Of course it's the fault of the NRA.

Sure, a database of all legally owned guns would make solving crimes easier. So would a database of everyone's fingerprints and retinal patterns, as well as national ID cards. Constant surveillance of all illegal immigrants and profiling of likely terrorists would also make crime solving easier.

Maybe ease of solving crimes isn't the only point of concern here? Certainly that seems to have been the position of all those people who have bewailed losses of privacy and perceived violations civil rights during our war on terrorism.

It is a hard fact that around the world accumulation of data on legally-owned weapons has almost always been eventually followed by some form of confiscation. While this may be commendable to those who are against weapons in the hands of anyone except the government, it is a cautionary note to the rest of us.