About 36,000 registered guns unaccounted for in D.C.

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http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1435659

WASHINGTON - As the District prepares to begin accepting applications for handgun permits, police are having a tough time finding tens of thousands of handguns already registered in the city. "Honestly, there are thousands of handguns that were registered in the city and I don't know whether those handguns are still in the city," says D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
About 41,000 handguns are already registered in D.C., and more than 36,000 of those guns are owned by residents who registered prior to the 1976 ban.
On WTOP's Ask the Chief program, Lanier says police don't know where the 36,000 registered handguns are because the department has not done an audit.
"A lot of these were registered pre-gun ban law, pre-1976, and even though those who registered back then were required to let us know if they moved or no longer have possesion of the handgun, whether they did or not we don't know. We believe that a lot of people did not."
Lanier says the main reason police have not done an audit is a lack of technology.
"Automation will make that a lot easier. It's all paper documents. We're working right now to automate all the information we have. It's hard to audit paper records."
D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), who chairs the committee that oversees the police, is concerned about how this will impact the department's ability to implement the new handgun regulations.
"It is unfortunate that this problem of how we have handled registration in the past is going to complicate the effort to start up new registrations. Clearly the government is going to have to get ahead of the game if we're going to do this right."
Lanier says about 1,100 of the handguns are registered to off-duty D.C. Police officers who live in the city, 163 belong to retired D.C. Police, 150 are registered to law enforcement officers who live in D.C. but do not work for the Metropolitan Police Department and about 2,800 belong to security companies.
(Copyright 2008 by WTOP Radio. All Rights Reserved.)

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Jeez, all this fuss over only 36,000 guns? There's probably at least one member on here with that many...


Edited to clarify...

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Clearly, this is why registration is generally a bad idea from a government accounting standpoint. It's why the "balistic fingerprinting" idea is too cumbersome for any real practicality. Unfortunately, it looks like the District is trying to lay the groundwork for dragging their heels on implementing the remedy required in Heller.

"Oops, we lost the 36,000 we already had registered! Our bad! Guess we have to start all over, so give us a several year extension, after all 36,000 registrations is a lot to track down, let alone all of the new ones we're going to get. Sorrrrrrrryyyyyy!"

Death by bureaucracy may be slow, but it's oh so painful.

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How could anybody be convicted of posessing an unregistered handgun with records so bad?

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How about just having a big bonfire and burn the 41,000 handgun registrations they have and then leave We, the People the hell alone as our Founders intended.

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deepdiver wrote:

How about just having a big bonfire and burn the 41,000 handgun registrations they have and then leave We, the People the hell alone as our Founders intended.

Click to expand...

Or better yet, draw circles on the backs of them and use them as targets

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The Chief of Police obviously doesn't read the Washington Post, because if she did she would know that the owners of all those guns committed suicide.

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I think everyone that paid to have there guns registered should get there money back. How can the police keep them safe if they loose track of where all the guns are? (sarcasm) They probably confiscated them and didn't know it. Or the people fled there little city state and didn't tell them for fear of being followed. This is why when the government says do this it'll keep you safe.Everyone should say, No thats alright I'll do it myself. This is a really good example of what happens when government does more than it's chartered to do. Also why the founding fathers had it wrote out, real simple like. But then they had to go and start thinking.