When has the government run ANYTHING efficiently? Fair and equal taxation? EPA? Equal enforcement under the law? Spending (choose any department)? They misuse their authority and can easily abuse the individual by placing a financial hardship on him should he ever have to fight a misdirected arrest or indictment. Even if they have no plans at ALL at this time to confiscate, the anti's would push them to a registry, etc, and keep pushing until it DOES happen. This is what I see: More government has given us more laws and regulation. That sounds good at first, but now we are the most regulated society in the world. We were THE leading nation for prosperity, but overregulation of industry has burdened industry to either go out of business, raise prices to accommodate higher costs to COMPLY with regulation (EPA, commerce laws, etc), and this raised prices beyond the international market and caused inflation. Our money has, as a result become worth less and less. The government has good intentions, but the result has been overregulation that causes the average worker to either do without or work more to make up for less buying power, and now each of us has an average of a $70K piece of the national debt hanging over us. Are we really free? Are we really better off than the average Joe in Germany , or China? What if we have a national economic collapse. Will we be prosperous then? Back to the point, allowing the federal government to increase the level of regulation far above our international market competitors has cost us too dearly to compete. They don't know when to stop or redefine regulation. The same will happen with new gun laws usurping the power of the people, in the most direct form, by disarming the citizenry inadvertently by way of well intentioned, but worthless regulation. Have you ever seen the government return freedoms BACK to the people without an arduous and costly fight? Once: with the repeal of prohibition. It would be harder in this day and age, or in any future that I can envision, to restore the 2nd Amendment, should they somehow override it with registry and confiscation.