Obama offers new gun control steps

These guns are mostly (if not all) "curios and relics", largely uninteresting to anyone but collectors. They are not the kind that "end up on the streets". This is not an attempt to curb crime, but instead to curb a popular & harmless hobby enjoyed by people who are card-carrying good guys who have subjected themselves to intense background checks.

Little different from banning re-importation of US cars sold overseas on the grounds that a vanishingly small number might be used as getaway cars in crimes.

The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns.

There is a category of extremely tightly controlled weapons known as "NFA" or "Class III", which includes "sawed-off shotguns", "silencers", "disguised guns", and the very few remaining legal machineguns. To get one of these, one must pay a $200 tax, pass an intensive criminal background check, and have a local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) sign the paperwork. This last point is often problematic: despite full legality of the registered purchase, and unquestionable confirmation the buyer is not a criminal and has no criminal intent, many CLEOs nonetheless refuse to sign the paperwork and have no legal obligation to do so. To get around this refusal (amounting to anti-gun bigotry), buyers may (and this has been firmly established by government gun registration department BATFE) create a corporation or trust which legally buys and owns the weapon, available to officers thereof. Shutting down this imputed "loophole" serves absolutely no purpose but to crush the very small category of upstanding citizens who cannot get reasonable cooperation from local officials, citizens who purchase these arms for upstanding hobby or business purposes.

In doing so, the Obama is unilaterally moving to destroy a Constitutionally protected activity which is long allowed & regulated by legislation, activity which has no connection to crime.