@sheogorath@g0v.social We have reasons in america why we dont allow bi-directional gun registeries. Part of the reason for our gun rights is to protect against tryanny (if we ever need to overthrow the government or protect ourselves from it we can). If there were a registry where the government knew the name and address of everyone with a gun it would defeat that purpose.

What we have is a uni-directional system. In other words there is no way to just look up a list of everyone who has a gun (not even police can do this). But what they can do is if they find a gun/bullet they can use the serial number on that gun to trace it back to who purchased it.

So effectively a gun can always be traced to its owner but it is impossible to see if a person owns any guns in general.