Goddamn lax gun laws

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by Beth

Yes. Unless the laws have changed. Possessing an unregistered gun can get you in serious trouble, unless it is some sort of antique.

As far as I can tell from the bradycampaign.org website, Florida law still has no registration requirements for guns purchased from individuals, only those purchased from gun dealers, pawn shops and second-hand dealers. Electronic gun registration records are required to be purged after a certain amount of time and the only registration paper form filled out is only on file at the gun dealer that sold the gun and nowhere else, so there is no system in place to find out if a gun is registered or not except by the following method.

In a criminal case, they find out where a gun came from by going to the gun manufacturer with the serial number, the manufacturer has a record of which dealer it was sold to, the dealer has the gun buyer registration forms on file. That file may only lead to the original purchaser of the gun, at their address at the time of purchase which may not be up to date anyway, who may or may not still be in possession of that gun. There is no requirement for individuals to keep records of who they sold a gun to. And it's near impossible to know who has guns, how many, and where.

There are millions upon millions of guns in the possession of Americans that never filled out a registration form because they've never bought a gun from anyone but an individual, millions. I know, I have one now and have had others in the past. Plus, everyone that has ever bought a gun from me didn't fill out any registration for it, that would be six guns that I've sold to individuals in my life.

[Godless Dave]

OK, that sounds more like a purchase permit than a registration. I think of registration as a permanent record of who owns what, like a car registration.

Minnesota is the same way: you need a permit to purchase handguns, but not to own one. If you get a purchase permit it's good for several months - as many guns as you can afford to buy in that time period. And it's only required for purchasing from a dealer (including at gun shows). There are no state laws regarding purchase or possession of longarms, just the federal law requiring an instant background check, and records of those are supposed to be purged after six months.

AFAIK there's no record anywhere that I own a shotgun, other than me mentioning it online.

Shooting guns outside, however, is heavily regulated, at least in populated areas.