>>>>>The SAFE Act, the gun control law hastily passed by the New York legislature in January, included a provision requiring physicians, psychologists, registered nurses, and licensed clinical social workers to report any patient they deem "likely to engage in conduct that will cause serious harm to self or others." The report goes to a county mental health official, who, assuming he agrees with the clinician's assessment, passes it on to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), which determines whether the patient holds a firearms license. If he does have such a license, which is required to legally buy a handgun in New York, the DCJS must notify the local licensing official, who must suspend or revoke the patient's license and instruct him to surrender all of his firearms, including rifles and shotguns. If he fails to do so, police are authorized to seize them.
>>>>>
>>>>>Which is how David Lewis, a 35-year-old Amherst librarian, was stripped of his guns and his Second Amendment rights.
>>>>>...
>>>>>
>>>>>http://reason.com/blog/2013/04/11/take-xanax-lose-your-guns
>>>>>
>>>>>Background checks database IS registration which leads to confiscation. Whether directly like during Katrina or "accidently" in this case or indirectly through changes in the defitition of mental capacity.
>>>>>
>>>>>When one combines the idea of a national background database with the looming national medical record database from Obamacare it's not too hard for even the most innocent of believers in "common sense" to connect the dots. There are only 2 dots!
>>>>>
>>>>>Have a great weekend all!
>>>>
>>>>The problem here is that the law was misapplied. If everyone involved would of been doing their job correctly this never would of happened.
>>>
>>>In the meantime a law-abiding citizen's rights were taken away as he was guilty until proven innocent. If humans are involved the human error or deliberate malfeasence will occur. There have been several cases recently of databases being made public. Be it the hacking by Wikileaks & anonomous or the more aggregious cases where the data was just handed over by authorities to a news organization who published it. Cases like this serve to prevent people with perfectly treatable mental issues from accurately reporting their condition for fear of their rights being trampled. The idea of a national medical database is even more frightening than the gun registry, and make no bones about it, it IS a registry. Again, there's only 2 dots.
>>
>>Nothing is 100% perfect. For example, innocent people are arrested every day - that is why we have this thing called a 'court system'.
>>Most Americans, at this point, feel that background checks should happen. As matter of fact I think the latest polls on that are showing something like 94% feel this way. There is a national database of automobiles and you don't seem to have a problem with that - so why not have a database of guns?
>
>Where is the background check for purchasing an automobile?

There is a paper trail of everyone that own's an automobile - and there is a background check to get a driver's license right?

>A knife (any kind)? A baseball bat? All are deadly weapons if the **USER** chooses to use them that way.

Now that's just stupid dude. A pillow or kitty cat can be used that way too if the **USER** chooses to use it that way. ...however someone with a pillow, knife, bat, kitty cat is not quite the same thing as someone armed with an AK-47. I think we all agreed a while back that a gun is more dangerous than a knife.

I do notice that you didn't respond to my comment about how having a database of all gun transactions and the ballistics for all guns would make it much easier for the cops to find the shooter.

>As a knee-jerk reaction for the Boston Marathon blasts, shouldn't we have a scary looking bomb ban?

No we should have a ban on bombs like we do. (this is a common sense thing of course).

And this gun problem is not a knee-jerk reaction. It's been an ongoing problem for a long time. The sixteen mass shootings in 2012 that left 90 people dead simply brought it to the top of the news. There have been almost 3500 shooting deaths since Newton - and believe it or not that number is actually kinda hard to come up with so I'm sure it's a lowball number.

Your concept of 'lets do nothing about it' will fail just as you were convinced that weed would never be legalized by any state. I give it a year or two and you will see our government's elected officials give in to the will of the people and we will have stricter guns laws. When that happens I will have the pleasure of saying "I told you so" one more time :)