Gun grabbers will try anything to limit our constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. While we appear to be taking back ground lost in previous decades–usually with data to prove that new laws have done nothing to make us any safer–there are a handful of laws in place that are particularly stupid.
Today, let’s take a look at those laws and just why they need to be killed.
What this is not is an in-depth, legalese description of these laws, just a brief overview. I am not an attorney, after all.
1. The Hughes Amendment
This was something tacked on to an otherwise pro-gun bill during the Reagan Era. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the name, if you’re a gun nut, you’re familiar with the ramifications of this bit of legislation. You see, this is the reason the machine gun market is what it is. This law banned machine guns manufactured after 1986 to go to private hands.
All this law did was assign an arbitrary cut-off date that had nothing to do with anything in and of itself. There was no indication that guns manufactured after that date would be more deadly (they aren’t), nor that legally held weapons were being used in crimes (they weren’t). Instead, it was a petulant child of a politician who tried to throw in a poison pill into a pro-gun law.
And it backfired on pretty much everyone.
2. Suppressor Regulation via The National Firearms Act of 1934
Suppressors, contrary to what the gun grabbers argue, aren’t an aid to illegal activities. Instead, they’re safety devices. They protect people’s hearing when they’re firing weapons. Period.
However, in the anti-gun hysteria surrounding gangland violence during Prohibition, suppressors were seen as the Boogeyman’s favorite took of choice. After all, a suppressor would allow him to kill in absolute silence.
Unfortunately for all of us, suppressors aren’t the silencers of Hollywood. They’re not even silencers. Instead, they’re mufflers for the end of your gun so you can shoot without needing ear plugs or muffs.
Further, in the gun-restricted Utopia of Europe, many gun grabbers seek to emulate, those who are blessed to own firearms in some countries are required to use suppressors. Apparently, the one thing Europeans get right on guns are the benefits of suppressors.
3. Magazine Limits
So-called high-capacity magazines seem to be the thing most likely to send a gun grabbing politician into apoplexy. Several states have limited magazines to an arbitrary number that’s supposed to make everyone safer. The thing is, they don’t.
Why? One word: Reloading.
A speedy reload with a magazine-fed firearm can be learned in just a few minutes, thus rendering limits pointless.
Meanwhile, proponents will look at this as evidence limits shouldn’t be lifted, but that’s not how a free society works. The onus is on supporters of any law to support the law’s existence, not on ours to show it’s a burden before it’s lifted.
4. Category Bans Based On Primarily Cosmetic Features
Yes, I’m looking at you, Assault Weapon Ban and similar state laws that have been enacted since the federal version sunsetted in 2004.
Lawmakers understand that if they simply ban the AR-15, that still leaves the M&P 15 Sport 2 or any other AR-15 rifle with a different name, so they go after obvious features that will identify the weapons as so-called “assault rifles.” However, in the process, all they manage to do is attack cosmetic features that don’t have anything to do with the function of the rifle like collapsible stocks and pistol grips.
Meanwhile, crime is unaffected because, as per usual, criminals don’t really care about following the laws. The only people being inconvenienced are the law abiding gun owners.
5. Waiting Periods For Firearms Purchases
There are places in this country where you have to wait three days to purchase a gun. For this Georgia boy, it boggles the mind that you’re required to wait to pick up something you’re legally allowed to buy for no other reason other than a politician thinks it’ll do some good.
Well, it doesn’t. Career criminals don’t buy guns legally, and remarkably few people purchase firearms at a whim with the intent to kill someone. There’s no real evidence that waiting periods do anything except annoy the law abiding. Even the left-leaning Politifact acknowledges this fact, for crying out loud.
6. Bans On Hollow Point Ammunition
I’m looking at you, New Jersey.
Hollow points are the preferred ammunition for a lot of people, including most law enforcement agencies (maybe all of them?) because with the round expanding, the risk of over penetration becomes greatly reduced. That means the chance of a round going through the target and into an innocent bystander is minimized as much as possible.
Yet in New Jersey, these rounds are illegal for general carry.
Yes, people have been arrested because of it. The problem is, hollow point ammunition is actually a safety measure in a lot of ways. Due to the expansion of the round, it’s far less likely to exit the body of the target. Even if it does, however, it does so at a significantly reduced velocity, which means it’s less likely to hurt someone else.
These are what we like to call “good things.”
But New Jersey doesn’t want people to carry them. Go figure.
7. Sporting Purposes Test For Imports
While there are a lot of things to dislike about the Gun Control Act of 1968, perhaps the dumbest is the “sporting purposes” clause that bans the import of certain weapons.
With its Heller ruling, the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment exists for the purposes of self-defense. That means trying to restrict guns to just those that meet some “sporting” standard (and it’s it amusing that competitions like 3-Gun aren’t considered “sporting” to the ATF?) may well be in violation of that standard.
Repeal that aspect of GCA-68 right away.
8. Zero-Tolerance For Gun-Shaped-Objects On School Campuses
Yes, I’m talking about stuff like Pop Tarts in the shape of guns. I’m also talking about guns depicted on t-shirts with things like American soldiers or even stormtroopers from Star Wars. Seriously, this stuff got stupid well before then.
Additionally, let’s not punish kids who wrestle guns away from armed attackers simply because they were in possession of it for a minute…in self-defense, for crying out loud.
9. 922r
For those unfamiliar with this bit of legal code, this is a section of law that pertains to the building of certain guns from imported kits. If you’re building an AK from a kit, you’re required to replace a certain number of parts from a certain list with American-made parts. If not, you’ve constructed an imported rifle and have broken the law. But replace a few parts with aftermarket goodies and suddenly you’re golden.
Were 922r about making sure American parts were going into imported products and applied to all products, I might be willing to overlook this. However, all it does is add a level of requirement on the law-abiding that’s completely unnecessary.
Then again, if you get rid of the sporting purposes limit previously mentioned, 922r becomes moot.
10. Gun Registration
There are a number of places that require lawful gun owners to register their firearms. For the life of me, I can’t understand just how anyone thinks that does anything other than exercise control over the law abiding.
Criminals do not buy guns at gun stores, register their weapons, and then go on a crime spree. They use guns purchased illegally, often stolen from people who followed the rules and registered their firearms with the state or from outside of the jurisdiction restricting these weapons.
These laws are beyond idiotic, they’re totalitarian and need to be killed. They don’t make anyone safer, and the onus is on supporters of such schemes to defend these and provide hard data that this actually makes us appreciably safer.
They can’t.
So there you have it, 10 gun laws that need to die in a fire. This is not an all inclusive list. Frankly, my complete list of gun laws to be eliminated would have just one entry: ALL OF THEM.
However, I’m realistic enough to know that’s not likely to happen any time soon, so here are some of the dumbest. Honorable mentions go to “May Issue” permit states, and the entire state of New York.
What about you? What are the dumbest gun laws you know of that need to be repealed right away?
