I realize that I’m commenting a full year after you originally posted this piece but…
This digital system does leave a trail. Personally, I think it should. It’s not a registry, or anything of the sort.
How is it “not a registry”? Every background check run through the NICS requires the make, model, serial number and caliber of the firearm being transferred.
The NICS doesn’t just look at the individuals involved in the transfer. It isn’t “Bob Jones is transferring a firearm to Bill Smith”.
The data in your proposed trail would show that “Bob Jones is transferring a 12 gauge, Remmington 870 shotgun serial number 12345678910 to Bill Smith on 1/23/2017 @ 11:52am.”.
So your “trail” IS a defacto registry. While it wouldn’t mandate that owners go and register firearms they currently have, over time it would collect all of the necessary registration information as new and used firearms were transferred. That was the reason the NICS was passed into law with a requirement that the records be destroyed to begin with.
I’d also disagree with your Step 2. Opening the NICS to the general public through a web portal (or app) is a bad idea.
I can go buy all the necessary personal info on 200 people that all live within my State off the Internet right now for less than $20. The overwhelming majority of them of them will pass the NICS check.
If I were of the criminal mindset, I could sit in front of a laptop and “transfer” all of my firearms to people I’ve never seen without any of them ever knowing that it happened. And I can print out copies of their driver’s license and slap it on a bill of sale along with the NICS approval code as “proof” of a legal transfer processed with the full faith and credit of the United States Government.
Any organized crime group could wash thousands of firearms through such a system dozens of times in a given year making any tracing effort by law enforcement virtually useless. Within a matter of a few years the NICS system would be flooded with thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of fraudulent transactions. Law enforcement would be in no better position under such a system than they are right now. They may actually end up in an even worse position.
I do agree though, that the NICS should be more easily accessible for private sales. IMO, it should be available at any police dept. and checks should be processed bu the local police free of any charge. If the general public wants the claimed benefits that come from background checks on every sale, then general public should be paying for it as a standard part of their general police dept operations. One of the (IMO, legit) complaints on these sorts of things from firearms owners is that the proposals slip in fees with the hidden intent of jacking up the cost of firearms ownership.
