Mr. Chad Hayward made some very dangerous statements in the Daily on Monday. He suggested the registration of firearms. Those intent upon criminal actions are not going to register their firearms. Only law-abiding citizens would register their guns and not a single criminal would be stopped.

Hayward doesn’t see how gun registration would affect gun ownership. Gun registration will nationally record the location of every gun so that the government can come and take them when it decides to ban weapons. Then only the criminals will have guns, leaving law-abiding citizens with nothing to defend themselves against the criminals.

Criminals break the law and passing a law will not stop people like the sniper. To stop the sniper, he must be caught and punished in such a way that it will discourage others from copying him.

Gun fingerprinting is a misnomer. These are not fingerprints exactly. These markings on the rifle are the scratches that the bullets receive when traveling through the barrel of the rifle.

Problems with gun fingerprinting are that the “fingerprint” changes over time to be unidentifiable with the original sample.

Gun barrels are interchangable on many rifles and it is easy to change barrels. Barrels are not tracked like completely assembled guns. Changing the barrel will render the gun fingerprinting useless. Besides, by retaining the fingerprinted barrel, the gun could be returned to the original fingerprinting after the altered barrel was used in a crime.

Gun fingerprinting is not the way to go.

There are millions of guns already made. Are we going to round these up to fingerprint them? Is there going to be a fee to pay every year to register the guns? And will it be the nightmare that registering a car is? I know that standing in line at the county courthouse to register my car and having to pay the fee for registration is not fun. Why complicate the life of every law-abiding gun owner and force registration? We know the criminals are not going to bother to register.

Even if gun fingerprinting and gun registrations would help solve the problem of crime in the small instance of a psycho sniper, is surrendering out freedoms for temporary safety the route we want to take? Soon the sniper will be behind bars and the world will be safe from him, but these laws will forever be on the books if Mr. Hayward gets his wish.

Has Mr. Hayward read history? Benjamin Franklin stated that “Those who are willing to trade civil liberties for temporary security, deserve neither.” I for one am not trading my freedoms for a little bit more security. The sniper is evil and will be punished when he is caught. Freedoms should not be removed from the whole country because of a madman who lives a thousand miles away.

Benjamin Rittgers

Senior

Computer Science