“You’re paranoid.”

“The government isn’t after your guns.”

“Nobody wants to confiscate your guns.”

“Registration doesn’t lead to confiscation.”

How many times have we heard gun control advocates snottily ridicule us for knowing our own history? For understanding the nature of statism?

“This isn’t Nazi Germany,” they say. “No one is going to disarm you and victimize you.”

“Registration is a safety measure,” they claim. “It’s a crime prevention measure.”

Is it? From Buffalo, NY comes a report that details a plan by the police department in that city to begin confiscating firearms of legal gun owners after their deaths.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derrenda said at a press conference last week that the department will be sending people to collect guns that belong to pistol permit holders who had died so “they don’t end up in the wrong hands.” The department will cross reference pistol permit holders with death records and the guns will be collected when possible, he said.

Derrenda said guns pose a threat if their owner is no longer alive to safeguard them, especially if a recently-deceased gun owner’s home is burglarized.

[…]

The state law says that if the permit holder dies, the estate has 15 days to dispose of the guns or turn them in to authorities, who can hold the weapons up to two years. LoHud.com reported that violation of the law by survivors is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine.

So how will the police department find out whether the deceased had a gun? Carry permits? ATF 4473 forms, which licensed firearms dealers have to retain for at least 20 years?

While not “technically” registration, these records give the authorities the tools they need to confiscate firearms – to steal them from the families of the deceased when they are grieving and vulnerable – to violate basic property rights.

And Buffalo isn’t the only place where this odious infringement on basic human rights has happened.

In Connecticut, cowardly politicians rammed through a registration requirement for all firearms they deemed to look scary.  Gun owners resisted, and the majority of what these pusillanimous twits call “assault” weapons remained unregistered.  A few tried to register at the last minute, before the suspense, they wound up in limbo. The state now had their ownership information, and began confiscation proceedings against these gun owners, claiming they illegally held their property.

The state is sending letters to 106 rifle owners and 108 residents with high-capacity magazines saying they can destroy the guns and ammunition, sell them to a federally licensed gun dealer, move the items out of state or sell them to somebody out of state, or make arrangements to turn them over to local or state police.

Those who fail to do so could face serious criminal penalties.

In California, a de facto registration law signed by Jerry Brown in 2011 required the state to retain background-check records of those who purchase guns (although it did not register specific guns to specific people.) And you know what happened? Reason magazine explained in January.

The new law will bolster a program that has generated much controversy. Earlier this month, legislators held hearings on the effectiveness of the Armed Prohibited Persons System, used to confiscate the firearms of California residents who are no longer eligible to own them. The California Department of Justice relies on the current ownership lists to identify gun owners and cross check those with lists of people who have been convicted of crimes or have been involuntarily committed for mental issues.

The state auditor found, in a report released in October, that the department has not sufficiently notified courts and mental-health officials of their reporting requirements. Despite a new $24-million state appropriation, the auditor found that the program has failed to take guns from nearly 21,000 Californians who have forfeited their gun rights.

Not enough for you?

Registration led to confiscation in Australia, and Barack Obama wants to make that nation an example for the United States. (Yes, I know the link is RT – the Kremlin funded propaganda machine – but in this case, it’s actually correct reporting.)

After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia, its government passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. They also implemented a mandatory gun “buyback” – also known as confiscation (with perhaps a nominal payment for the owner’s property).

Those who do not remember history are, indeed, doomed to repeat it. That is the warning Canadian news anchor Brian Lilley  gave his American neighbors last year when he emphasized that registration did, in fact, lead to confiscation in Canada.

And in my birthplace – the USSR – firearm registration was introduced in 1918, which led to confiscation of weapons from everyone but… you guessed it… members of the Communist Party, with a stint in jail for anyone who possessed firearms and wasn’t a member. This was how Communists cemented their power over the hated bourgeoisie – those business owners, capitalists, and other undesirables whom they wanted to keep defenseless.

Those of us who grew up in tyrannical holes understand only too well that registering people for exercising their natural rights can only lead to the demise of those rights. Those of us who have studied history understand this as well.

Those who ignorantly seek to treat their fellow Americans like criminals merely for daring to exercise their rights either forgot their history, or are ignoring it.

Those of us who remember history never had any doubt about the end result of registration.