By: Teresa Mull

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering HB0768, called “the Firearms Registration Act.”

This bill, according to Ammoland, would require gun owners to:

  • register their firearms with the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP)

  • provide the police with the make, model, and the serial numbers of all their guns

  • submit fingerprints, two photographs that are no older than 30 days, and go through a background check – the same one they must go through to purchase a gun – for each firearm that they own

  • provide the (PSP) with their home and work address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth, age, sex, and citizenship

  • keep all firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock

  • notify PSP within 48 hours if they change jobs, phone numbers, addresses, or anything else on their application

  • pay $10 per firearm every year to renew the certification 60 days before it expires

Gun Registries Don’t Stop Mass Shootings
Gun rights activist and retired Air Force Colonel, Dr. Val Finnell, who lives in Pennsylvania, explained to GPM why HB0768 would not be effective:

The Draconian measures in HB0768 seek to license gun owners and register all firearms. The public is being told that registration and licensing will prevent crime and mass shootings. Not so, and the recent New Zealand mass murders proves it.

New Zealand has gun owner licensing, and they register all semi-automatic firearms. Moreover, no one in New Zealand is permitted to own a gun for self-defense and they must have a specific endorsement to purchase semi-automatic firearms. Yet, Brenton Tarrant was able to circumvent all of these laws and slaughter 50 innocent people. Importantly, according to the UN Small Arms Survey, there is no correlation between registration rates, percent of unregistered weapons, and homicide rates.

Gun Registration Leads to Confiscation
Finnell notes how gun registries lead ultimately to gun confiscations:

"The biggest problem with gun registration is that it leads to confiscation. This is what we will see unfold in New Zealand as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised a vote to ban semi-automatics. With a registration list of all Kiwis who own these firearms, it will be easy for the government to seize weapons that are not turned in after an amnesty period. History teaches us that registration lists are used to confiscate guns. For example, Canada used the handgun registration law of 1934 as the source used to identify and confiscate (without compensation) over half of the registered handguns in 2001. Dittos for Australia in 1996 when the government confiscated over 660,000 previously legal weapons from their citizens.

"Finally, let’s remember that criminals do not register their guns, nor are they legally required to do so (Haynes vs. U.S. 390 U.S. 85, 1968. The Supreme Court concluded that forcing a criminal to register their illegal guns was a form of self-incrimination.)

"Gun registration will only lead to the inevitable confiscation of firearms, as we have seen in Nazi Germany, Australia, Canada, and now New Zealand."

Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].