Here’s the future scene, not long coming.
You’re looking at firearms at a gun shop. Dressed as a hunter, a mannequin with eyes and ears holds a rifle. While you’re admiring that rifle, unbeknownst to you, the mannequin takes a picture of your face and transforms it into a permanently-stored text ID. You want that rifle, a clerk gets it, you buy it.
But the rifle won't be
really yours "to have and to hold" right then & there. You must pass the U.S.
federal firearms background investigation mandated by
existing federal laws. Will the mannequin-fronted system be
expediting those firearms background investigations for the
benefit of the shop-owner and his customers?
The practical appeal for
statists and
socialists is that the "
permanently-stored text
ID", presumably in the context of predictable federal laws requiring that the
ID be
forwarded to 1 (or more)
federal agencies, provides those agencies with much of the benefit of
firearm registration records that would predictably be trivially compiled into a directory to facilitate
confiscation of
Constitutionally protected firearms.
A week goes by, and a digital camera picks up your face at a rally. Unbeknownst to you, a confederate flag is waving in the background, and all of it posted on social media. AI in the Cloud cross references your facial text ID at the rally and the gun shop and sets off a police warning across the country. When you return home, three cops are waiting for you outside.
It is
not illegal to wave a "
Confederate flag", whether the "battle flag" or the national flag, in the U.S.A., nor is it illegal to be present where 1 (or more) is (are) being waved (or otherwise displayed). Unlike, e.g., waving a
nαzι flag (or otherwise displaying nαzι symbols) in Germany.
Yes, of
course I know which U.S. political party not only conflates the 2 actions in its own rhetoric, but also panders to political radicals who do so (sometimes using physical violence while breaking other laws). So readers should have no doubt whatsoever that the same political party would conflate the 2 into a
legal ban if they could get away with it.
But I'll decline the obvious
specific digression, because this is not 1 of
CathInfo's political-topics subforums.