Though President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court will more than likely remain in limbo until at least until after the November election, the choice should be unsettling to supporters of the Second Amendment and gun ownership rights.

Begin with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), established by the 1993 Brady Act, under which firearm background checks would be conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once a person passed the background check, the FBI's record of his or her identity was required to be destroyed, although it would be kept by the dealer. No records of firearm sales were allowed to be recorded at a government facility, and no system of registration of firearm owners was allowed.

Nevertheless, when NICS went online in 1998 Attorney General Janet Reno signed a regulation allowing the FBI to retain full information on the firearm purchaser—name, address, race, and date of birth—for six months. She called the list an "audit log" rather than gun owner registration.