Anti-gun zealots like to grandstand. They’ll use any opportunity to try and do so.

Ostensibly, they’ll claim their efforts are necessary to draw attention to the issue of gun control as if the American public has been oblivious to the debate despite the near constant barrage by the mainstream media.

Ultimately, though, they tend to betray their deepest, darkest desires regardless of any rhetoric to the contrary. Take, for example, the latest effort to pop up.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson introduced legislation this week that would create a national gun registry.

Known as the “Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act,” the bill would require ATF to set up a “searchable, computerized database” of all records pertaining to the sale, importation, production or shipment of firearms. The agency would be given three years to get the system up and running.

“The fact that there is a law on the books that forces agents to comb through millions of files by hand is absolutely ridiculous,” said Nelson, a Florida Democrat.

Under current federal law Big Brother is prohibited from tracking gun purchases. All transfer records remain in the possession of an FFL until a firearm is involved in a crime. Then, investigators can contact the FFL to get the pertinent info on who the gun was sold to. Only when an FFL goes out of business does it turn records over to the ATF’s National Tracing Center in West Virginia.

Supporters are likely to try and argue that without universal background checks, the bill couldn’t possibly create a firearm registry. However, we also know they want exactly that.

In other words, they want to know where every law-abiding citizen with a gun is at all times.

How this will reduce crime, however, is still a mystery, especially since we have ample evidence that criminals do not follow the law in obtaining their firearms. They either steal them or purchase them illegally, either by falsifying information during what appear to be legal sales or through the black market itself. In other words, this won’t do a damn thing to stop anyone from doing anything illegal, nor is it going to help the police apprehend people who do.

But what it easily can do is make confiscation a simple matter. If you know where the guns are, you know which doors to kick in.

Anti-gun zealots can claim all they want that no one is coming for your guns, but their every move seems to be an attempt to move the nation in exactly that direction.

That’s the only thing a registry will do. We’ve seen how authorities have used that before. Why should we believe them if they claim this time it will be different.

The truth is, while people like Emma Gonzalez, who happens to be championing this bill, I might add, and her fellow travelers claim that they want guns to be a nonpartisan issue and engender compromise with their ideological opponents, pushing for laws that are very much on the other sides’ “never gonna happen” is not the way to make that happen.

If a law like this goes into effect, I fully expect to be reporting on an increased number of boating accidents happening within the first week following the law’s passage.