations is a sizable percentage of guns covered by the new assault rifle definitions.
It is true, we will never know how many unregistered assault rifles there are in Conn. Pro-gun types tried to argue that the law would cover up to 250,000 people (mostly by claiming things the law did not, such as an assault rifle would be any semi-automatic with a non-wood stock). The more rational supporters of the law said 50,000 to 70,000 since these guns are not your average hunting rifles and shotguns. Have limited use for plinking and out side of a few specialty shooting events are not used for competition.
But over time three things will happen: 1) unregistered guns will be found and the owners will go to jail never to own a gun legally again. 2) banned guns will be sold out of state or turned in. and 3) some of the more radical nuts will do what they did in the 1990's, burry them in the ground to never see the light of day again. (I know a person who did just that in 1992 in New York. When the federal assault rifle law ended, he spent five months trying to find where he put it. He did find it in the end, and it was not in bad shape. It was still illegal in NYS for anyone but him to own as he owned it before the law was in effect he was grandfathered.)
I would not be surprised to see by April that 45,000 new gun owners registered their newly defined assault rifles. Not with a rational guess of 50,000 who would be effected by the law.
There should be no fear that gun owners "just won't follow the laws" so we should not try to pass them. For all their macho-bluster of "cold dead fingers", it is just that.