Whatever happened to Mississippi rifle registration?

M

MeekAndMild

New member
IIRC when I was stationed on an Air Force base in Mississippi in the 1980s one of the things that was emphasized during our inbriefing was that Mississippi required registration of centerfire rifles. They never told us how to register them, just that this should be done. Basically everyone else I talked to except the base personell office noncom: military, civilian and LEO alike, either didn't know about it or said they just ignored it.

I stayed there four years, even bought a rifle or two, but there was never any procedure revealed to me on how to register them. I never looked very hard, but I've always wondered just what was this law, who administered it and what came of it.

:confused:
 
After checking the Mississippi section of the BATF book "State Laws and Published Ordinances - Firearms," I could find nothing in the Mississippi codes that requires registration of any firearms.
 
Was this BATF book from the early 80s or from the present?

I'm not just asking this question in a vacuum. Mississippi has a history of racist laws (link 1) (link 2) (link 3) from the time of radical reconstruction through the 1960's and I was wondering if the law that I heard discussed might have been a forgotten holdover from that past.

One would think that a poorly known and generally ignored law would be a good way for a government to treat citizens in a discriminatory manner by its selective enforcement. One would also think that governments tend to accumulate such laws (not saying Mississippi in specific but governments in general) which are largely ignored but are never taken off the books.

I have heard it said that one of the best ways to get laws removed from the books would be to enforce them strictly.
 
I was born, raised and currently make my home in Mississippi and have never
heard of any firearms registration schemes at a statewide level.

Your base commander might have required registration of firearms kept on his
base.
 
Valid point Hank. Trouble is that registration of all on-base firearms was required and if a person stayed in base housing they were required to have a very specific storage solution. We were familiar with the forms et cetera.

No, like I said before this was a law which was never enforced to my understanding and was little known. My own conjecture was if there was truly a law it would have been on the books as a holdover from older times. My reason for posting the question was to find out if anyone here has heard of such a law and if so could they give the details. :confused:
 
I was able to find in the Mississippi Code where several firearms registration laws
were repealed in 1988. The text of the laws was not available from sources easily available to me. IIRC Mississippi did quite a bit of housekeeping of the
Code around that time.

I've been purchasing firearms in Miss. since the mid 1960s and have never been
required to register one so like you say, these laws were either not enforced or
were selectively enforced.
 
Thanks, that helps some. In the end I may have to visit the law library the next time I pass by Ole Miss.

My experiance was the same as yours in the 80's, except for the one detail of the legal briefing I have mentioned.
 
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