Tom King has the low down on what he thinks gun owners in The Empire State will be facing in 2008. Chief among them is the effort there to close the “musket loophole”, by classifying black powder muzzle loading firearms the same as modern firearms.
2008 is going to be rough sailing folks. We have to be ready.
I think that private sales will be a big push in 2008. They are going after any and all things that can be defined as “loopholes.” And then some…
“We’ll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily -given the political realities – very modest. We’ll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of hand-guns, is going to take time. The first problem is to slow down production and sales. Next is to get registration. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal.”
Pete Shields, Founder, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (then known as Handgun Control, Inc.)
I think that private sales will be a big push in 2008.
McCarthy and Schumer already stated that forcing private sales to go through licensed dealers (or at least to require jumping through the same bureaucratic hoops as required for licensed dealers) as the “next step.”
The “next step” might be in two phases–first the mythical “gun show loophole,” then all private sales, but I’m convinced that’s their top priority.
Two steps? Do you guys forsee the first round of legislation aiming to prohibit private transfers ONLY on the premises of gun shows? It seems to me what they want, of course, is for us to do background checks on all private transfers…period.
I’ve not read “gun show loophole” proposals…but are they specifically saying this regards sales only at “official” gun shows?
Yes, given the recent hype, it does seem like their next best “attainable” priority. If it can be spun into a “loophole”, it’s got to be bad. Soon we are going to see loopholes springing out of, well, nowhere.
Just say “NO.”
Well, the mythical “gun show loophole” is the easy target–they’ve already laid much of the groundwork toward the end of demonizing gun shows, and there’s some precedence at the state level for “closing the loophole” (something like 15 states, I believe?) There’s also a federal bill that would do the same thing on the national level–H.R. 96.
Imposing such requirements on all sales is a more ambitious goal. I certainly don’t dispute that they have that goal in mind, but I think they’ll see it as being easier to get there incrementally.
Of course, once all private sales have to go through a licensed dealer, then they can put H.R. 4818 in place, to make private transactions even more ponderous (and expensive).
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the NRA compromise on this also. You know, like to show how reasonable they are, Hell maybe they’ll even co-sponsor it.
2640 seemed to work so well for them that they are being defended on the previous step. Why wouldn’t they want to make the next step the previous step and get more praise for being so reasonable?
Just think of all the access they could get with Shumer, Feinstein, McCarthy, Boxer et. al. Isn’t that what politics is all about, access?
Well, they should have a HELL of a lot of it now.