Gun controls are being adopted at an ever increasing rate. The foothold was established using the popular back door approach. Most firearms manufacturers do business with the government and sell arms and munitions to foreign countries. Since the Constitution limits the government with "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) must control and regulate via intimidation and by controlling industry. The source and authority for most of their rules comes from Section 414 of the Mutual Security Act of 1954 -- the result of an Arms and Munitions Import and Export Limitation Agreement. It is a treaty entered into with other countries by the U.S. Government and ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Those who make the weapons want to sell overseas and to our own government, so they must agree to abide by the rules the BATF adopts to supposedly cause compliance with the 1954 Treaty and any subsequent arms limitations agreements. The manufacturer agrees to refuse to sell weapons to anyone who does not have a Federal Firearms License. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), a division of the Treasury Department, will issue the Firearms Licenses to anyone who meets their criteria and voluntarily agrees to comply with the BATF Regulations. Either you will abide by BATF rules or the firearms manufacturers will not sell you weapons. If you want to be in the gun business, you must get the license and abide by their restrictive regulations, designed to circumvent the limits of the U.S. Constitution.
You, as a private citizen, are not required to give any information to the gun dealer. That would violate your right to keep and bear arms. But the gun store dealer has a license and he has agreed to abide by the BATF rules and regulations. The dealer is required (under the rules) to get the information or refuse to sell you a weapon. The regulations are subject to change at anytime. Application of a law requiring immediate computer checks of customers, by a seller with a Firearms License, circumvents the intent of the Second Amendment.
This back door approach to changing our system of law is actually causing our legal system to get bogged down. Little dictators want to force their particular likes and desires or standards on the entire population. The courts, sworn to uphold the Constitution, are permitting their very authority to be diminished in the eyes of the people by permitting this back-door approach to circumventing the Constitution.
The door for eventually banning firearms is now wide open and the rules include refusing to wholesale weapons to anyone who is not licensed by the BATF. In order for a local businessman to buy new guns, he must apply for a Federal Firearms License (FFL). That application includes the agreement to keep a list of gun purchasers. Other requirements are added every year, such as waiting periods for delivery and reports to the police department when you want a gun.
If you want to sell your guns for a profit, you can do it. You do not need a license. Of course, BATF will try to convince you that you do. At a major west-coast gun show I noticed that a man had over 50 brand new handguns for sale and he was not taking down the names of the people who bought them. I asked how he could do this without violating the BATF rules.
"I don't have an FFL (Federal Firearms License) so I don't have to follow their rules. I buy the guns from a person who has an FFL and I fill out a form for each one I buy. What I do with it after that is none of the government's business," he explained. The guns were all a part of his Private Collection. He collected new, unfired, automatic pistols -- no two were alike. When he decided to sell his collection at a profit, he didn't even violate the rules. Free enterprise in action! However, don't count on it! Those who want to disarm America are actively looking for ways to require private citizens to run checks on buyers or be held financially responsible for anything the buyer does with the gun.
The BATF License Application (CFR 55.45 - Pg 563) is submitted "under penalty of perjury and the penalties imposed by 18 USC 844(a)." Such a phrase and threat would not be necessary if it were really a valid requirement that dealers have a BATF license. A valid law can speak for itself. Rules need a tangled web of red tape and back-up rules to keep from falling apart under close scrutiny or challenge.
It is also interesting to note when reading the CFR manuals, that there is continued references to laws, treaties and other rules. This is usually a successful method of discouraging the public and even lawyers from searching too far. You can only crack so many books in attempts to find the answer. Eventually the cross references can get one to the point where they forget the original question.
Many fascist controls are being put into place all the time. Now, it is a violation of state rules for a licensed garage to even work on a car when the emissions equipment has been disconnected or removed. The Feds coerced the states to pass such regulations or "lose highway funds."
Successful application of such controls will eventually lead to more controls. In a Supreme Court decision regarding search warrants for CLOSELY REGULATED businesses, the Court actually held that because the industry is so closely controlled, they have no right to expect any privacy and therefore search warrants are not required: "...when an entrepreneur embarks upon such a business (firearms, liquor, etc.), he has voluntarily chosen to subject himself to a full arsenal of government regulation." (Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., supra, 98 Supreme Court at 1820-21).
How long will it be before the Supreme Court decides that since "We the people..." have been so closely regulated in the past, that we can no longer have an expectation of a right to privacy?
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The government can control some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time -- but they can't control all of the people all of the time! (To paraphrase Abe Lincoln).