How does one suspect someone has illegal weapons? "I bet he has an Illegal gun or two"? Unless tipped off, they appear to be completely clueless.
The way I propose introduces a polite search and clarification. Can be refused multiple times but when it becomes suspicious and they have reason to believe you're refusing for a reason besides it being a bad time, then a search warrant would probably be the course of action.
"Your honor, he refused to let me search his home for illegal weapons on three different occasions. If he were a law-abiding citizen, he would have no reason to object to police searching his home, so now we need to search his home to find out what he's hiding."
People attempt this kind of logic all the time: "If you have nothing to hide, then why are you concerned about warrent-less wire taps?" "If you have nothing to hide, then why are you upset I want to pat you down?" "If you have nothing to hide, then you'll have no problem with the government tracking your online activity." "Only people hiding something would say no."
Do you see the problem here?
This is a direct violation of one of the basic premises of American law - that you are innocent until proven guilty. That is ignored often enough as-is; we sure as hell don't need a policy that explicitly equates standing up for your rights with criminal behavior. If the police have reason to suspect you have illegal weapons, they can get a warrant. Otherwise, they can stay the hell out of my home.
I would also oppose to random pat downs, Unless they have reason to believe I am a threat. If they do believe me to be a threat then from a distance they could tell me the reason why I am being patted down such as there has been a robbery in the area and you match the persons description. Having nothing to hide myself, This wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, NYPD actually implemented random pat-downs, called stop-and-frisk, and it was upheld over an NYCLU court case by claiming that it didn't target any individual group. (That was on appeal - the original District Court ruling was that they were unconstitutional, but it was overturned on appeal.) They've since caught a TON of flak, as the patdowns have been used far, far more against minorities than anyone else, well out of proportion to the actual racial distribution in NYC. (In fact, in one year, there were more pat-downs of black people than there were black residents.)
The city is claiming to be in the process of reworking the policy, but at this time the NYPD still overwhelmingly targets blacks and hispanics.
I understand your point on the Gun registry, I don't see how gun nuts can see Gun Registry and taking them away. In fact its the opposite, You register to get a gun?
But hey, each to their own.
To be honest, I think the Biometric scanners are really not needed. If you are in control of your weapon and it is stored safely and securely then no one but yourself should even be holding the weapon. Yes I understand it would help reduce accidental deaths, But surely there is a more cost effective way? I dread to think of the cost of each biometric scanner on each weapon, let alone all of them!
The biometrics scanners would have two purposes - they would seriously limit accidental deaths, especially kids shooting someone while playing with the guns, and they would make the gun useless if stolen, unless someone found a way to hack the chip, and I guarantee you most folks who steal guns aren't going to be able to hack chips. If they could do that, they'd make WAY more money for way less risk via hacking or legit jobs.
But yet again may I stress, I have said that my opinions are coming from a side of the pond without many guns at all. Your side of the pond would obviously see it different than mine as you have lived along side guns most of your lives.
Fair enough.
