For those who endorse "some control" with restrictions on felons and other undesirables, let's have a look what the actual implementation requires.
ID. Everyone has to have ID. The ID has to be state approved and, if firearms regulations are federal (national), then the ID has to be acceptable to the feds as well. The feds are like any bureaucracy, they won't be happy with broad variations in format or validations and will want to "standardize" the process, always working toward a National ID (which they will control and monitor) and eventually becoming a key to every official interaction with government.
The vision is kind of "SSN gene-spliced with driver's license with some next-gen RFID" allowing government to "properly manage" the population and its activities. It will, of course, be promoted as a convenience to the citizenry, a protection against fraud, and an assurance that one is "properly enrolled" in all the entitlements that are one's due.
Oh, and it will guarantee that the freedom to exercise your rights is intact, since we will always know who you are.
And this makes perfect sense because . . . well, we issue federal ID to felons as well, and that makes it easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. And since there will never be any doubt that you're a good guy, we can go back to selling guns in hardware stores and gas stations, because the proprietor will always have the confidence that the ID he's scanning is legitimate, and the customer is exactly who he says he is. Because felons won't carry counterfeit ID cards, and they won't lie about who they are, and they will always go through officially approved channels to obtain their weapons.
('Scuse me while I wrestle my tongue back out of my cheek before I sprain it.)
Well, okay, since we have to concede that the bad guys might just possibly break the rules (the really, really bad ones), then I guess we can't do away with the FFL system. But most bad guys will play by the rules. Really. No, I'm serious here -- stop that laughing!
Hmmm. Okay, that's probably not gonna work out like the bureaucrats suggest, but it could work out, so we have to at least try, right? So we do the National ID thing. I mean, really, what could go wrong?
(Ow. I bit my tongue.)
What's that you say? Keep the bad guys locked up until we're certain we can trust them? Perform actual rehabilitation? Dude! You can't do that! That would be cruel and unusual punishment!
We have to let them out . . . so they can mingle with society and honest folk . . . but that's okay because we register them, and we always know where they are. How? Hey, remember that National ID?
And since we have to be sensitive to the needs of felons -- like their healthy interaction with society -- we have to continue to make sure that, when you want to exercise your rights, you aren't one of them.
Because you can never really be sure, right?
But since we're the government, you can trust us with this system.
Because gun control has done much to reduce crime.
Hey, just look at our record. We have complete gun control in Chicago and Washington DC, and look what it's done for them!
Hey, come on, we only want a little control.
And it's for your own good.
Think of the children.
