Jun 02, 2020 - Countries with universal background checks and gun registries experience significantly fewer gun-related deaths. As a highly encrypted, tamper-resistant, and decentralized database, distributed ledger technology has the potential to serve as a distributed registry of guns. DLT could allow gun buyers to prove a lack of a criminal record (the equivalent of a background check) without giving up personal information. This survey of the blockchain landscape highlights several start-ups such as VeriTransfer and BitRail that are experimenting with DLT to do for firearms provenance what other blockchain innovators have done with food, cannabis, and p...