You Don't Get To Own A Cannon... Maybe We Need To Re-Frame Gun Control... To Arms Control...

[MH1]

65. It's irrelevant to the gun discussion, but I'm curious how you get from my statement to

"free speech zones".

If you insist on conflating the two, however, I will point out that all commercial speech is essentially "registered", except for a small number of people who have the knowledge and will to enforce strong anonymity controls. (Commercial speech = anything published, including what I write on a website like DU.) If I am speaking in the park to another person and happen to express a highly negative opinion of the current government, I'm not at risk of having the police come to my house and take me away to prison for years. THAT is what free speech means at its practical essence in this country. (I am, however, at risk of the local code enforcement guys taking a ruler to my grass height more frequently and slapping me with a fine a lot quicker than they would if I were buddies with my commissioner.)

3-D printing brings in a whole new dimension to the gun control argument, because now it is possible for a person to build their own gun from non-controlled (and probably non-controllable) material. But outside of that - still only practical for a relatively small number of people - gun ownership is a commercial activity (the gun was at some time purchased and has monetary value). So it's not a far stretch to maintain records on purchases and transfers. Just as the residue of my internet activity does not in itself constrain my subsequent activity on the internet, neither does registration of gun ownership in itself constrain my activity or future purchases. What it does, is link my name to it and make me responsible for it.