"If you are doing nothing wrong who cares if the "government" knows what you own?" is a close tie with "What have you got to hide?" as peeve off-ing question.
Segues into if I don't blindly trust or obey the government, maybe I should be under government scrutiny. I remember the 1924-1975 Virginia Racial Integrity Act, read about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, learned about the Nisei internment camps in the film
Hell to Eternity: the Guy Gabaldon Story, lived through a dry county 1953-1968 local option prohibition. And mom and dad took me to the drive-in in the 1950s to see
1984 so I grew up not trusting big gov't especially demands of blind submission.
"Reasonable regulation" to prohibitionist mentalities alway ends up as close to prohibition as possible and their promise of great benefits at minor inconvenience is the camel's nose under the tent's edge.
In 1967 New York City passed a long gun (rifle and shotgun) registration law at a nominal fee of $3.
Long gun owners were promised that any increase in costs of administring the law would come out of general public safety funds and the fee would never go over the $3. By year 2000, the registration fee was $55, paid by the registered owner.
When NYC decided to implement its own Assault Weapon Ban in 1991, owners of registered semi-auto military rifles on the ban list were told to show proof the guns had been (a) moved or legally sold and were outside NYC, (b) surrendered to the NYPD, or (c) deactivated.
Currently, the Rifle/Shotgun fees include $89.75 for fingerprinting alone.
But there is no longer a charge for registering rifle or shotguns not even $3. You do have to have a permit and the permit fee is $140 + $89.75 FBI fingerprint fee or total of $229.75.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/firearms_licensing/rifle_licensing_information.shtml