We Threepers Have Some Company

In New Zealand, they have a gun registry. Civilians with small arms are required by law to register them with the government. The rate of compliance is un-knowable. The original plan (probably necessary to getting it passed at all) was to have "your guns are yours for life" lifetime registrations. Then somebody broke some unrelated laws and the country switched to "oh wait, they're yours for 10 years" decade-long registrations. Who would have ever guessed that was coming. Note: the alternatives are registration of your weapons, abandoning them to the custody of the state, or becoming an outlaw by doing the same thing from the day before the law was enacted, to the day after.

Anyway, today, many years after they went from lifetime to 10-year registrations, there is a reported rate of 22% non-compliance with the new 10-year registration law.

22%.

That 22% was the difference the gun-banners saw coming when they got this legislation passed in the first place. Those 22% would have prevented passage of the original legislation, I gay-rohn-tee. American Moderates, take note: The gun control crowd got a gun registry put into law in that country because it was innocuous; you just register your guns, that's all. Just once, ever in your life, that's all. The law was changed later to Register them each Decade OR ELSE. The gun control advocates are lobbying for three-year registrations now. If they are successful in getting 3-year registration terms, next they will go for one year. Following that, it will be zero-year and New Zealand will follow Australia into higher per-capita rates of violent crime subsequent to a complete gun BAN. That's what we call a "slippery slope" my friend.

In the linked NZ Herald article, they quote victim-disarmament advocate Philip Alpers as saying "The police really have no idea of how many guns are out there" as if that were a bad thing. The police have no business knowing how many guns are out there, just like they have no business knowing how many drill presses or hand held screwdrivers are out there. Guns are tools. To get in trouble with one, you have to do other things that were already illegal before the first gun control measure was ever passed.

Hat tip to Uncle.