[quote]Not exactly. If registering a weapon is a prerequisite to possessing, it does not follow that by being a felon, you are exempted from this. Though you might feel it is redundant, it is a different crime than the possession. If you are driving recklessly AND end up killing someone in the process, you can be charged with both manslaughter and reckless driving. These are separate charges. [/quote]
Suppose you’re crossing the border from Mexico with an ounce of cocaine in your pocket that you just bought there. You can be arrested because you have an illegal drug, and you can be arrested because you failed to declare something you bought in Mexico. Those are two different crimes, but they are still redundant, the first one much more severe than the second one.
[quote]Part of the reason I found it all humorous, is that gun registration is portrayed as a way to keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals. If they are not required to register their firearms, then how is gun registration supposed to accomplish this?[/quote]
And what if they were required to register their firearms, would that make any difference? Once the criminal is caught with a gun, he goes to prison for a long time whether he registered it or not. Nobody would ever register their guns any more than they would declare cocaine at the border crossing. Felons can’t even _get_ guns legally (the only options are to make it, to steal it, to buy it from another criminal, or to fool a licensed gun dealer somehow – in each case there’s one more felony.)
BTW, I found a case, “581 F.2d 704: United States of America v. Robert Lee Wright, Jr.” from 1978 where the defendant got caught with a sawed-off shotgun in his car during a police stop, and ended up convicted simultaneously for having a gun while being a felon, and for failing to register (and for a few other closely related offenses, adding up to 17 years in prison – all because of a single gun). So either Haynes vs. U.S. does not apply as broadly as we think, or it has been superseded (or Mr. Wright had a bad lawyer).
BTW2, Haynes vs. U.S. refers to 26 USC 5871, which only applies to machineguns, short-barrel shotguns and a few other kinds of weapons. There’s no federal law that mandates registration of handguns. In many states, there are no state laws, either.
