10 Dumbest Gun Control Laws
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.
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