Reconsidering

If the government mandates you perform a reasonable and rational action in response to an event with the threat of criminal charges if you don't...

It makes me doubt that action is reasonable and rational.

The gun grabbers commonly add a requirement to report lost or stolen firearms to the the police to their anti-gun shit with criminal penalties ranging from fines to jail-time for failing to do so.

The one firearm we've had stolen got reported moments after we realized it was gone.  That seemed reasonable.  Rational.

What am I missing that they think that the government needs to threaten me with charges if I don't report I'd been robbed?

Wait.

I was trying to be reasonable and rational again.

I think the real motive is to try and catch gun owners lying about where their gun is when a trace finds they were the last name on the document chain.  Especially in places with registration.

The part that really bothers me is they often give a timeframe that's measured from the time of theft and ignores the possibility that the owner could be unaware it was missing.

Case in point is Willard's 625 that's been here for a long time with neither of us realizing it.  He became aware that it had not come home from our range trip when I discovered it in my garage.  It'd obviously gotten set down in a shuffle from the car to the house and I'd probably said I wanted to take a picture or something.  And we'd both forgotten it was there.

Does that make it lost, stolen or missing?

It can't be too lost or missing now.  We know where it is.

Stolen?  When I told him I'd found it, he said to add it to the got-to-get-to-the-damn-range-45-comparo-pile.  That sounds more like loaned.

Nobody here is a felon so, at worst, this is an accidental transfer.  Nothing illegal about that because we're all squeaky clean and law abiding.

But under these laws Willard would have been liable for that revolver ending up at a crime scene for failing to report it was missing, even though he was unaware it'd wandered off.