Annoyed, Yes - Common Sense is Apparently NOT Common

Gun legislation is foolish, almost, but not quite as foolish as the legislation promoted by the gun lobby. It is all asinine. I vehemently agree the vast majority who own firearms are responsible with them, and should continue to own them. We need to address firearms in this country not by trying to nitpick over specific weapons or details of the number of rounds a magazine can hold, but through addressing the legislation barring intelligently addressing the issue.

Addressing the foolishness of current legislation, the so called assult weapons, we banned the real ones outright in 1986. Now all we are arguing about is the rifles and guns that look scary. Yes, I agree this is foolish, and a gigantic waste of time and political capital as well.

We do need responsible legislation. We need to apply common sense to a very deadly problem. As with trying to solve any problem, the first step is to better understand the problem - to study it. To study the problem, we need good data. Through study we can identify patterns in the data, and we can proactively address an emerging pattern before it becomes a real problem.

But we cannot do any of this. A database of registered gun owners does not exist. Such a thing is forbidden by law. It is all either paper, microfiche, or images housed in a building in West Virginia. None if it is searchable. Even there was a database, the Centers for Disease Control cannot study it. There is a law explicitly forbidding this as well.

Gun control laws need to address these two fundamental issues - a registered firearm owner database, and enable the CDC to track and study firearm deaths. Everything else is foolishness, a gigantic waste of time.