FBI Crime Stats: You are more likely to be killed by hands and feet than by a shotgun or rifle

[sir pball]

68. I'm willing to take it a step farther, actually.

ALL firearms transactions must be on a 4473 through an FFL. Create a new class of FFL that isn't allowed to maintain any inventory or conduct direct sales, but instead just call in an NICS check, sign off, and have the same recordkeeping requirements as any other dealer, for a statutorily-regulated reasonable fee ($10?). It would be a great cottage industry for retirees, and as much as I'd like to see NICS open to the public, even with a simple yes/no reply and legal protections against abuse you know that it would be abused. "Sorry, we can't give you the job/rent you the apartment/be friends with you - just because"; without recordkeeping on NICS you can't prove abuse.

I don't mind a paper trail on firearms; it would be immensely helpful to law enforcement and a pretty solid deterrent against diverting guns from legal ownership, while not being a registry or database where somebody can simply sit down and call up a list of weapons I own. TPTB would have to literally track every firearm ever sold, from the manufacturer on, to have a priori knowledge of who has what - but if they want to know the history of a particular gun, they can find it out. I always thought it was a good compromise, but never floated it till now. Thoughts?