Are you in favour of relatively unlimited individual weapon rights? If you are not, you might want to reconsider: I like to think that my reasoning behind this claim is quite convincing.
Before moving on to the aforementioned reasoning, I would like to make it clear that among other things, I design firearms and other kinds of weapons, and why I do so should become fairly obvious if you read the rest of this entry. I am, of course, arguably at least somewhat biased concerning these matters, but it doesn’t seem very rational to simply assume that I am so biased that my arguments about them are somehow deeply flawed or even completely invalid.
It seems to me that power is not intrinsically corruptive, but also that the corrupt tend to seek power and that only the absolutely corrupt seek absolute power, and from this viewpoint, it would seem to be quite sensible for people to seek to safeguard their rights and liberties as well as reasonably possible. Those who are fundamentally opposed to liberty will, of course, work against such safeguarding efforts in a rather consistent, arguably even compulsive manner. It is obviously a priority for such people to seek to deprive the people whom they seek to repress of weapons that can be used as effective means of resistance against repression, especially of the kinds of weapons that are particularly suitable for military and paramilitary uses, of course, and thus it seems that it should be made clear that rifles in this latter category of weapons are used only in relatively small proportions of criminal homicides and other violent crimes involving firearms committed in the United States of America, and that the vast majority of them are, in fact, also at least good and relatively often even excellent for defensive and sporting uses.
To me it seems quite obvious that a state is an entity separate from a people, ideally much like a corporation is from its owners, and that one at least should be just a tool, i.e. a means to an end rather than a self-justifying end in itself, and it would seem to be approximately equally obvious that a state will act only as prosocially as it has to, and it is, of course, rather difficult for a people to coerce a state if they are not suitably equipped to do so.
It would appear to be quite sensible to want to live in a society in which the people don’t have to essentially just hope that the state and obviously law enforcement and the armed forces in particular won’t turn against them at some point due to, for example, systematic extremist infiltration, i.e. to want to have a society in which the people have an overwhelmingly strong ability to keep state power in check instead of a society that is essentially based on wishful thinking. Some people, however, seem to be so indoctrinated and/or enthralled by their fantasies of in some ways relatively unrestricted power, greater wealth, higher social status, and/or ”glory” that they rather conveniently ignore the quite distinct possibility that a society in which at least just about everyone can in practice be coerced to serve it indefinitely is not necessarily a great idea.
The abolition of liberty would seem to be a real threat at least for now, even if it seems like a fairly remote one at the moment. Things can, however, change quite rapidly, as is well known, and it seems that it should be kept in mind that the replacement of liberty with abject repression might happen as a consequence of the relative foolishness of only a single generation. It would thus seem quite reasonable for a people to invest amply in education.
It seems that combining an education system in which a very considerable proportion of the eligible population gets at least half a year or so of military education (including civics classes) with constitutionally guaranteed weapon rights (with some reasonable limitations, of course) would also help to perpetuate liberty: it is obviously relatively difficult to successfully limit the rights and liberties of a people arbitrarily and/or to carry out a coup d’état or a violent revolution successfully if a large proportion of the population in question is opposed to such actions, genuinely capable of well-organized paramilitary and/or military operations against their domestic enemies, and determined to crush them. A well-armed civilian population is, of course, also an extra deterrent against invasion.
From the viewpoint of prioritizing the safeguarding of liberty, a registry of privately owned weapons seems like an eminently bad idea, even though such a registry can, of course, be helpful when used for legitimate purposes, since such a registry can obviously also be used to, for example, facilitate mass confiscation of weapons and/or the creation of a database of people who are, on average, relatively likely to engage in armed resistance against a repressive state and/or to support such resistance. Weapon registry data is, of course, also very attractive to a state or states planning to invade the country in question. Burglars, too, might want to acquire weapon registry data so that they would know which dwellings are relatively safe to burgle even when the inhabitants are present and which dwellings to burgle when the inhabitants are not present if they want to steal weapons. Taking into account all of the ways such a registry can be abused, it seems that the existence of one is arguably a rather considerable threat to the people living under the jurisdiction of a state with one.
Law enforcement work is obviously more inconvenient without the aid of such a registry than with such aid, but at least in this context it doesn’t seem very reasonable to prioritize what is convenient for law enforcement when crafting potentially extremely significant legislation. Law enforcement officers who have to cope with the inconvenience of not having such a registry at their disposal should, of course, be trained and paid relatively well.
In my opinion, there should, however, be a non-logging, well-maintained, robust, easy-to-use system for making instant background checks in order to help prevent and reduce the possession of weapons subject to legal restrictions by people who are not legally allowed to possess them, and the use of a system like this arguably shouldn’t require any special qualifications so that it would fulfil its purpose as well as possible.
States obviously tend to be relatively very significant concentrations of power, and thus it would seem to be quite sensible to maintain a reasonable degree of suspicion towards them.