California slips closer to tyranny not with a bang, but with a whimper:

Neither Matt Dittmer nor the people he shoots with are happy about a new law that will preserve information about their gun purchases in a California state database. But he is resigned to it.

“I don’t like it, but I’m living in a state where I don’t have a choice,” Dittmer said as he stopped by Auburn Outdoor Sports on a recent afternoon to buy a sleek black AR rifle.

…

While Dittmer said his shooting range compatriots are anticipating the law, it was the first that Nancy Stewart, who had stopped in to pick up a pair of .22-caliber rifles to expand the family collection, had heard of it. Stewart said the measure wouldn’t deter her from buying a gun. But it did give her pause.

“You wonder, what does this information mean?” said Stewart, a 55-year-old paralegal who lives in Grass Valley. “My ultimate concern is if someone knocks on my door and says you’ve got three guns, we need two of them.”

Oh, dear Nancy, you almost have it.

If merely taking weapons out of the hands of criminals was of interest, registration would never need to take place. Laws mandating serious jail time for crimes involving weapons are effective enough towards that end.

No, gun registration laws are not passed to affect the criminal element in society, and they never have been. Gun registration laws are created in order to eventually confiscate all firearms. They serve no other purpose than to tell the authorities who has all the guns, so that they can be taken at gunpoint by the state when the state no longer has a healthy respect for the power of the citizenry.

They’re not going to come for two of your three guns, Nancy. They’re going to come for all of them, after passing more laws that make possession of registered firearms, “X, Y, and Z” illegal because of “public safety” concerns. Those who refuse to give up their God-given rights will be branded as “public safety risks”… a new breed of criminal that occurs when peaceful citizens are deemed dangerous, even though they’ve committed no crimes.

A very prescient author had another name for this. He called it “thoughtcrime.”

Only people who pose a legitimate public-safety risk will have anything to worry about, said Steve Lindley, director of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Firearms.

“If you do become prohibited, we are going to come confiscate your firearms,” Lindley said. “But only people who have done something in their life – committed a felony, committed a violent misdemeanor, they are a fugitive from justice or they have been deemed mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others. We need to take action and prevent those people from possessing firearms.”

That prohibited class represents a small sliver of California’s population of gun owners, Lindley said. Otherwise, gun owners can rest easy: His department has no plans to “go out and confiscate people’s firearms for no reason.”

I’m sure Lindley’s assurances sounded more convincing in the original German.