The Instant Registration Check is one of the worst things that has been done to the Second Amendment and to gun owners.

This became law as part of the Brady Bill, having been designed to replace the waiting period after the first five years of the act.

The waiting period was unconstitutional because it infringed on the people’s right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.

The waiting period encouraged local law enforcement agencies to convert our Second Amendment right into a privilege. A right does not exist if the government gets to give permission for us to exercise the right.

Well, the instant registration check also converts a right into a privilege — both presume that the government should control the exercise of the right.

“But,” gun control advocates will ask, “what about all the bad guys the Brady Law has kept from getting guns?” The answer is that those who are actually disqualified from owning a gun (less than half of those initially rejected) can easily get a gun elsewhere if they are intending to commit a crime.

The Brady Law has not lowered crime. Crime started to decline before the Law went on the books. Armed citizens keep crime down, and making it legally easier for the average person to carry a concealed firearm must get a lot of the credit for our decline in crime.

Meanwhile, the Instant Background Check not only converts a right into a privilege, it registers gun buyers at the same time — over 3,000,000 since the FBI started doing the checks. The FBI says they need to keep the names of gun buyers who have broken no laws for law-enforcement purposes.

What? Files on non-criminals? What paranoia! The FBI evidently thinks the same way Sarah Brady does — the civilian population cannot be trusted to keep and bear arms.

Am I being paranoid? What’s wrong with registering gun owners? Ask those who bought an SKS sporter rifle in California at a store and had to register it. Now they are a crook if they did not hand it in by the end of last year. And the state of California has had plans to go door to door to get the over 90% that were not turned in.