Demise and Futo Ino
Demise said:
Can you show exactly how simple registration is an infringement on ownership? Registration doesn't stop you from owning a gun, it just lets the government know you have it.
How would you feel about a law that made you register every bible or other religious article that you bought? How about the government requiring all churches, etc. to provide lists of members, as well as lists of contributors? How about a law that required you to give the government a copy of the key to every door in your house, along with alarm codes. How about a law requiring full access to all of your computer files, including the keys to any encryption algorithm? All of these laws would provide some rational basis for their enactment, most being some variation of "its for the children" or "its for your own good."
In each and every one of these cases, the law wouldn't be an "infringement on ownership" or (in the case of going to church, etc.) an "infringement on free assembly or freedom of religion." However, what you
are dealing with is having a chilling effect on the exercise of a fundamental right. Think about the effect on your voting rights if an election official was standing in the voting booth with you - just to make sure you know how to work the machine, of course, so that we don't get any more repeats of Floriduh. Hell, most people wouldn't even bother to vote under those circumstances - i.e. the right to vote would have been infringed.
I know that you are playing
's advocate, but all too many people say the same crap and
mean it - look at all of the gorons that say "Well, if you have to register cars, why not guns?" All of these folks have
GOT to understand that regulation or taxation of any right is an infringement thereon, no matter what it is called or what the reasons for doing so are,
not by outlawing it, but by making it difficult to exercise that right.
I've got a real, historical example of the chilling effect on a fundamental freedom caused by registration: several Soviet Bloc countries (notably Rumania) required the registration of all typewriters and copying machines. Not only was ownership registered, impressions of typewriter keys were taken and invisible identification marks were put on every copy produced. Were these things banned? Nope, but if you wanted to exercise the fundamental freedom to publish or copy an anti-government article, your knowledge of the fact that the government would quickly track you down tended to persuade the folks of those countries not to do so.
Futo Ino
Isn't there a 1942 or 1943 USSC case that originated in Pennsylvania which said that any tax on an instrumentality used to exercise a fundamental right was unconstitutional? IIRC, it had to do with taxes on bibles or something similar. It would seem to me that this case would be ample precedent to overturn all of the taxes and fees imposed on guns, ammo, concealed carry permits, etc.