I support guns’ rights, however, I do have a few questions regarding registration of gun ownership. What is the libertarian view on guns’ registration? i believe that the current law requires every gun owners to register their firearms.
Thank you in advance.
Here in Florida you don’t have to.
There is no national gun registration that I know of; and yes, I am a gun owner. I know that they do a criminal background check, but beyond that, the only person besides myself that has a record of my purchases is the firearms dealer I bought my weapons through.
There have been various schemes and attempts at trying to register firearms in the past two decades that have caused a lot of Second Amendment folks to get heated. My personal favorite was from the numbnut from Rhode Island who was going to require gun owners to report their firearms on the tax returns and pay a tax on them as well.
If you support registration and taxes on gun ownership and support restrictions on what you can do with a gun peacefully then you are not in favor of gun rights. Real rights do not require government permission. Things people do that require govenrment permission are privileges.
Are there any Libertarians that are anti-gun? Or am I the only one, assuming I can call myself a Libertarian holding this position? Would it be consistent with Libertarian thought if like minded individuals set up a neighborhood/town/city that prohibited guns, a dry town if you will.
It would be very consistent as long as you don’t violate the property rights of others.
You would be free to patronize only those businesses that had adequate gun control regulations. For example, you may not take your kid to a Mall that allows its consumers to carry a gun. The point is that a free society is not about “no regulations” but simply about legitimate ownership of property. There will be regulations and rules all over the place, but they will be the product of the market and not some arbitrary law maker that holds a territorial coercive monopoly over its subjects.
Just so you know, banning guns in your town might lure criminals from elsewhere to your town. If you look at how gun control affects crime rates in major US cities, their crime rates dramatically go up. A dry town would no doubt lure criminals, especially when they know that the people in your town cannot defend themselves. Same thing with the right to carry a concealed weapon.
I agree that a free society is a society which respects all private property rights and contracts.
Of course people may set up their own community where they banned firearms, provided there was unanimous agreement, since an individual’s rights cannot simply be voted away. If anyone did create such a community, however, it would quickly become a haven for thieves, drug lords, corrupt officials, and brutal police, all operating with impunity. They have already tried this in places like New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago.
There is a reason that the murder rate is lower in Israel than it is in any major American city. You’re not likely to commit an act of violence when fifty random people can shoot back at you. That’s why to commit murder in Israel, you literally have to be suicidal.
What is the libertarian view on guns’ registration?
Consistently? Libertarians don’t believe in the government existing.
What exactly would be the purpose of gun registration, and what would such information be used for? To find your gun after it’s stolen? If your car is stolen, the police consider it already chopped, and just hand you a report to give to your insurance company. The only reason government would do such a thing is to make confiscation easier when the National Guard rolls in. Totalitarian states such as Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and New York City have always employed such tactics. Trampling on the peoples’ rights just becomes a habit, even when there is no purpose to it. In the end, nobody is safer and everyone is more oppressed.