Charleston Institutes "Voluntary" Gun Registration

Today's Charleston Gazette and Charleston Daily Mail both had stories reporting that the Charleston Police Department was instituting a new program called "Project Gun Safe" "to reduce gun crimes, to promote officer and public safety and to educate and involve community members on personal firearm responsibility."

"Project Gun Safe" includes such wasteful, feel-good compoenents as a gun buy-back program and $100 rewards for information leadings to arrests for "possessing an illegal gun." However, this program has a far worse component.

The Charleston Gazette reports that "Project Gun Safe" "includes an effort to document firearms held legally within the city. Charleston police will be giving out safety locks to citizens that voluntarily provide a firearm inventory card for each gun they own to the Charleston Police Department."

You read that correctly: "voluntary" gun registration has arrives in the Mountain State. Click here for WVCDL's press release responding to today's shocking news.

Gun buy-backs?

"Voluntary" registration?

WTF is going on down there in Charleston?

I grew up in WV, and most of the folks I know who still live there would be unstuffing their pillows and heating up the tar buckets if this was going on in the Northern or Central Counties...

What is happening to my beloved "Wild Wonderful"? Apparently the folks in Charleston are trying to make it "Tame, Servile..."

Please fellow Mountaineers, say it ain't so!

Pravda-on-the-Kanawha Endorses Charleston Gun Registration Plan

Pravda-on-the-Kanawha, aka the Charleston Gazette, has wholeheartedly endorsed Charleston's new "voluntary" gun registration plan and says "[d]ecent gun owners should cooperate with the registration plan." The only think shocking to me about this editorial is how long it took them to publish it.

WVCDL Opposititon to Charleston Gun Registration Plan Covered on Talk Radio

WVCDL's opposition to Charleston's "voluntary" gun registration plan was covered yeaterday on WCHS 580 AM.

... s this not a direct Violation of West Virginia Preemption Statute?..., I think..., but I am not sure...

aadvark said:

... s this not a direct Violation of West Virginia Preemption Statute?..., I think..., but I am not sure...

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this program does not violate preemption, W.Va. Code § 8-12-5a, because it is ostensibly being conducted on a "voluntary" basis.

Some states, most notably Florida, have had their own problems with states skirting preemption laws by maintaining "voluntary" gun registries and/or keeping records of guns that were registered before preemption. Thus, in 2004, Florida augmented its preemption law by passing a specific prohibition on any form of gun registration and requiring the destruction of any existing registries. See Fla. Stat. §§ 790.335 and 336.

Recent preemption reform bills we have had introduced in the Legislature, 2009 HB 3335 and 2010 HB 4305, both sponsored by Delegate Doug Reynolds, D-Wayne, included a section (proposed §61-7-18) that would prohibit so-called "voluntary registration" schemes. This section is virtually identical to Fla. Stat. §§ 790.335 and 336.

Another section, proposed §61-7-20, would regulate so-called "gun buyback" programs. In the prior bills, this section was limited to duplicating the provisions of Ky. Rev. Stat. § 237.025, which provides a minimal level of protection for owners of stolen guns; the 2011 version of this section is going to provide for the resale of relinquished guns by public auction to FFL dealers for resale to the public. We have derived the new mandatory resale provision from a proposal VCDL has been trying to pass in Virginia, most recently passed by the General Assembly as 2009 HB 2528 but vetoed by then-Governor and current Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. See also 2010 VA HB 108.