The point of the warrantless search is really just to preliminarily "test" one's lawfulness, truthfulness and probity. Obviously, if one is law abiding, one isn't going to report a gun lost/stolen while also having possession of it. Additionally, and more importantly, if a gun is truly stolen from one's property, and one reports it so, cops are going to want to look at the premises to see whether the thief left any evidence that could lead to finding/identifying him/her. The sooner cops can obtain any such evidence that exists, the better their odds of finding the thief, and hopefully, the gun. I'd think a law abider would want to abet the cops doing just those two things, and not forcing cops to go get a warrant is one way to do so.
Theft:
- If one's gun is stolen from one's vehicle, perhaps while it was parked at a mall, the cops are going to want to look over the car right then and there. Why not let them?
- If the gun is stolen from a building, the cops who show up to take the report need to examine points of ingress and egress and the area from which the gun is said to have been stolen. They don't need to check the whole damn building, and allowing them to do so isn't an aim of what I proposed.
Loss:
- Losses are somewhat different than thefts. Sure, the gun's still gone, but the whole point of a gun being lost is that one doesn't know from where it was lost. Accordingly, where is there to search? If one tells the cops, "I lost it in my house/car," well one must necessarily then still has possession of the gun, even if one doesn't know where. One should keep looking for it.
Of course, the whole point of something being lost is that one doesn't know where or when it disappeared. The best one can do is identify the last known place/time when one had possession of the gun. That said, there's really no place for the cops to sagely direct their attention/search; thus the warrantless search aspect of that section of the post isn't germane....the last place one knows one had the gun is, obviously, not a place to look because in that time/place, one had the damn thing.
"I lost it on the Acela when I was going from DC to NYC." No, the cops aren't going to go looking on the Acela and the gun owner need not ask Amtrak for permission for the cops to do so.
On some level, I'd think folks'd think about the proposal in a rational manner.