"Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here." (Emphasis added)
A few bloggers thought this was odd since Louisiana doesn't have any registration laws. It's not that hard to believe the MSM, especially the NYT is ignorant of firearms laws.
But Firehand wondered if there were feds involved would they use NICS records? Course it's not like they did anything of this nature before. But what I wonder is if they didn't watch a recent re-run of Red Dawn? You remember the film - bad acting, poorly written script in what could have been a decent movie? Well remember what the Cuban Colonel told his troops to do when they took over the town? Go to the sporting goods stores, pawn shops & guns stores & bring back every Form 4473 they had.
Form 4473 is the federal paperwork required to purchase a firearm. Any commercial transaction of a firearm initiates with a Form 4473 being filled out. Dealers in firearms are required to keep the records for 20 years. If they go out of business all Form 4473's less than 20 years old are sent in to the ATFU.
So it's possible that there's been abuse of the NICS system, but it's probably more likely that every Form 4473 from every gun shop, pawn shop & sporting goods store (like Wal MArt for instance) was rounded up a few days ago. That would give the cops a good lead on who owns firearms.
& to the NYT it would seem to be gun registration, even though it's really gun owner registration.
But since that'd be illegal as the records in question do not pertain to a criminal investigation of a specific firearm I can't believe those constitution loving local cops, nor the always respective of rights feds would utilize such methods. & besides, registration will never lead to confiscation.
Posted by Publicola at September 9, 2005 10:21 AM | TrackBackI don't know if we should make too much of that particular turn of phrase.
The ignorantis of the MSM assume that any lawfully posessed arm is registered, because, after all, you have to register your guns, right? Isn't that what all honest gunowners do? And those who don't register, they're not honest gunowners, right? And full automatic revolvers hose down the streets with buckshot, don't they?
"registered guns" = MSMese for "lawfully posessed".
Posted by: geekWithA.45 at September 10, 2005 10:41 PM