‘One gun a month’: rationing Constitutional rights
3/31/2009
I have recently been discussing, one at a time, the various approaches the forcible citizen disarmament lobby takes in pursuing its agenda. Today, we’ll look at “one gun a month” laws. The idea behind such legislation is that if limited to buying only one gun per month, an aspiring gun trafficker will be unable to efficiently ply his illicit trade, and gun trafficking will thus be significantly curtailed. Generally, in order to make the legislation more palatable, it’s written to apply only to handgun purchases–the thinking, apparently, being to give “pro-sportsmen” politicians some cover in voting for it; “See, I’m not interfering with hunters–I just want to regulate those nasty handguns.”
Even with that strategy, efforts to pass such laws have not done all that well. To my knowledge, only three states have passed them (well–four, actually, but South Carolina repealed its version of the law in 2004, after determinining that it was not effective in reducing crime). In notoriously anti-gun New Jersey, for example, the gun haters have pushed hard for such a law without success. The Illinois House of Representatives might vote on it any day now, but considering the gun haters’ defeats last week, it will probably have a rough time.
Of the three states that do have a “one handgun a month” law on the books, one is Virginia–commonly singled out as being at fault for violent crime in New York, because of its “weak gun laws.” My guess is that if the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” had their way, Virginia (and every other state) would have a “no guns per month” law.
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 