At 4:33 AM 9/2/96, Skippy wrote:

Contrary to popular fiction, ALL firearms have been permanently registered since the 1968 Gun Control Act. The media monopoly lies when they say the contrary.

Nope. Gun sales between individuals without any paperwork were fully legal in some places until recently (and may still be fully legal...I can only speak of California).

From 1974 until a couple of years ago, I bought and sold a dozen or more rifles, handguns, and even Evil Assault Weapons, mostly through fully legal gun shows. I even sold a .357 Smith to some guy, made a joke about how great these gun shows were and how great it was to be able to just take cash and hand over a gun without any paperwork...the guy laughed and said he was a San Jose cop. I felt nervous for a few seconds, but quickly realized there was no law *I* was breaking, so I laughed too.

Most of these guns I kept no records on, nor did any laws say I had to. (A few years ago it became necessary for even private citizen-units to obtain the proper firearms transfer papers from the gubment. I wanted to sell a laser-equipped Heckler & Koch SP-89 without creating a paper trail (as I'd not had one when I acquired the piece a few years earlier), so a friend of mine used his friendly neighborhood libertarian FFL dealer, who has a policy that the stack of transfer forms he is required to keep on file will mysteriously burn up if the Feds ever seek out his records. (Who knows if he'll abide by this policy, but the point is that there are literally tens of thousands of these "kitchen table FFL dealers," and no computerized filing of records. This is one reason I quit the NRA: they are advocating the "instant check." Such an instant check would mean massive computerization of all files, and of course cross-referencing to files on citizens. This would be much worse than the "paper chaos" of stacks of firearms paperwork sitting in dusty filing cabinets. I'll take a 10-day ineffectual waiting period to a Big Brother database of all purchasers.)

BTW, I muse that the issue of guns, drugs and censorship make an excellent litmus test for libertarians: either you support the legalization of, all of, or your a fake.

I'm not sure what the "legalization of censorship" would mean, though I support the right of anyone to screen out what they choose not to read or view. And I support the right of companies to decide what materials to buy, have viewed by employees, etc. (So if the "Valley Lesbigays" want to show a tape at Hewlett-Packard, H-P can just say "Nope--we're not interested.) I fully support legalization of all drugs, all guns, and am unalterably opposed to any form of government censorship. Does this mean I pass or flunk the litmus test? (He said acidly.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."