It is here, and, Cowboy, it swings a wide loop. The state senate passed it yesterday, and by the time you read this it may have cleared the Albany house.
I read it from the enacting clause to the final word,* but I confess a degree of eye-glaze and some confusion. Much of the language modifies other laws which are referred to only by statute number. It is quite unnecessarily wordy. I understood as much as I did only because of career experience in extracting actual meaning from political gobbledygook.
The standout quality is its impact on subjects other than firearms control. It affects the mental health system, family law, education laws, and a variety of other criminal and tort procedures. A cursory reading suggests that this is a useful guide to what the United States will be when the extreme Left and the neocon Right finally achieve their post-constitutional America . This is true even if you eliminate the bill's actual gun-control provisions.
For just one -- there are several others -- example: There is a one-day procedure for declaring an upset spouse a "protected party" and imposing a variety of restrictions on his or her mate.There are complicated administrative and judicial reliefs written into the law, but for most real-life purposes, for many or most people, they are permanent. And this occurs before any finding of legal guilt.
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The actual firearms restrictions tend strongly toward the the Pelosi/Feinstein solution to violence. Another coat of pancake makeup.
Thumb-hole stocks become illegal on semi-automatic long guns. So do barrel shrouds. So do "pistol grips" if they are "conspicuous."
Seven rounds becomes the legal capacity limit for nearly all detachable magazines. (Someone is going to make money with new seven-rounders for millions of Colt Woodsmans, Ruger Standards et. seq., Browning Nomads, Hi-Standard HDs. And so forth.)
Higher capacity magazines already possessed are legal to own, but not use, for one year, after which they must be sold for out-of-state use. The alternative is confiscation and a criminal charge. (New York doesn't mind the horror of murder via the eighth round in a magazine provided, of course, that the victim is shot in a place other than New York. Federalism at work.)
There much more, and at the risk of inviting you devote a lot of time to a tedious chore, I suggest you read the bill. It is almost certainly the sort of frightening nonsense which our president lusts for.
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*How many of the lawmakers did before voting, I wonder (C.f. Nancy Pelosi's "pass it to know what is in it" theory of making law.)
3 comments:
You're worried about stuff like this just when KimK announces her due date? Sheesh. Where are your priorities? JAGSC
"In a range of reforms the bill attends to the weaknesses in the
state's current regulatory structure to bring a consistency and rationality that must be the cornerstone of a safe society. A single standard across the State will ensure that legal gun owners obtain their licenses expeditiously while those prohibited are denied that privilege."
"Privilege??" Whatever happened to "governments are instituted among men to secure those rights...?"
:), Jags.
Good catch, Stranded. I wish I were a better and more ambitious historian. Then I could trace things back and perhaps learn what led to the mass conclusion that the Constitution creates and awards our rights.
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