carlrodd said:
i understand that you have to fill out paperwork when you purchase firearms from a dealer anyway, but it seems stupid to use something that is just another means of tracking what you have. is this a common consensus among gun owners? i have only purchased two firearms in my life, and it would never occur to me to use anything but cash to pay for firearms, ammo, anything having to do with weapons. is it a correct assumption that you make it far easier for the powers that be to know what you have if you use credit for your purchases?
As has been said, the credit card reciept does not distinguish between firearms or other items found in the business place. They aren't going to say "he spent $647 at Joe's sporting goods. Had to be a gun". Hell, I've dropped as little as $60 on a gun and as much as $2,200 on other, non-gun items at the gunstore at one time.
I'd not worry about them being able to track weapons; they have umpteen ways of doing so without financial evidence anyway. I'm quite sure that all of us who've ever filled out a 4473 has a little red mark in the FBI's database. Best way to stay off the radar is to
not do anything that throws a flag (like buying 20 firearms and 10,000 rounds at once).
But besides all that, there are simply so many firearms in circulation (most not "registered, some don't even have serial #'s), that there would be no way to effectively confiscate them. Estimates on legal guns in the U.S. range from 175 million to 300 million. I'm betting the number is actually even higher, and you can add another 30 or 50 million
illegal guns to that list.
Many of the legal ones have been handed down or privately transferred so many times that the paper trail went up in smoke long ago. And once a firearm is in circulation, it tends to stay there. I would bet an absolutely miniscule percentage are actually confiscated and destroyed.
As spectacularly ignorant as our politicians are, there is no way that any of them could actually think that going door to door for confiscation could work.
Does uncle sam know I own guns? No doubt. Do they know how many? not likely. Will they ever get a single one of them from me? No way.