Nebraska Bill Would Protect Gun Owner Privacy

No one should find themselves on a government list simply because they exercised their constitutionally protected rights. If I speak out about injustice, I shouldn’t be put on a list because I used my First Amendment rights. I shouldn’t be on a government list because of where I go to church. No one should.

But gun owners often find themselves having to defend their privacy from a government that seems to view the Second Amendment as a second-class right. They want us all to be put on lists.

In Nebraska, though, a new measure seeks to prevent just that from happening.

Nebraska Firearms Owners Association Vice President Joe Goebel believes the government should not put you on a list if you own a firearm.

“They’re not supposed to be having a list on you,” Goebel said. “As we’ve seen in the past, when they’ve had lists and what not on citizens throughout history—across the world and the U.S.—the creation of lists leads to the abuse and civil rights violations and facilitates confiscating.”

There is no national gun registry.

Goebel’s organization believes Nebraska law should align with that. That’s why they support LB686, which state Sen. Dan Lonowski of Hastings introduced.

If passed, state entities would not be allowed to keep records or registries of firearms ownership. Exceptions would include keeping records during a criminal investigation.

“It basically protects Nebraskans in case the federal government, sometime in the future, would try to change that,” Goebel said.

LB686 would also prohibit companies that process credit or debit card transactions from assigning firearms retailers merchant category codes (MCCs) that distinguish them from other retailers.

A banking group argues that the MCCs couldn’t lead to a registry because they don’t look in the bag to see exactly what is being bought. In fairness, that’s true.

But if someone is going to a gun store regularly, people could figure out that this person might be a gun owner. 

Plus, let’s remember that this idea was first floated as a way to actually do pretty much what the group says can’t be done; as a way to monitor people buying guns in some “suspicious” fashion, which no one has yet managed to define for me in a way that couldn’t just as easily apply to anyone who is interested in owning firearms.

Of course, if it won’t work that way, then I see no harm in telling credit card companies they can’t use specific codes for gun stores. Do you?

The truth of the matter is that there’s no reason to keep records of who owns guns beyond those necessary to eventually confiscate guns. Gun registration doesn’t prevent crime. It rarely, if ever, solves a crime. It’s mostly useless for anything except monitoring which law-abiding citizens have what firearms.

That’s it.

So yeah, I think Nebraska needs this bill. I think all 50 states need this bill.

It’s bad enough that it seems the ATF is breaking the law and monitoring lawful gun purchases, which creates a registry of sorts, but we don’t need to let state authorities do the same.