Application Make Register 2007: Fill & Download for Free

Why wouldn’t suppressors be legal? They are very rarely used to commit crimes. There are currently about 1.5 million suppressors legally registered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in the United States. Of these, the ATF reports about 44 weapons equipped with suppressors are used each year to commit crimes.According to Western Criminology Review 8(2), 44–57 (2007)“One of the harshest penalties in the federal system is a 30-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of a silencer (used to reduce the noise of a gunshot) during a “crime of violence” or drug trafficking:”Suppressors, commonly referred to as silencers, reduce the noise level that firearms make. They also lessen recoil, potentially allowing one to shoot more accurately.You don’t just walk into your local gun shop and buy one of these. Before you make the purchase you must be approved and your suppressor must be registered with the ATF. If you are registering as an individual, you will be fingerprinted and your photograph will be taken.You must pay a $200 transfer fee to the ATF. This is commonly referred to as a “tax stamp”. Once the ATF approves your application and receives your fee, the firearms dealer is free to release your suppressor to you.The device may be used on any weapon you own that will accommodate it. The tax stamp remains associated with your suppressor for life.

Thanks for the A2A.If the United States banned semi-automatic rifles like the AR 15 would gun owners turn their weapons in? Would there be a war?First off, no firearms “ban” effected by a U.S. Federal law to date has affected weapons legally possessed by civilians as of when the ban took effect. They have all “grandfathered” these weapons, and only the NFA placed any restrictions on future transfer of the restricted weapons. The 2018 version of the AWB, currently languishing in subcommittee, has similar language stating that the ban shall not apply to any weapon lawfully possessed as of when the ban becomes law (which will not happen in 2018 and likely not for the foreseeable future).As of this year there are an estimated 20 million weapons in civilian hands that met the definition of the 1994 AWB, with 25% of gun owners owning at least one. That number is almost entirely the result of post-2004 purchases, most of that in turn coming during the Obama Administration. As for the current proposed bills, from 2017 and 2018, which tighten the definition to a “one-feature rule” as some states have done (NY’s and CA’s versions of the bans being fairly legendary at this point), these definitions only raise the number of guns covered by the definition, and the total number of gun owners affected.So, a ban on further sales is so pointless that the NSSF was actually considering stating its official support of the measure, as nearly all the gun manufacturers in the country were telling the NSSF (the actual gun industry lobby; the NRA is an organization of gun owners) that the market for these rifles is all but saturated as it is. 2018 apparently gave the lie to that (official numbers from the ATF are not yet available even for 2017, but industry analysts and gun manufacturers still talk at least in vague figures, and indications are that Parkland reignited demand as Republicans couldn’t be sure their East Coast Republican President was going to toe the party line on firearms), but the point is that a proposed ban on these weapons that grandfathers the existing ones, as all the Federal ones have, would at this point be like closing the barn door after the cows are not only out, but in the next county.So, with that said, what about a ban that doesn’t grandfather the currently-owned rifles? That would be the worst-case scenario for gun owners, especially given current language of proposed bans, and the recent increase in interest in suppressors (which require a threaded barrel to attach the suppressor, and a semi-automatic rifle or pistol with a detachable magazine and threaded barrel would fall under the 2018 ban’s language). The number of suppressors legally registered under the NFA has increased fivefold since 2007, from about 285k to over 1.3 million, and for each of those there is at least one pistol or rifle with a threaded barrel, most of them semi-automatic. Without the weapon, the silencer’s just a threaded down-filled can.What would gun owners do? Good question.Option 1, very commonly theorized by both sides, is that you’d see a mass uprising of armed individuals determined to give the guns back in person, unloaded through the barrel, and with their owner cold and dead before anyone interested in confiscating it could get anywhere near the gun or owner. This is the worst-case scenario for all involved, and it’s very unlikely for several reasons:The rank and file patrol officers, who’d be the ones going house to house serving warrants, are commonly gun owners themselves, beyond their service weapons. There are departments in every state, with thousands of officers, whose sole job is to work with gun owners to ensure the weapons are used safely and lawfully (game wardens/game rangers), many of whom spend their off-duty hours right out in the blinds with a rifle alongside ordinary civilians. And they’re not all hunting deer with .308s. A new ban with enforced confiscation would literally pit brother against brother.Recall that the estimate is about 25% of the gun-owning public, own a weapon falling under the 1994 definition of an “assault weapon”, and the proposed definitions for new bans have only gotten broader since. Sure, many have no military training and so would be little more than a rabble, but using the middle-of-the-road estimate of 85 million gun owners in the U.S., we’re talking about a rabble of 20 million people, a rabble that outnumbers the sworn police force of this country by something like 27 to 1. You could muster every person in this country empowered to make arrests and send them out into the streets with 100% mindless compliance, and every one of those officers would be required to take the guns away from 25 people, one way or another, without quitting or dying.An enforced confiscation would be impractical in most of the country (all of it, really), because the police have no idea where they all are. There is no nationwide registry of guns or gun owners, and states that have tried it have so far seen compliance rates as low as 4%. For every house where the police may know there’s a banned weapon (or at least be confident enough for a search warrant), there are 24 other houses that have a weapon that didn’t come up on any searchable records. Maybe the house on the other side of the street, or four in a cul-de-sac. And actually going house to house, kicking in every door and turning it upside-down looking for guns would have the ACLU finally on the same side as the NRA for all practical purposes, arguing that the government’s policy is so facially violative of the Fourth Amendment that anyone having anything to do with it should have a bench warrant issued for their arrest for malfeasance in office. This would create a Constitutional crisis the like of which the U.S. has never seen; law enforcement would be torn between obeying executive orders to enforce the statute law, and obeying court orders to stand down (or vice versa), on a national level.So, not very likely. You’ll have police either resigning or straight up refusing to follow orders left and right, dramatically reducing the executive power to enforce such a law, and the Army has no law enforcement powers within the United States except under martial law, which is only legal if the courts in the jurisdiction are not functioning (and the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana, post-Katrina, had a functioning court system and so martial law was illegal; if New Orleans, underwater, was not sufficient grounds for martial law, I really don’t want to see what would be a valid situation for it). The National Guard can be deputized in certain situations, but that’s at the Governor’s discretion, and the President can only override State control of the Guard when the State is using the Guard in violation of Constitutional civil rights. So, as long as the 2A is legally functional, the President’s hands are tied; he can only use the National Guard units to oppose a confiscation when a Governor has mobilized the Guard to enforce one. And anyway, the larger the force you try to muster, the more people you involve in this debate, and the more of them will remember that they serve the Constitution first and the President second.Option 2 is passive resistance. This takes many forms:Ballot box opposition - Any move by Democrats to ban assault weapons, successful or failed, will harden the political lines. 25% of Democrats are gun owners themselves, so a blanket move to ban very popular weapons like ARs will likely see most of those cross the aisle, so Dems will find themselves reduced to as little as 3/4 of their current constituency, all moving over to the GOP, who could nominate a ham sandwich at that point as long as the voter base were confident it would never sign a new gun control law.Tragic boating accidents - Remember I said that there is no national registry, and state registries have very low compliance. The best the police could do in most cases is to knock on the door real polite and inquire as to the whereabouts of such and such a gun that they have some probably outdated documentation on. The gun owners will have a ready script: “Oh, I lost that one a long time ago in a really deep lake in another state.”. The police can think you’re lying all they want. That won’t get them a search warrant. Recall that any move for a forced mass confiscation, even with blanket warrants, would be contested within hours in every single court in the nation by both the ACLU and the NRA. They’ll contest the grounds for the warrant, the constitutionality of such broad applicability, and where there isn’t a warrant at all the plaintiffs will have a field day in court tearing the entire policy apart.Nonviolent opposition - Marches. Rallies. Parades. With or without permits, but largely without weapons; a show of pure human force. If you thought the March for Our Lives rally was big, you ain’t seen nothing. We’re talking about empty-holster rallies totally shutting down every major city for days at a time.Gun owners are numerous, and while no longer a true majority of Americans, they tend to be among the most motivated voting base any political party could ask for. Gun owners are a large part of the reason Trump was elected; Clinton made no secret of her dislike for guns and calls for gun control, and while it may seem shallow, guns are enough of an issue to have one of the largest single-issue activist bases in the country. Just like Obama was elected as “not another Republican who got us into this economic mess”, Trump was elected as “not another Democrat who will continue to push Obama’s misguided gun control and broken criminal justice reform policies”.Option 3?Sit back and laugh right alongside the police at the ineptitude and naivete of the legislators.No, I’m serious.Massive noncompliance with SAFE Act'No' Sheriff in Town: Some Lawmen Refuse to Enforce Federal Gun Laws.Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun ControlGun control still 'not the issue' for law enforcement despite police attacksAnd these are in states and locates where strict gun control measures are getting out of the Legislature. Can you imagine telling Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that he’s got to give the ATF and FBI his full cooperation for a statewide confiscation? He deployed the State Guard to observe joint military training exercises at Ft. Hood, on the premise that it could be a prelude to a military coup by the Obama Administration. As kooky as I think that move was, it erases any doubt over what he’d actually order state and local law enforcement to do in the face of a confiscation order. And Texas is heading purpler; I can only imagine what the Feds would face in Appalachia or the Rockies, or the Plains States north of the Lone Star. You know, all those hard-working backbone-of-America types making up 80–90% of an entire region’s population, that won’t quite have forgotten about being called a “basket of deplorables”.

Some Democrats already are. 22% of registered Dems own a gun, and 23% of those identifying as having a liberal ideology, regardless of party affiliation, own a gun. 36% of ideological moderates and 37% of political independents, which both parties claim as their own, own guns. It’s possible, even common, to be liberal on a number of key issues and still be pro-gun. I'm one of those people; I come from a liberal household and generally think that socially and fiscally the Dems have the right idea, but the party-majority support for gun control is a bridge too far.As a party, the Democrats have been careful with their words, so to avoid giving too many political weapons to the Republicans. The fiery, aggressive anti-gun rhetoric of the early 90s, coupled with the legislation produced (Brady Bill, GFSZA, AWB) was credited as a primary reason the Dems lost control of Congress in 1994, and it took two wars and the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression for the Dems to get it back 12 years later.This is the DNC’s 2016 platform on the topic of gun violence:With 33,000 Americans dying every year, Democrats believe that we must finally take sensible action to address gun violence. While responsible gun ownership is part of the fabric of many communities, too many families in America have suffered from gun violence. We can respect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping our communities safe. To build on the success of the lifesaving Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, we will expand and strengthen background checks and close dangerous loopholes in our current laws; repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to revoke the dangerous legal immunity protections gun makers and sellers now enjoy; and keep weapons of war—such as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines (LCAM's)—off our streets. We will fight back against attempts to make it harder for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to revoke federal licenses from law breaking gun dealers, and ensure guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists, intimate partner abusers, other violent criminals, and those with severe mental health issues. There is insufficient research on effective gun prevention policies, which is why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must have the resources it needs to study gun violence as a public health issue.Let’s break that down:Expand and strengthen background checks - Republicans are cautiously in favor of this as well; the shooting in Sutherland Springs by a man who should never have been able to walk into an Academy and buy any gun was evidence the government was not following its own laws. An additional 4,000 cases of similar failures to report disqualifying violations of the UCMJ (DDs or BCDs, equivalents of felonies or domestic violence misdemeanors) only strengthened that conclusion across the political spectrum. The Fix NICS Act is now law as of late March 2018 and is in process of being implemented, and very few on either side think that’s a bad thing.Close dangerous loopholes - By this the DNC refers to the “private sale loophole”, aka the “gun show loophole”. The GOP will commonly say it’s not a loophole; the Brady Bill’s NICS provisions were intentionally written this way for three reasons:First, the Feds’ ability to restrict intrastate transfers was not well-tested; the Commerce Clause facially allows the Feds to regulate trade in firearms across state lines, and Wickard v. Filburn gave the Feds authority via the Commerce Clause to regulate things “of a type that move in interstate commerce”, whether the things in question actually did cross state lines (in Filburn’s case wheat grown to feed livestock, which didn’t even leave his farm). However, that case was nearly 60 years old and very little had been decided since, and another challenge to the Gun-Free School Zones Act was working its way up. It was prudent, at least at the time, to avoid writing another law that could be overturned in its entirety as an overreach.The year was 1992; the Internet was still a toddler at the time, and so NICS was created as a call center instead of an online service (which was recently added, but is still not in widespread use among FFLs). Requiring that center to deal with not only every new gun purchase (and annual sales have tripled since NICS went into effect), but also every privately-sold, loaned or borrowed firearm, would have delayed the project by years and added billions in costs.The ATF 4473 form that is filled out with the information given to NICS must be kept by the seller for 20 years. That’s a long time to expect a private seller to not only not misuse your identifying information (a fully-filled-out 4473 is identity theft on a silver platter; name, address, DOB, POB, SSN/TIN, the works), but also to safeguard that information. FFLs have a lot of overhead inherent in secure storage of not only guns, but tens of thousands of 4473s carefully arranged by year. Those forms, in the wrong hands, are far more valuable than the actual guns. So, requiring even temporary transfers to go through NICS the same way as new sales would dramatically increase the risk of identity theft.We have the technology to create a system that mitigates these issues; the problem is proving that the system can’t be used as a national registry or to form one over time, which is a huge hard limit for gun owners. A list of who has the guns has invariably been used wherever it has existed to confiscate at least some of those same guns. Some examples sound paranoid or extreme, such as Germany’s own registries as well as registries in other countries like Belgium and Denmark which were used to confiscate civilian firearms in Nazi-occupied territories in WWII. Others are happening right now in the United States; Connecticut was planning to go house to house confiscating semi-automatic rifles meeting that state’s definition of “assault weapons”, that records of sale indicated were bought but never registered as such in the state. They had to put that on hold because it turned out 68% of the state’s own police officers had unregistered weapons. When a majority of your own police force thinks it's a stupid law, they're probably right.Repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act - For those not in the know, the PLCAA, codified in 15 USC Ch. 105, prohibits the bringing of any lawsuit alleging damages based on the misuse of a firearm against any manufacturer or seller of firearms. Lawsuits may still be brought in cases of “negligent entrustment” (a seller sold a gun to a person or in a circumstance that they shouldn’t have), and it still allows suits for damages due to defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct and other actions.The law was passed in response to several anti-gun politicians and advocacy groups, including Democrat office-holders in New York, New Jersey and California, filing these kinds of suits against gun manufacturers with the express purpose of bankrupting them with legal costs. No other consumer product has been the target of such actions. Even tobacco producers were not sued because of the criminal misuse of their products; they were sued and fined for false advertising and perjury, and because their product, used exactly as intended, kills its own user.The law therefore exists for the exact reason Democrats don’t like it; it prevents their express stated desire to circumvent not only the 2A but the basic rules of jurisprudence in civil courts by making sure gun manufacturers in the United States are run out of business. Its repeal would allow these suits to continue again, unabated by anti-gun State and Federal judges who could cost gun manufacturers millions of dollars every time they deny a motion to dismiss.Keep “weapons of war” - assault weapons and large-capacity magazines - off our streets - And we come to the heart of the gun control movement’s most public advocacy; banning the AR-15 and others like it. The statistics are clear; despite widely-publicized mass shootings, more people are killed with hammers than with any rifle, whether semi-automatic or otherwise (the ATF and FBI do not differentiate between operating methods in their reporting). Handguns remain overwhelmingly the most common weapon type in firearm-related deaths. This is despite an estimated 25% of gun owners now owning at least one rifle of a type and configuration that would have been banned under the 1994 AWB. These rifles aren’t even used in a majority of mass shootings. Simply put, these rifles are not the problem.As for LCMs? The usual, and fairly arbitrary, threshold is typically 10 rounds. 10-round magazines for ARs, much like those for most full-frame handguns, require artificial spacers below the follower in order to function in the gun; they are by no means “standard” capacity for those guns and in fact gun manufacturers have to go out of their way to comply with these regulations (which, for some reason, don’t apply to the police. Weird.). Those 10-round mags, BTW, are exactly the magazines the Parkland shooter used, so the 10-round limit had zero effect on his ability to kill 17 people. The Newtown shooter had access to larger magazines, but evidence shows he was discarding them after just 10 or 15 rounds fired in “tactical reloads” to ensure he had a full magazine between groups of victims. So a 10-round limit wouldn’t have mattered much to him either. The Virginia Tech shooter used a combination of 10 and 15-round magazines - 19 in total - to kill 33 people, so I wager he wouldn’t have been slowed much by having only 10-rounders. It’s almost like gun control advocates think reloading is hard.Fight back against attempts to make it harder for the BATFE to revoke FFLs - Not quite sure what they’re referring to here, other than the idea that FFLs shouldn’t be revoked for “inadvertent errors or technical mistakes”. That’s written into the Firearm Owner’s Protection Act, which is 32 years old this year. Most gun owners regard FOPA with disdain for its inclusion of the Hughes Amendment, which closed the book on NFA registrations of machine guns (the remaining 175,000 or so “transferrable” machine guns typically cost 5 figures each plus the NFA tax and months of paperwork, and to even put your hands on a newer one you basically have to either be a cop or in the business of selling guns to cops), however the Act really did protect firearm owners and sellers from government abuses of power that were rampant in the wake of the Gun Control Act, which gave the ATF as we know it today most of its current power to regulate, investigate and prosecute firearm sellers. There are attempts to increase the ATF’s investigative capabilities with more funding, and to lift the restriction on the feds creating a centralized database. Republicans are at least publicly in favor of better enforcement of the laws (less in favor of the money it would cost; the ATF’s budget has doubled in the 21st Century as it is, with no more agents than it used to have, so more field agents looking at NICS denials and inspecting paperwork means even more money), but a registry, again, is a total no-go.Ensure guns do not fall into the hands of:Terrorists, […] other violent criminals - Totally in favor. How? The platform’s thin on ways to do this that don’t make law-abiding gun owners’ lives a living hell. “No-fly, no-buy”? By its nature the No-Fly List is sensitive information; if you know your name’s on it, you know the U.S. Government knows who you are and considers you a likely threat to national security, and there are people on that list we’d rather not tip off. However, if being on the no-fly list makes you a “prohibited person” under 18 USC Sec 922 (the bulk of Federal restrictions on sale/possession/transfer of firearms), then it’s a 10-year Federal felony for you to try to buy one. So that blue-shirted TSA agent gets that much more power over you; not only can they strip-search you for making a snide comment, that little episode also bars you from buying a gun and makes you a Federal felon if you even try, all without your knowledge. Couple that with a near-total lack of due process (assuming you even know you’re on it, there’s no definite legal path to get yourself removed), and this is a non-starter.Intimate partner abusers - The “boyfriend loophole” mentioned here is also getting more attention in the wake of Sutherland Springs and other notable shootings committed by domestic abusers. An update to the Brady Act in 1996 made those convicted of domestic abuse of a family member (even if it’s a misdemeanor offense) prohibited persons. All well and good; wife-beaters probably shouldn’t have guns. However, it leaves out people convicted of abusing a person they have had a romantic or intimate relationship with, but no formal familial ties; boyfriends/girlfriends, paramours/mistresses, live-ins/common-laws, and their direct blood relations (parents/children). This is indeed a loophole, and closing it is not a bad idea. The primary counterargument is “bitchez be crazy”; it’s not unheard of, in fact fairly common anecdotally, for intimate partners to accuse each other of physical abuse out of spite. Investigation and prosecution of these types of offenses also range across the spectrum; my own wife and her mother were abused by her biological father, who never spent a day in jail despite several calls and reports of said abuse. On the other side, it’s well known in legal circles that women accuse their partners of totally fabricated episodes of abuse, for the sole purpose of getting their partner on record as a wife-beater to gain an advantage in the relationship (or the divorce proceedings). Allegations of abuse are often taken at face value and shift the burden of proof on the (typically male) defendant to prove the abuse did not happen. Even recanted testimony and reports can be used to sway a jury, by claiming that the recanting is pure Stockholm Syndrome after a moment of lucid realization of the danger of their partner. Upping the ante by making a boyfriend prohibited from owning a gun for life, just for having the bad luck to date a crazy woman, is not the right way to deal with this.Those with mental health issues - Ah yes. The very next day after media sources revealed that Adam Lanza was a high-functioning autistic with pathological antisocial tendencies, psychologists and mental health counselors were on the tube cautioning viewers not to jump to conclusions about the mentally ill in general, that only a very small percentage of people with mental illnesses have any violent tendencies, and in most of those cases it’s a tendency toward self-harm. So we’re still looking for needles in haystacks even after cutting down the haystack. By how much? About one in 5 people will have a mental health issue in their lifetimes according to the APA. Ten percent of the population is diagnosed with childhood ADHD, and half of those retain symptoms into adulthood. Suicidal ideation tends to be short-lived and very hard to predict even among those with depressive disorders.So what’s the fix? Require a State-licensed psychiatrist to put his own name and signature on the line (in more ways than one) endorsing your firearms application? If you happen to go out and kill two dozen people, his reputation is shattered whether his license gets pulled for it or not. There’s an obvious alternative; deny everyone you meet, then nobody can ever prove you wrong. That’s known as a perverse incentive, and we try to avoid those regarding our basic civil rights.The other alternative? A standardized questionnaire for mental health issues alongside the 4473 questionnaire of various disqualifying events. The correct answers are obvious, and unless you’ve been committed to a mental institution against your will, the government can’t even prove you wrong like they can with NICS. Is someone over the phone going to say that you are experiencing disembodied voices?Restore funding and mandate to the CDC to research gun violence - Perhaps a little context is needed. Largely as part of the effort to pass the myriad early-’90s firearm legislation, in 1993, the CDC funded a study by Arthur Kellerman, which reached the opposite conclusion of statisticians John Lott and Gary Kleck, that “more guns equals less crime”. Kellerman asserted the opposite; that gun owners were not just more likely to be the victims of violent crime, they were 54 times more likely to die by gunfire than to use their gun to kill a criminal assailant. That conclusion pointedly ignored the fact that about 96% of defensive gun uses do not involve pulling the trigger at all. Others pointed out that his analysis focused on guns to the exclusion of all other weapons held by either the assailant or defender (One could get a similar result from a study of the possession of kitchen knives), and that the ratio included every possible situation of death by firearm including suicides and accidents, compared only to willful justifiable homicide by firearm on behalf of a homeowner, deliberately stacking the deck against defensive use.These and other discrediting analyses of the Kellerman study were the driving force behind a bill known as the Dickey Amendment, which banned the CDC from using federal funds to “advocate for or promote gun control”, and reallocated its existing firearm study funding to traumatic brain injury research. The CDC, in fact, is not barred from researching gun violence; it is simply barred from funding or publishing studies openly asserting the conclusion that gun control is effective or necessary. Of course gun control advocates, who support that very conclusion, will say that’s as good as, because the CDC could only ever publish the exact opposite conclusion. In theory, an unbiased look at a narrow question of gun violence, with clinical reporting of the results without asserting a conclusion, would be fine by the terms of the Dickey Amendment no matter what they found. However, proving a study has zero bias is like proving whether or not you believe in a God; ultimately we can either take your word for it, or reverse-engineer a conclusion from your actions.In 2007, however, Gary Kleck, in reviewing the CDC’s papers on the topic of guns, found an unpublished study from 1996. The stated intent was to discredit his own statistics on the annual number of defensive gun uses, which he estimated at around 2.2 million based on his own surveys. The CDC’s much broader and more rigorous phone survey came to the figure of… 2.4 million. So, the CDC commissioned a study aimed at discrediting his, came to the opposite conclusion in favor of gun rights… and buried it deep in their archives for 11 years. Once this came to light in the Bush Administration, it tabled the topic of lifting the ban after the AWB expired, and with the housing crisis looming, the nation was otherwise occupied for a number of years until late in 2012 when Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT with a Bushmaster-branded AR-15.In 2013, in the wake of Newtown and with a renewed attempt at an Assault Weapons Ban in Congress, Obama asked the CDC to revisit any existing research and compile an analysis. With the Dickey Amendment in mind, they looked at the existing work, borrowing stats from across the political spectrum of study backers, and their official conclusion was, “more study is needed”. Privately, sources have said that those involved in the study sent a memo to President Obama saying, in effect, “you’re not going to want to use anything we found in support of the AWB”. What they'd found was what we know from FBI crime and death reporting; rifles are involved in less than 300 deaths annually, while partly because of Obama's 2008 election and much more significantly due to the pending AWB, these weapons were now owned by one in five gun owners with nearly ten million sold (now closer to 16 million and 25% of gun owners). The Obama Administration more or less sat on the CDC report until it was leaked by Congressional Republicans, the 2013 AWB died in the Senate, and the issue of CDC funding for gun research been hotly contested ever since.So, some of what the DNC wants is pretty universal at least in theory. What it has actually advocated for since this platform was published has, with the exception of Fix NICS, been very strongly opposed by anyone with any clue about guns, including the bump stock ban (so generalized it can be applied to almost any weapon with any attention paid to trigger feel), ill-fated AWB bills in 2017 and 2018 (strengthening the criteria from a “two-feature” to a “one-feature” definition as well as including any semi-automatic variant of a fully-automatic firearm which would also ban several very popular handguns), and the promised efforts to repeal or judicially overturn the PLCAA.So, to actually answer the stated question, if the Democrats officially joined in lock-step with the Republicans on the topic of guns, I personally would go officially register as a Democrat, because at that point they would agree with my own stance on all the major talking points.