MSNBC twists Las Vegas shooting to advocate for national gun registry

An NBC reporter appeared to advocate for the creation of a national gun registry based on the comments from the brother of Stephen Paddock, the gunman who killed 59 Americans in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Here's the video of the exchange:

Why it may be taking so long to trace the weapons. https://t.co/r1sHPCg60v

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) October 2, 2017

What did he say?

"About these weapons," Brian Williams asked to NBC reporter Ken Delanian, "what do we know?"

"Well, Brian, we know they seized more than 10 rifles in the hotel room but the brother [Eric Paddock] asked a really interesting question — do they know who sold him the machine gun?" Delanian asked. "Well, that raises two issues."

"One, we don't know if he actually had a machine gun," he explained. "A fully-automatic weapon — those have been illegal since 1986. However, you can get one if you register it, there are ways to legally acquire pre-1986 weapons. There are also cheap and easy ways to modify semi-automatic weapons that are legal and readily available."

"But the other issue is it's not easy for the ATF to trace gun ownership in this country," he added. "There is no national gun database to trace the serial numbers quickly to an owner. It often takes them a long time because they are dealing with paper records, and in some cases, microfilm at an agency in Martinsburg, West Virginia. There's been a lot of reporting on this Brian, because of pressure from the gun lobby and congressional restrictions, the ATF has difficulty tracing gun ownership."

"And that may be one of the reasons we don't yet know whether or not there was a machine gun, and if so who sold it to this perpetrator," he concluded.

Is this a reasonable argument?

Delanian admitted in the interview that the information would likely be eventually discovered by investigators, undermining his rationale for having a gun registry.

"It's likely that we will find out the particulars on whether there was a modified machine gun," Delanian said later in the interview. "The ownership is traceable, generally, it just takes longer than most investigators would like to see, Brian."

Second Amendment advocates have also pointed to state level gun ownership registries that were later used to confiscate guns. They say these examples expose the true aim of such registries to aid in gun confiscation.