My company is in the process of scanning in our 'service cards', with technicians hand-written notes dating back to the 1940s. There are several million of them, and a company in India is doing all the scanning and image-to-text conversion for us for about a million dollars. Estimated time is 30 days.
If the government wants that data (and in this administration they definitely do), and a single change is made to the laws, they could have copies mailed and scanned in less than 90 days. Within 6 months you could have a full-fledged registration database system up and running.
Right, with an act of congress and the conversion of million and millions of forms, it is possible. Again, it is not likely. Not just logistically, but because such an operation would put millions of gun owners up in arms (so to speak).

