I think the hypothetical was... that a person is perfectly free to mark or adorn their firearms however they like. Under light scrutiny... if your firearm appears to be legally serialized... you could save yourself some headache. IE., A traffic stop and for whatever reason an officer wants to secure your firearm for the duration of the stop and does a casual glance to verify it's serialized. He's not going to perform a serial number search for a traffic violation and more than likely... deal with the traffic violation and send you on your way."There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order" Frederick Douglass
A new type of urban camo.
But if it doesn't work, lawyers are expensive, lawfare insidious, and you are putting your livelihood, life and faith in the jury box.
Hypothetically, if I had an 80% and if I chose not to comply, it would not make any public appearances until I moved out of state, or society collapsed.
Everyone has to make a gut check and determine where we are on the continuum.
If you've done something that warrants deep scrutiny... you likely have bigger legal issues to contend with... and even if they run a serial check (which fewer than 5% are ever run even in major crimes)... coming back without a "hit" is pretty typical. The only record of it would be on a local registry with an FFL. Theoretically, that FFL would have to have gone out of business and turned over their log books and then be added into the federal database before it would kick back any result.
They would simply be verifying that the serial number hadn't previously been logged and associated with a previous crime.
You're right though. It's a personal choice and not encouraging anyone to willfully violate the law, but just pointing out the hypothetical.