Gun Product Liability discussed at last nights Democratic debate

[Mr. AR50]

Let's see. The same man who said 'If you like your Health Care Plan you can keep it'. The same man who said 'I am prohibited from simply ordering amnesty for millions of immigrants'. The same man who at one time talked about background checks on ammunition purchases as 'Another means of identifying those people with unregistered firearms.'
Yeah, right.
Any kind of 'National Reciprocity' that we receive in return for agreeing to 'Universal Background Checks', which, BTW, cannot work unless/until the CURRENT owners of all 350 million firearms in this country are identified and located, which is REGISTRATION, will be a joke. Obama is just dangling a carrot in front of those few gun owners who are naive enough to bite.

[sqlbullet]

...'Universal Background Checks', which, BTW, cannot work unless/until the CURRENT owners of all 350 million firearms in this country are identified and located, which is REGISTRATION...

It can work without registration. 

The left/anti-gun/democrat crowd want registration.  And this is the vehicle they are trying to use to get it.  No doubt about it.  And, as a result, they always frame the dialog in those terms.

But, UBC's can works without universal registration.  Here is how it would work.

You need to have proof that you completed a background check on a private party sale.  That is really all that needs to happen.  So....

    1.  Buyer and seller agree on a price for a given firearm
    2.  Buyer goes to the state run web portal (in my state this would be Utah BCS)
    3.  Buyer creates account/logs into portal, and accomplishes needed verification of identity
    4.  The portal provides the buyer an approval ID
    5.  Buyer provides the approval ID to the seller
    6.  Seller logs into the portal and verifies identity
    7.  Seller enters the buyer provided approval ID, and is presented with a photo of the buyer and a red/green approval indicator
    8.  The state system records only a hash of the seller ID + approval ID + date + approval status, along with the date and hash type

The hash would be ideally a general standard hash such as SHA-2.  These are one way cryptographic representations of information*.

Since the hash is a one way affair, the state cannot use the data it has recorded as a registry.  But, they seller, if ever under scrutiny, can provide in their defense the original sellerId, approvalId, date and approval status.  If these values are again hashed, and appear in the official record, then it is proven that the background check occurred.  If additional security is required, the seller could be offered the option to salt the hash, and would then bear the burden of preserving the salt along with the relevant id's and date.  Allowing very complex salt, such as an uploaded file, would ensure that the system admins would have no way of reversing the data and any regularity that may exist would be completely scrambled by the salt.

*Since the audience may not be fully versed on one way encryption and it's use, let me provide a relatively common example.  One that is used by most websites.  As you know, your username and password are used as a challenge to access most online information.  If you have ever clicked an "I forgot my password" link, you know that the process does not recover you password, but allows you to verify identity by an alternate, more complex challenge, and then provides a means to enter a new password.

The reason the password is not recovered is simple.  You password is not stored by the online information system.  When you register or change the password, it is hashed using a one-way algorithm.  The hash is stored.  The next time access is attempted, you again provide your password, it is again hashed using the same one-way algorithm, and the hash is compared to the save value.  If they match, then it is extremely likely you entered the same value.  As a result, the website does not know your password, but can reasonably determine if you have provided the same value each time.

Salt is a term used to describe a random addition to the items being hashed.  The same "salt" has to be present each time to ensure the same result is achieved.

[Wolfie]

^concur