Okay, I'm ready to get raked over the coals again. First, let me say that I live in Lincoln, but I do oppose this Omaha ordinance. I even wrote your mayor and your city council to express my dismay at this and also the gun registration ordinance. However, I think some of you either don't understand the point of this thing, or you simply are so mad you don't care what it says, only that you don't want it.
It seems to me, unless I read something wrong, the law requires fingerprinting in order to sell a gun, not to buy one. Okay, I don't like it either way. And, it gives the police access to these records. I don't like that part either. Still, the point of the law, as the mayor tried to explain, is to try and stop guns from being stolen from their legal, registered owners. If the thieves have a harder time selling them, they will be less attractive as a means of raising money for their meth habits or whatever other illegal activities they may be involved in. Think of it like the laws many jurisdicitions have passed regarding the sale of scrap metal. People stealing copper wire, copper pipe, aluminum, man hole covers, just about anything they could sell to the scrap dealer, were creating a lot of expense for the rest of the public and often some very unsafe situations as well (missing man hole covers in the streets, stolen ground wires on electrical equipment, phone outages, etc.). This hasn't completely disappeared, but it has been reduced a great deal by laws regulating the sale of scrap metals and requiring those doing so to register and provide ID. I'm not saying the gun fingerprinting is going to work as well (there will still be illegal sales of stolen guns to other criminals), but it is an attempt to protect legal gun owners. It may be ill-advised, poorly designed, ineffective, and unwanted by gun owners, but I don't see it as an attempt to stymie legal gun sales or make it so hard for law-abiding citizens to buy and sell guns that they give up and stop owning guns.
Like David Hineline said above, it's not really that much different than providing any other form of ID. I'm not sure what the previous practice was regarding the sale of used guns to a gun store. I've never sold one myself to a dealer. My guess is they at least got your name and address. Unless you provided them a false ID, giving them a fingerprint too isn't going to make a whole lot of difference, is it?
I repeat, I'm not in favor of this thing, I wrote in to complain about it, and I don't think it will be terribly effective. It may indeed have a negative effect economically for Omaha (though I would imagine gun sales are a pretty small fraction of the business transactions in Omaha as a whole). On the other hand, unless you are one of those paranoid, think everything is a conspiracy against you, everything the government does is wrong sort of people, (or a gun thief) I can't see why it makes you so angry.
Here in Lincoln, there was just a story about some places that were buying stolen property and reselling it. One of them was a record/CD/DVD shop that bought and sold new and used items. The police got some information that they were buying stolen property, so they set up a sting to check it out and put a stop to it. They got brand new CDs and DVDs from some local stores and took them in to sell (undercover of course). The owner and one of his employees bought them knowing full well they were stolen (still had the anti-theft magnetic strips attached). They cooperated with police afterward and got off pretty lightly. They have since changed their policy and now require an ID before they'll buy anything. They tag every item so it can be traced back to the seller if it is subsequently determined to be stolen. I don't think they were required to do this, but it may have contributed to them getting off easy for what they had been doing. The point is that if we continue to allow people like this to provide an easy outlet for stolen goods, we're only cutting our own throats.
One more time, I don't like the new Omaha law. I'm simply trying to point out the real intent of it (as I see it anyway). If someone knows differently, and it really is some kind of conspiracy to take our guns away from us, clue the rest of us in on how you know that.
