Thanks to Jacob, we have found a draft copy of the bill McCarthy plans to introduce. Here’s the features.
- 10 round limit
- Importation completely prohibited.
- Transfer completely prohibited
- Manufacture completely prohibited
- Grandfathering for current owners only.
- Exception for law enforcement because they need “to be able to shoot as many people as possible as quickly as possible,” apparently.
- Ten year prison sentence for violation.
Needless to say the response to this bill isn’t “no.” It’s “Hell no!” Under this law, I could become a felon for giving a magazine to Bitter. There’s no exception to transfer except for law enforcement. Technically handing one to your friend would be a felony.
You can all take your ball and go home now, gun control folks, the answer is no. She’s introducing it Tuesday. I’d suggest calling shortly thereafter, to tell your critter you expect it to go nowhere. Don’t take anything for granted.
UPDATE: Some more features, looking more closely:
- Would ban stripper clips that hold more than 10 rounds.
- Would ban any gun with a fixed tubular magazine that was not a .22 that held more than 10 rounds.
- Ban any gun with a fixed magazine capacity that is more than 10 rounds of any caliber, if magazine is not tubular.
- Would ban all belted ammunition, or parts that could be use to make up a belt.
- Would ban any repair parts for a magazine if the repair parts could be used to make a magazine.
- Presumably retired law enforcement need to shoot as many people as fast as possible too, because they are also exempted.
UPDATE: Yes, looking over it, this will ban some guns folks. This isn’t just a magazine ban.
my prediction is this will die in comittee without even getting so much as a hearing.
If I read it right, it would also effect magazine tubes, like on lever guns.
Is that your reading too?
Cause the refers to a *feeding device*.
Unless it was a .22, yes.
im actually more surprised. They think this is what will be able to pass???? Are they serious? They must be more crazy then we thought.
With 258 A rated house reps and 50 A rated sens (lets not forget the B rated and the C swing votes).
To just get it to a vote in the senate you will need all 31 F rated and atleast 10 A’s to go along with it.
Are they dubbing it “Blair Holt 2”? It seems to be as poorly reasoned and hopefully to have as little chance of passing. Bills that seek to exploit tragedies while emotions are running high should generally be shelved.
Normally, this is where the picture of someone having a facepalm moment occurs.
WTF… NRA needs to spend the hell out of it’s cash in NY next election. They got some doozies up there.
My guess is that this is McCarthy reaching for the moon and the stars in the hope that some portion of it will ultimately escape committee and make it to the House floor.
I think it bears repeating that, under 18 USC 241-242, just by proposing the law, McCarthy herself has committed a Federal crime.
M
I have sent a very nice email to my new Representative, Renee Ellmers. I have asked her to go up to Rep McCarthy and tell her not only no, but hell no.
I have also let her know that I am a gun blogger, and I will be very happy to assist her in learning anything about firearms she doesn’t already know.
Everyone else here has done the same, right?
Nuts. I guess they took notice of how ineffective the last AWB was by restricting transfer.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s bill apparently grants an exemption for .22 rifles with tubular magazines, ones such as the Marlin Model 60. How considerate of her, since New Jersey law still classifies this rifle as an “assault weapon” if it is of the older variety with the 17 round capacity.
For someone who doesn’t know a thing about guns, she sure did her homework. It looks like she just about covered all the bases. It must have taken her handlers quite a bit of time to write such an airtight bill without even the potential for “loopholes”.
But this is just in response to last week’s shooting. It’s not as if she was sitting on top of this pre-drafted bill, salivating for an opportunity to unleash it on us. :)
I think it bears repeating that, under 18 USC 241-242, just by proposing the law, McCarthy herself has committed a Federal crime.
That’s not true. That’s not how that law works.
mobo:
Her staffers probably wrote it, quite likely with help from gun control groups.
“Feed strips” may get interpreted to mean stripper clips, but it technically refers to the strips used by Hotchkiss-type machine guns. Because, as we all know, century-old designs that haven’t been manufactured since the end of WWII are a major public safety issue in modern America.
I’d say that Carrie’s had her staffers hanging out on a lot of gun boards.
Seb:
Bad attempt at humor on my part… of course it was written by her staff with help from gun control groups far in advance.
That woman is not even capable of defining a barrel shroud, which even someone who has never even seen a gun should be able to make a somewhat educated guess based soley on the words themselves.
What are those boxlike things that are used to load a Gatling Gun? I guess you could load the hopper manually, but i’ve seen video of them loading them with something. Are they covered? Are Gatlings even illegal to own without an NFA stamp?
They are known as “the box thing that goes up.”
“Feed strips†may get interpreted to mean stripper clips
It may, but it may not. The term isn’t defined, so it comes down to what a prosecutor can convince a judge and jury it means.
spinmister Said (January 14th, 2011 at 3:20 pm):
my prediction is this will die in comittee without even getting so much as a hearing.
That is my prediction, also. And that prediction is backed by much evidence. Ironically, what it will also likely do is stimulate the purchase of a shitload of magazines … getting way more into our hands and stimulating more manufacture. Given that is precisely what McCarthy and her supporters purport to be against … and given that they clearly know both Boehner and Reid will not support such a bill … it really makes you wonder what their true intentions are. Surely they are not that delusional. Perhaps they feel it will have the effect of stimulating discussion of gun control? Are they simply pandering to gun control organizations to make them happy?
Who knows. But this bill’s introduction not only won’t accomplish what they want. It’s very likely to accomplish the opposite.
They may just want something to shout to the faithful come reelection season.
“Remember back when I tried to protect your babies from semiautomatic clips that fire 33 bullets a second, and the NRA and their stooges in Congress blocked the bill? Vote for me, and I’ll spend _another_ four years trying to force your taboos on the rest of the country…”
Sebastian Said (January 14th, 2011 at 5:27 pm):
mobo:
Her staffers probably wrote it, quite likely with help from gun control groups.
Indeed, that is what happened. I read a couple articles stating that immediately after the Tucson murders, the offices of McCarthy and Lautenberg had a big conference call with gun control groups, to brainstorm and quickly come up with “something that might pass.” Among the groups mentioned were Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, and Legal Community Against Violence.
“Are Gatlings even illegal to own without an NFA stamp?”
Any unpowered, manually-operated machinegun is exempt from the NFA. A Gatling would probably be called a firearm under the GCA, since .45-70 is still manufactured, but some of the other ones – Gardners, Nordenfeldts, Biras – may be cash & carry as the ammo is not available. You can also build them yourself if you’re really handy.
“The term isn’t defined, so it comes down to what a prosecutor can convince a judge and jury it means.”
There would probably be some defining going on in the regs. Failing that, ATF would publish a ruling.
For those of you contemplating buying magazines, this is my advice.
Hold off for now, and let those who don’t know any better buy a bunch of them. Because you know once they start selling, the prices will be raised. The manufacturers will tool up and increase production to satisfy the increased demand. Then the market will saturate, and the prices will drop … probably lower than they are now. And now is pretty low … run of the mill aluminum USGI AR mags are going for what … $6 or 7 each? And not that long ago, I bought a dozen LE-marked “demo” Glock 22 mags for like $11 each.
I don’t know how long that cycle might take … a year or two?
I wonder how the reps feels about my two 100 round Calico magazine?
What spinmister said. This one is going nowhere.
I’d be confident in that even if Speaker Boehner hadn’t already said that gun control bills were a no-go.
Diomed: That’s all right, but note that any actual Gatling gun (ie, not a new reproduction) that was pre-1899 would be “not a firearm” as well, due to being So Very Old.
Carl: The motivation is pure posturing, “to be seen to be doing something”.
If (when) the bill dies, they can still point to it as “doing something” and blame others for its death in committee.
That’s astounding.
Thanks, #12 Ronnie. Pretty cool to know my old 1970s Marlin 60 with the original, cheap, Sears or Kmart scope is considered an assault weapon in NJ. I suppose I should paint it black to make it even more scary.
How can a person that harbors so much fear of the unknown foist their beliefs on the very people they work for? They must see their position in gubment as a avenue to make the people behave.
“Technically handing one to your friend would be a felony.”
Markie Marxist sez: “Of course it will be! We’ve been looking for an easy way to felonize private gun owners for ages! The right to keep and bear arms is a felony to begin with, as far as we Marxists are concerned, since private gun ownership is an affront to the authority of the Marxist state. We just haven’t been able to get the mechanism of that perspective into place within the legal system, but we’re working on it! All your felony will belong to us! Ha! Ha!â€