This Week in Gun Rights is TTAG’s weekly roundup of legal, legislative and other news affecting guns, the gun business and gun owners’ rights.
Federal Bill Would Mandate Guns Be Made “Smart”
Ah, the ever-present threat to increase the IQ of our tools. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has proposed a bill that would require all new handguns sold in the U.S., within five years of passage to feature “personalized” technology so only the owner could fire it. That requirement would be extended to older firearms (they’d have to be retrofitted) for sale within 10 years.
We should remember this has already been tried and it was quickly abandoned because signals could be interfered with, rendering the firearms useless. Also, putting an electro-mechanical disconnect in a trigger’s transfer bar, or whatever it might be, is a sure way to wind up with a miserable trigger.
In addition to that, the liability of an electronics-interrupted firearm could create unique and cavernous legal issues for firearm manufacturers.
I’m just trying to imagine a Spanish ruby being brought to a gun shop, with a gunsmith trying to figure out where to shove an Arduino along a two-inch plain steel bar. It’s ludicrous. Plain and simple.
The Sun’s 2020 Biden Interview Reveals Insights on President’s Conceptions on Guns
The Las Vegas Sun had apparently been sitting on an exclusive interview with then-candidate Joe Biden from January of 2020. They finally published it recently and it covers a range of topics including, of course, gun control.
SPOILER ALERT: Some of the things Biden says reveals an extreme disconnect with how the near-octogenarian perceives gun control and the way the rest of the country sees and uses firearms.
He alludes to his ownership of a “12 and 20 gauge shotgun,” questions the “sporting” utility of certain firearms and tells hunters if you carry a rifle with a 30-round magazine, “You must be a lousy damn shot.”.
It seems Grampy Joe is genuinely of the belief that what he calls assault rifles are a redheaded stepchild that no politician wants to stand behind. This of course, despite the millions of recent gun owners overwhelmingly choosing and buying firearms that he would most assuredly consider assault weapons.
Vermont Legislator Attempting to Repeal Switchblade Ban
Vermont has long been a constitutional carry state, but you’re in deep trouble there if you so much as possess a switchblade knife over three inches. It’s the only knife where simple possession is banned in the state. Vermont representative Patrick Brennan has filed a bill that would repeal that ban.
I’m happy to see these types of laws getting attention, as the right to arms most assuredly includes edged weapons. Plus, switchblades are not only cool, but massively useful. Much like “assault weapon” regulations, switchblade prohibitions target tools for their characteristics, irrelevant to their lethality.
Gun Controllers: Microstamping Technology is Here!
As with “smart” guns, the technology for microstamping is always just around the corner…and likely will be for many years to come. Even so, its proponents have decided that now is the time to push the technology through. How? With the aid of legislation, of course.
Attempting to push innovation via government mandate creates perverse incentives. Rather than coming up with a smooth and safe integration, it encourages firms to come up with a barely workable solution, viciously protect their IP, and then lock the people down with expensive, technically compliant trash.
The proponents of microstamping even recognize this would add significant costs to firearms. To them, that’s a feature, not a bug. But when the people most likely to be violently victimized are disadvantaged by the results of their harebrained mandates, the policy is not only ill-founded, it’s immoral.
Rubio Re-Introduces Gun-Adjacent Terror Watchlist Bill
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is, once again, pushing a bill he calls the “Terror Intelligence Improvement Act,” which would have serious consequences for anyone who has ever been placed on one of the government’s numerous and growing terror watchlists, even a decade after inclusion.
Terror watchlists are a constitutional nightmare, as they’re top secret, the government won’t tell you if you’re on or off one, and often the only way individuals find out about their inclusion is after enduring a pattern of harassment at the hands of government actors.
Rubio’s bill would frustrate this massive issue by compelling the consolidation of these lists, and adding one more consequence to the heap: the potential to lose the right to acquire firearms.
Rubio gives lip service to the Constitution by requiring that the subject person actually be notified of a hearing before their right to acquire a gun is suspended. That’s certainly better than we usually see with these kinds of bills, but that’s damning with faint praise.
As always, when the Police and Military adopt smartgun tech, Let me know. Until then, No thank you.
“That requirement would be extended to older firearms (they’d have to be retrofitted) for sale within 10 years.”
Carolyn Baloney is delusional. Let me just take out my 125 year old mauser and start machining on it so it can be retrofitted with batteries and microprocessors. Fuck no!
They don’t care and that is not the point of the law. Gu control laws are meant to punish and criminalize the exercise of a righht. They know that a law like that renders a large portion of the 400 millions firearms inoperable, legally, and makes them a target for police interactions that will lead to large fines and lengthy prison sentences. The guns will be hidden and in a generation or two, gun ownership will plummet as people take grand pappy’s icky guns in for destruction and Walmart gift cards.
Here’s telling Americans they must be a pretty lousy shot if they need 30 rounds when the pos Jim Crow Gun Control joe and his democRat Party ilk have a wall of troops around the capital with more than 30 f-n rounds to protect their marxist Rat’s nest.
The hypocrisy of those mealy mouth stinking deranged dirty diaper democRats never ceases to amaze me.
Rubio’s a puss & a flip flop RINO & inanimate object’s don’t hurt or kill without a person in control of such object. Persecute the person not the tool he chose to use. But then all the Karen’s wouldn’t have anything to bitch about.
Yeah, I’m glad he didn’t become president. Just what the world needed another GWB style statist.
That Rubio’s a dyed in the wool RINO, is pretty obvious. He’s a little sneakier about it than Mitt the Schitt.and Burr the Cur is all.
They need to knock this James Bond s**t off. If it’s electronic, it can be hacked, period. Some thug will just kill you and cut your finger off to use the gun.
As for Microstamping, I can’t really see the point, because just finding a case that’s linked to you, is still only circumstantial evidence. Ammo can be stolen/lost even easier than guns.
I understand spelling errors happen, but the title isn’t the place for that.
Ya, I’m going to be that guy
Scare tactics, nothing will take root. Just causing more ammo to be bought up.
Starting to believe the Democrats have stock in arms and ammo sales.
Hope you’re right. Don’t think you are though. The Democrats are not shy about ramming their will down the rest of America’s throat whenever they gain an upper hand. And the Republicans never do anything besides line their own pockets, elected or unelected. If you think they can’t won’t think again. If they do it in their own states doing it nationwide is the next step.. and California has been suffering under tyrannical and unconstitutional edicts for decades now, and New York joined them with the “SAFE” act about 5 years ago.
It can and will happen. I hope we have a little more time, but I’m not counting on it.
{Scare tactics.}
“Hope you’re right. Don’t think you are though.”
Yup, they will ‘go for the gusto’, and pass what they can. Meanwhile, their delusional, rabid base (kinda like TTAG’s pathetic brain-damaged trolls) will be shrieking to “Kill the filibuster”.
Something will get passed before it’s said and done, and we will be left with the thin hope of the courts un-doing the damage later.
Hang on kids, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride… 🙁
Sounds like somebody doesn’t remember the 90’s or didn’t have the great misfortune of growing up in a non-free state.
It’s easy to claim “fake news” or “nothingburger” when you haven’t lived it yourself.
In fact it’s what these people are counting on.
Look no further than the insulated and well-off libs in places like Maine and New Hampshire embracing policies that will ruin them. Liberalism is extremely attractive if you’ve never lived through it yourself.
So keep thinking this is all smoke and will amount to nothing. Having lived through a time and place where this shit was very real I won’t take any chances and will treat each proposal no matter how ludicrous as a real threat.
Microstamping and Smart Guns are both great ideas — and Biden should implement both immediately by Executive Order.
Of course, he cannot apply such requirements to the open market by Executive Order because that would require action by congress… BUT he can immediately require microstamping and smart guns for all new federal government firearms and make microstamping and smart guns a requirement for any federal grants to state and local law enforcement.
That way the feds get to lead the way and show us all how well microstamping and smart guns work.
My “dumb” guns have something in common with Joe Biden. They are all inanimate objects.
“The Ho” is already handling foreign policy for gramps just 3 weeks in:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-france-harris-macron/u-s-vice-president-harris-speaks-with-frances-macron-seeks-to-strengthen-ties-idUSKBN2AF1YK
I’m not sure how well that’s gonna work, with French intellectuals sounding the alarm at US demands of ‘Critical Race Theory’ and ‘cancel culture’s censorship demands :
‘Out-of-control woke leftism and cancel culture’ from the U.S is a threat to FRANCE because it ‘attacks’ the nation’s heritage and identity, French politicians and intellectuals say”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9242453/Out-control-woke-leftism-cancel-culture-threat-FRANCE-French-politicians-say.html
when the French, who literally have a mainstream socialist political party that wins legislative seats and the presidency, tell you you’re going too far left then its probably best to believe them.
The key to understanding Biden’s view of firearms in the hands of private citizens lies in his advice for defending your home with a double barreled shotgun. He advised firing both barrels into the air in a direction away from the threat. That would empty the gun so that the homeowner would be unable to shoot the home invaders. I used to think Biden and his ilk reserved that right to police. However, with calls to defund police, I now think they believe no force should be used against criminals.
Microstamping and smart guns are for the technically ignorant. Microstamping gets destroyed with use, and a quick swipe with a file or sandpaper will destroy it immediately without affecting the functioning of the gun. Only an idiot would use a gun registered to them in a crime, and the microstamp doesn’t indicate who currently possesses the gun once it hits the black market.
The problem with smart guns is that firing a gun is mechanically simple — a nail on a spring hits the primer. It’s not time dependent, like the spark in an engine.
Smart guns either must stop the nail from hitting the promer or be a critical connection between the nail and spring. In the former, whatever is blocking can be removed, and the latter can be circumvented by forcing the connection to always be there. It might stop a child who can’t figure out how to search for the youtube video on how to defeat it. There might be a small advantage for weapons retention if the scheme relies on physical attributes of the owner and not just proximity. This advantage mainly applies to police, who carry guns openly and get into physical struggles with bad guys, so force the police use them and figure out the disadvantages, like not firing when they really need it to. Besides, cops take their guns home, and we must protect their children. We can’t continue endangering their children by issuing guns that reliably fire when you pull the trigger.
Micro stamping is going to make a .22LR $100 a round. A Smart HiPoint $1530.65 fifty. How do you keep the undesirables out of the neighborhood, raise the rent.
Preach brother.
Mandate smart guns?
If they want to start mandating that something be “smart” maybe they should start by mandating that to congresscritters.
From “Guam capsizing” and “I was almost killed but wasn’t even in the building” to favorites like “faked evidence in a trial” and “heavy as 10 moving boxes”, they sure do inspire faith in their great leadership, don’t they?
MAYBE SOME MICRO TO HELP PEOPLE BE MORE SMART , AND THUGS TO DUMB TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT A WEAPON , OR USE ANY TYPE OF WEAPON ? UUUUH ?
DARN HUMANS , ANYWAY .
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