"Once a lenient national handgun licensing system is established, the licensing system can gradually be tightened, and police, as they have done in Great Britain, can begin inventing their own conditions to put on licenses.  Such practices already occur in American jurisdictions such as New York, where licensing authorities sometimes add their own, extralegal restrictions to handgun licenses."
- NRA Institute for Legislative Action statement, 4/9/00

It's an undeniable fact that registration of firearms and licensing of their owners has led to confiscation in many countries.  That's why the Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 prohibited the government from keeping a national registry of gun owners, and the Brady Law - championed by Sarah Brady of Handgun Control Inc. - contains similar prohibitive language. 

Fear that licensing will lead to confiscation aren't unfounded.  As we've seen in places like Great Britain, Germany and Cuba, anti-gun advocates never come right out and say they want to ban firearms.  They always start small, with "common sense solutions" like licenses, and gradually add more and more restrictions until private citizens completely lose their firearms.

Proponents of licensing gun owners make the flawed analogy to licensed drivers.  They deliberately miss the point that driving a car is a privilege, not a Constitutional right like the one to keep and bear arms.   To say, "We restrict the use of cars, so why not restrict the Second Amendment" is like saying, "We restrict the use of radio frequencies, so why not restrict the First Amendment."

There are 60-65 million legal gun owners in America.  Licensing them all would create a huge, expensive bureaucracy that would do little to prevent crime.  That money, and the government's effort, would be better spent tracking criminals, not pushing the election-year gimmick of licensing.