Do you want your name and picture in a database accessible by anyone?

[Yarome]

Playing devil's lettuce here, that single mother/other young women may benefit from their gun ownership being public knowledge. A knowingly armed target may well look less attractive to assault. Kind of like how poisonous animals are sometimes brightly colored.

Well.. on the flip side... if you know your target is armed and you are intent on doing them harm... common sense would dictate you don't approach unless you yourself are armed, make use of tactical advantage (aka... be sneaky about it)... and pop 'em in the noggin when they least expect it.

Whereas, if you were unaware of the danger your target presents, you're more likely to find yourself at a disadvantage.

I side with the intended victim on this one. "Appear weak when you are strong..." ~Sun Tzu

The nutshell: A registry has the potential to escalate a confrontation and defeat a victims potential tactical advantage, IMHO.

 

[Jay Walk]

I would not want that,
Imagine the guns that would get stolen.

If you purchased guns legally from an FFL the ATF already knows what you have.

 

[dancinghippos]

I believe we need to look beyond ourselves when we speak of privacy. Individuals here may not care who knows about their firearms or their address, but what about others? What about the judges and other officers of the court? What about every single officer of the peace or person that needs to carry or own a firearm as part of their occupation? What about the single young mother that has been harassed and wishes to arm herself against danger? Do they need to have their information published? Every person that owns a gun is not self sufficient and worried only about their jobs or what their neighbors may think. Some have legitimate reasons for at least some level of privacy and the security that everyone does not have their personal information, including gun ownership, instantly available.

I'm not saying there is a guarantee of absolute privacy, just saying that not everyone is ready to have their gun ownership status published in a readily available database.

I used to work with a guy from El Salvador. They had registration there. That was how the armed criminals knew to demand exactly the registered gun. They didn't know about the unregistered gun.

When people babble at me about how gun registration is just like car registration, I offer to put up a sign in their front yard,
"THIS HOME IS PROUD TO BE GUN-FREE"

For some reason, they never take me up on the offer.

 

[dancinghippos]

The universal advantage of gun owning homes and non-gun-owning homes looking exactly the same is that burglaries are riskier propositions.

 

[Longwalkhome]

I am all for the right to privacy. It would be far better that if they take privacy away then we know who "they" is and all their personal information. Key to privacy is to out those who expose our personal info.