discussion: is gun registration unconstitutional?

I've received an enormous amount of flak from certain people that perceive my remarks about

mandatory gun registration being stupid but constitutional as heresy. (Yes, I chose that word

carefully. The reactions that I have received in email make it sound like Stephen Halbrook and

I are greater threats to gun rights than the Violence Policy Center. I am now "a problem"

for this bunch because I am teaching Constitutional History, and, they fear, teaching it with an

insufficiently fanatical devotion to their received truth.)

One point raised in these discussions, before I decided to add this bunch to my spam filter,

was the question of what types of mandatory gun registration laws infringe on the Second

Amendment. Accepting for the moment the notion that the Second Amendment protects an

individual right (there being only about 90 or so state supreme court and federal court decisions

taking that view), certainly, laws that criminalize possession of an unregistered gun could be

said to "infringe" on that right, because they deny gun ownership for reasons other than criminal

misuse, or reasons to suspect that the owner might misuse a gun.

A mandatory registration law, however, might simply provide for police to register the serial

number of any unregistered gun found in private, otherwise law-abiding hands, in the course of

an investigation. Such a law would not infringe on the right to own a gun. Mandatory registration

through licensed dealers could be justified through the Constitution's interstate commerce clause

(which I believe is how the current licensing of gun dealers is justified).

Anyone care to add their two cents in on this issue? There are probably some arguments under

that right of privacy hiding under the Ninth Amendment inkblot for overturning a mandatory

registration law.

We also know that ex-felons are exempt from mandatory firearms registration because of Haynes v.

U.S., unless the registration scheme is appropriately sanitized to prevent this information

from being used for pursuit of the ex-felon. Could an equal protection argument perhaps

be built on top of Haynes to argue that non-felons deserve the same protection of the law as

ex-felons? There are those who are beginning to argue that loss of voting privileges by

ex-felons is a violation of constitutional rights, because they have served their sentence.

I can see how one might use equal protection to either argue:

1. Ex-felons should get their rights to guns back; or,

2. Non-felons should have at least as much protection from a mandatory registration law as

ex-felons. If it's unfair to penalize ex-felons with loss of voting rights, it's at least as unfair to

penalize non-felons with potential punishment for failing to register a gun.

Clayton E. Cramer

now proudly sporting the title, "'A problem' for people that think the NRA is part of the anti-gun conspiracy!"

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