Friday, November 30, 2007

Extend and Clarify my Remarks

I commented yesterday about the 1986 gun control law.

Armed Canadian properly brought to my attention that the 1986 law isn't all bad, except for maybe the Hughes Amendment that pertained to NFA controlled weapons manufactured after 1986.

He's right, in that I should look at the law in toto. It's a lot more complicated than merely creating artificially high prices by banning new machine guns, and large swaths of it are beneficial to gun owners. Like prohibiting the government from making the NICS system into a defacto registration.

So if I were running for president, and some questioner (that WASN'T a plant Democrat operative) asked what gun control law I'd repeal... I'd have to be a weaselly politician at first and say "that depends..."

If allowed to eleborate I'd target provisions of past laws. Like the Hughes Amendment. And suppressors being targetted by the NFA of the 1930s. Or maybe pass NEW laws that reigned in abuses of the BATF that has been running mom and pop FFL dealers out of business by citing benign typos on a tiny percentage of 4473 gun purchase application forms. Or I'd pass new laws extending and funding the Civilian Marksmanship program. With an appeal of the Hughes Act we could make surplus military rifles (set to semi-auto at the armory) available again.

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