Sunday, February 17, 2013

WHY SHOULD THERE BE FEAR OF GUN REGISTRATION

Today on Meet the Press with David Gregory, Captain Mark Kelly was being interviewed about the work he and Gabby Gifford are doing towards gun control.  I heard it mentioned that people are afraid of gun registration but that no one is calling for that.  I beg to differ.  If people are buying guns for self protection and to be ready to protect our nation should we need it, why would they care if they are registered.  If the gun has been legally obtained and used properly and legally, why shouldn't guns and bullets from them be traceable to aid law enforcement when trying to solve a crime by illegal use of guns?

Privacy should be a valuable part of what we all may claim.  However, privacy is limited to those who do not threaten the safety or their own lives or others, in the mental health world.  Though I believe our laws have gone too far with that one, making suicide 'forbidden' or the right top die, that is a subject for another blog.

The laws may differ from state to state, but there are towns that demand that guns be registered.  There is obviously no way, at present, for that to be enforced, but it should work for the protection of the gun owner.  If a gun registered is stolen, reported, and a crime committed with it, that alone would not prove that the owner planned the crime and reported the loss beforehand  However, the law looks at many elements and there would be little question as they do a thorough check of the owner's life and activity that, indeed, someone else committed a crime with the owner's gun.  We knew that the killer at Sandy Hook was not the owner only when we learned that his mother had been shot to death with her own gun before the massacre at the school.. 

Just as free speech is not always free;  privacy does not always guarantee that we remain private. In today's world we are losing more and more privacy.  Our computers are tracked when we are on the internet by so many and inofrmation about us stored by a company or companies who do great business selling our information to others.  For a few dollars we can find out information on our friends and  neighbors.  Doesn't that suggest there are limitations to the definition of privacy?

Lastly, privacy and secrecy are not synonymous.  That does not seem to be universally accepted.

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