The national daily Helsingin Sanomat reports that the national weapons register is rife with mistakes and inaccuracies.Government ineptitude. Gee. What a surprise.
So is it better or worse than BATFU's NFRTR?
And let's not even talk about creating an incentive for criminal workarounds via modifying "de-activated weapons," or stimulating the market for "illegal trade."
Oh, hell, let's--not that it will do any good...
[Via Bruce Mills]
How much would a gun registry cost the US?
ReplyDelete"650,000 Finns possess a firearms license. Annually, about 60,000–70,000 guns are exchanged legally."
So about 10% a year transfer a weapon. According to http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp in 1993/94 there were 59.1 million people who own a gun in this country. Additionally there are 47.6 million households with weapons in them in this country.
The average family moves once every 7 years, which means 14% of those household will move each year. According to the Brady campaign there are an estimated 193 million privately owned guns in America, so each household would average 4 guns each.
14% of 47.6 million times 4 equals 26.6 million, the number of registration address changes that would need to be entered annually. Add to that the private transactions of 5.9 million and the 4.5 million new guns bought each year (stat from the Brady Campaign), and the total is 37 million registry changes each year.
Assuming that each registry change takes a total of 10 minutes to process from start to finish (sorting the mail, opening it, distributing it, entering the data, etc.).
Now assume that each bureaucrat involved has 6 productive hours a day gives us 1654 man years means it would require 3728 active workers to process the changes. AFSCME workers average about $25/hour or about $52,000 a year. Add 20% for supervisory personnel and you have an annual personnel only budget of over $230 million.