Hawaii now has a law that automatically places the names of citizens who register a gun into the FBI criminal database.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Hawaii’s governor signed a bill making it the first U.S. state to place its residents who own firearms in a federal criminal record database and monitor them for possible wrongdoing anywhere in the country, his office said. 

The move by gun control proponents in the liberal state represents an effort to institute some limits on firearms in the face of a bitter national debate over guns that this week saw Democratic lawmakers stage a sit-in at the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Hawaii Governor David Ige, a Democrat, on Thursday signed into law a bill to have police in the state enroll people into an FBI criminal monitoring service after they register their firearms as already required, his office said in a statement. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation database called “Rap Back” will allow Hawaii police to be notified when a firearm owner from the state is arrested anywhere in the United States. 

Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to place firearm owners on the FBI’s Rap Back, which until now was used to monitor criminal activities by individuals under investigation or people in positions of trust such as school teachers and daycare workers.

I think this is a great idea.

Of course I am also one of the people in a position of trust whose fingerprints have been sent to the FBI like five times now, for a variety of different positions.

If the FBI gets to keep an eye on me, a peaceful non-gun owner, then it seems perfectly fair that people with deadly weapons in their possession should be tracked as well.

I mean if they don't do anything wrong, they have nothing to fear.

Right?

P.S. By the way Hawaii has the lowest number of gun fatalities in the nation.

Pro-gun advocates burn almost 1000 gun registration forms in protest of being asked to be responsible gun owners.

Photo courtesy of Facebook

Courtesy of Post Star:

Nearly a thousand gun registration forms were turned into ashes Sunday. 

The forms are used for people to register with New York State Police firearms that meet the state’s definition of military-style assault weapons. The deadline is April 15. Gun rights advocates gathered at the Saratoga-Wilton Elks Lodge 161 to burn the papers in a symbolic protest. 

E.J. Stokes, leader of the Warren County chapter of New York Revolution, said he was participating because he believes in the U.S. Constitution. 

“Once the Second (Amendment) falls, the rest will go with it. It’s an unconstitutional law, done in the middle of the night with no input from the public,” he said. 

The event was organized by the NY2A Grassroots Coalition. NY2A co-founder Jake Palmateer said the goal is for people not to register their assault weapon as an act of civil disobedience. 

“We are opposed to registration because the evidence is clear that registration leads to confiscation,” he said.

This fear of confiscation has apparently been given new life by a Canadian broadcaster who claimed that the same thing had happened there. He works for Sun News, which unsurprisingly in referred to as "Fox News North."

In fact Canada DOES have fairly aggressive gun registration policies. Which has resulted in an incredibly low number of gun deaths.

This from Business Insider:  

The U.S.'s neighbor to the north also has outstandingly low gun casualty statistics. In 2009, there were 0.5 deaths per 100,000 from gun homicide — only 173 people. Still, the ownership is comparatively high — there are 23.8 firearms per 100 people in the country. 

There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories. 

Licensing agents are required to advise an applicant's spouse or next-of-kin prior to granting a license, and licenses are denied to applicants with any past history of domestic violence. Buyers in private sales of weapons must pass official background checks. 

Canadian civilians aren't allowed to possess automatic weapons, handguns with a barrel shorter than 10.5 cm or any modified handgun, rifle or shotgun. Most semi-automatic assault weapons are also banned. As a result of exemptions, several kinds of assault weapons are still legal in Canada, although this has been the source of some controversy. 

And guess what, so far losing access to those automatic weapons has NOT resulted in martial law or the emergence of a police state in Canada, which is the conspiracy theory used by the NRA and 2nd Amendment fetishists in this country to argue for no gun registration or control at all.

Call me crazy, but the idea of having fewer automatic weapons on the streets, and low gun casualty statistics like those enjoyed by Canada, does not exactly make me terribly sensitive to the concerns of the chubby old guys who fear that losing their shiny black penis extender will negatively impact their manhood.

We need to make a change in this country, and it needs to happen now.

We register our cars, we register our planes, and we register our boats. But apparently being asked to register our guns is akin to being called a sex offender.

The above image is courtesy of Brancy's blog, on which there is a link to a Breitbart article that then links to an article from The Courant, a local Hartford, Connecticut paper that reported how shocked Connecticut politicians were that fun owners were resisting a new law requiring residents to register their military styled weapons: 

Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31. 

But few thought the figures would be this bad. 

By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in. 

That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000. 

And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies. 

"I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register," said Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, the ranking GOP senator on the legislature's public safety committee. "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."

Of course the Breibart article takes the side of the assault rifle owning scofflaws, while encouraging citizens in other states to follow suit, and by linking to it one would assume that Bristol is in full agreement that these people should not be required to let the police know that they own these weapons.

Which of course begs the question as to WHY anybody would be so fearful of allowing the government to know how many military style weapons are in their possession.

I mean we are not talking about simply owning a handgun for personal protection, which is ground zero for the NRA, nor is this even about restricting access to these high powered weapons. It is only about allowing the police to know who purchased which weapon, so that if it is used in a criminal manner they can trace it back to its source and perhaps put a bad guy behind bars.

If you are simply planning to use the weapon for target practice, or display it in your gun case so your fellow Cro-Magnon buddies know how manly you are, there should be no problem with registering the weapon just like you do your car, dog, and marriage.

The reason for that is also behind much of the NRA driven fervor to buy more and more guns. And THAT is the idea that the government is working on a plan to repeal the 2nd Amendment, and even more conspiratorial than that is the belief that Obama is, at some point, going to declare martial law, and that the only hope to fight against that is heavily armed citizens ready to fight back with unregistered weaponry.

In the old days this would have been considered the very fringe of the fringe of the conservative movement, but with the help of Sarah Palin, talk radio, and NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre this is now considered a reasonable concern for millions of gun owners in this country.

It is insane, and the flames of that insanity are fanned by Right Wing blogs like Breitbart, Sarah Palin, and now Palin's hateful little parrot Bristol.

You know there was a time when being a conservative meant respecting, and following the law. They actively called for more laws, more law enforcement, and longer prison sentences for those who would break the law.

Today they are the ones promoting lawlessness, calling for open revolt, and nurturing distrust of the government.

What could possibly have happened to change their point of view so dramatically?