> Legally buying guns in the US come with registration of serial numbers, names, and addresses.
It is illegal for the government to make a registry of gun owners. There is an electronic check to clear you as a legal gun owner but there is no registry.
It’s only theoretically non searchable, IIRC each submitted document has to be OCRed every time a search is ran on the documents, and this is enough of a legal fig leaf to qualify it as not a registry. A sizeable GPU farm would make this basically a moot point.
Oh I agree. It is very likely that the electronic checks are recorded and could be used as a non-official registry of gun owners. I removed my comment to that effect because it is speculation. But, electronic records are so easily recorded that I have little doubt that the electronic checks are in fact an illegal registry.
Seven states have required gun registries. It is not illegal for a state to have a registry. It is illegal for the federal government to have a gun registry with exceptions for NFA controlled arms.
It is illegal for the government to make a registry of gun owners. There is an electronic check to clear you as a legal gun owner but there is no registry.