Federally licensed firearms dealers are already required to record sales. They're the first point of sale for any new gun, and have been for quite some time. While they aren't currently required to submit those purchase records to a federal database, when a gun is used in commission of a crime now the government has to go back and manually trace the history from initial point of sale and subsequent owners.
If you buy an unregistered firearm from someone and they reported the transfer as required by law, then you would be the last person "on the hook" for that gun.
Felons don't even have the right to purchase firearms, so pointing out they won't register is kind of stupid, isn't it?
Perhaps you need to re-examine your last sentence a little harder there champ. If felons don't register firearms, or bother buying them from FFLs (because it is illegal) then just what is registering new purchases going to do to combat felons committing crimes with firearms?
I guarantee i own firearms that aren't on any lists. If I want to sell them, there isn't anything the government can do to trace them back to me. Furthermore, punishing honest gun owners for no real benefit is beyond stupid, and nothing you propose will do a single thing to reduce gun crime. There are currently around 300 million firearms in this country. Countless numbers of those have been already transferred without any record keeping. Tracing them back, even if they could trace all of them wouldn't solve anything. Having a firearm stolen isnt a crime in most states, for the person that had it stolen. Thus, all of the firearms that gangs already have, won't do anything to reduce gun crime. In other words, the only way gun registration would work is that it requires registration of every gun (including that sniper rifle in your closet, designed to penetrate body armor from long range...ie, a bolt action hunting rifle) in existence. And good luck with that. As others have mentioned, the Canadians estimate less than half of their gun owners complied with their failed gun registry, and after spending over a billion dollars, gave up. And in Connecticut, registration numbers for their failed attempts were even worse. Oh, you didn't know Connecticut tried to do a gun registration for those scary assault weapons? Wake the fuck up.
You are worse than the liberal gun grabbers. They at least are ignorant, and clueless about firearms, and simply want them all banned because they are scary and evil. You, on the other hand, should know better, but choose to throw your fellow gun owners under the bus, because you are just a fucking tard.