Registered where? With whom? Few states have gun registries and there's no national gun registry, and as private sales are still perfectly legal in most every state, unless we require registration of every firearm ever purchased in the US, retroactively, there's no way you can enforce a law requiring an FFL transfer of a pre-ligislation firearm unless you catch them in the act.
So what's the solution?
Again, looking at the idea top-to-bottom, let me know what your solution is and we'll go from there. Also, please provide some data as to how many of these mass-shootings have come from privately sold firearms? Thanks.
Playing devil's advocate here. I don't think that this would ever fly in the US but you were looking for anecdotal evidence of a plan enacted by a government that could possibly work. My issue continues to be that the standard position is "But its sooo hard! It's impossible!" yet here is some numerical evidence that one country attempted to tackle the issue and had some measure of success. (Success being fewer mass murders) Sources for the articles are at the bottom of the post.
Washington Post said:
John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is no one’s idea of a lefty. He was one of George W. Bush’s closest allies, enthusiastically backing the Iraq intervention, and took a hard line domestically against increased immigration and union organizing (pdf).
But one of Howard’s other lasting legacies is Australia’s gun control regime, first passed in 1996 in response to a massacre in Tasmania that left 35 dead. The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. It also instituted a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.
Slate article said:
The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent.
Concise list of actual measures put in place:
1. Ban semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns
2. Institute mandatory buyback of now banned weapons
3. Ban private sales
4. Require all weapons be individually registered to their owners
5. Require gun owners present a genuine reason for purchase
Washington Post said:
So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? (John) Howard cites a study (pdf) by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law’s effectiveness.
The paper also estimated that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people results in a 35 to 50 percent decline in the homicide rate, but because of the low number of homicides in Australia normally, this finding isn’t statistically significant.
So while there is conflicting data (the Washington Post does a good job of showing both sides, specifically that the murder rate data was too inconclusive to draw corollaries) there is one thing that is not up for debate.
Slate article said:
But here’s the most stunning statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn’t been a single one in Australia since.
However here is an interesting point of view from an op-ed by John Howard, the face of the Australian bill.
John Howard said:
There is more to this than merely the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and the proximity of the November presidential election. It is hard to believe that their reaction would have been any different if the murders in Aurora had taken place immediately after the election of either Obama or Romney. So deeply embedded is the gun culture of the US, that millions of law-abiding, Americans truly believe that it is safer to own a gun, based on the chilling logic that because there are so many guns in circulation, one's own weapon is needed for self-protection. To put it another way, the situation is so far gone there can be no turning back.
Discuss!
References:
Leftist hippy magazine
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html
Slightly less leftist hippy paper but from a dirty leftitst hippy blog post on said paper
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
Gun buyback study
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
