For those who have been reading me for a good while you’ll note that this is a Redux of an older post I did back on my Livejournal. Of course Livejournal sucks for blogging, and that post is difficult to find, plus this subject is getting a lot of play given the talk about “High-Capacity” magazines in the aftermath of the Arizona Shooting.
As a general rule most gun laws are redundant, like banning carry to curb violent acts that are all read criminal, or banning private sales to keep criminals from getting guns which is already a crime. Or what I call “The Numbers Game”.
The best example is magazine restrictions. One of the greatest examples of this is the S&W4006 handgun. It was introduced in 1990 and was the debut handgun for the .40 S&W cartridge. I may be mistaken but I believe it was based on the 5906 Pistol The 5906 pistol was a 9x19mm pistol that had a standard capacity of 15 rounds. Because of the larger size of the .40 S&W round, the 4006 pistol had a standard capacity of 11 rounds.
I pick this gun because it was designed at the exact wrong place and wrong time, because in 1994 the Federal Assault Weapon ban was passed, which in part banned the sale of new magazines over 10 rounds to civilians. Given that the 4006 was a popular pistol for the 4 years it was unrestricted, there were lots of 11-round mags in the wild, that being said S&W overnight went from being able to sell 11-round magazines to the general market, to having to stamp “Law Enforcement Only” on the 11 rounders, and producing 10-round magazines for civilian sales.
Now let’s talk about the logistics of this. A 10 Round magazines is legal, but a magazine that holds ONE more is now a crime to own. Care to tell me what difference that new magazine causes? Here’s a better one, the person who bought a “Ban compliant” 4006 could load the 10-round magazine up, chamber a round, then drop the magazine and top it off. So the magazine holds 10, but the gun now is holding 11…
Of course this doesn’t make sense. Also it cost S&W a ton of money because they had to tool up new magazines that simply made it impossible for the owner to seat the last round. Today the 4006’s replacement is the M&P 40, which has a 15 round magazine in the full-size, and 10 rounds in the compact variant. The M&P 45 holds exactly 10 rounds. These numbers are intentional, S&W has prepared for a new ban so that if they are going to make a non-compliant magazine, they’ll make the “High-Capacity” a significantly higher number than 10, or exactly 10.
This example can go on. How about the NFA ban on firearms with bores larger than .50 Caliber, or the similar California ban which expands the limit to .50. First up I’m curious what the exact definition is because the venerable .50 BMG actually has a bore of 0.510″. But let’s take that as an example, let’s say I make a wild-cat cartridge that blows out the case neck of a .50 BMG to 0.520″. A different of 1/100th of an inch, and a difference I don’t think anybody could tell without a micrometer, but one rifle is totally legal, while the other is illegal without a Federal Tax Stamp, and goofy paperwork. In California a similar idea actually exists. .50 Caliber firearms are banned for sale there, so Ron Barret invented the .416 Barret cartridge, which is ballistically VERY similar to the .50 BMG, but a slightly smaller bore. But we could technically go between them and still have a legal firearm. Even sillier, the ban makes no distinction on muzzle energy. So a new production rifle in the old .50-70 Buffalo cartridge, or Marlin’s Guide gun in .50 AE are illegal, but something in .416 Barret, or .460 Weatherby Magnum would be OK. You couldn’t buy a Desert Eagle in .50 AE, or a S&W .500 Magnum Revolver….but the same guns in .44 Magnum, or .460 Magnum respectively are perfectly legal.
What do these laws accomplish? Nothing, they picked an arbitrary line in the sand and somehow want you to respect it.
How about another NFA law. Rifles with barrels shorter than 16″, or shotguns shorter than 18″. First up why different barrel lengths for different long-arms? And why is a 16″ shotgun a crime, when a 16″ rifle is not? What’s the harm in a rifle with a barrel with the length of 15″? To further blur the line, it is perfectly legal to buy Pistols built off of rifle receivers that have short barrels, but no shoulder-stock. Of course this is ONLY legal if the receiver has NEVER been assembled as a rifle before. What does a piece of metal’s past have to do with anything?
Again an arbitrary line in the sand chosen for no scientific or logical reasons.
Don’t you think it would be common sense to follow laws that are drawn to do nothing but restrict freedoms?
Making .50 BMG bans even more ridiculous is the .510 DTC cartridge, which has nearly identical ballistics, uses the exact same projectiles, is made with slightly modified .50 BMG brass, and is perfectly legal in France (where it was originally designed) and California.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.510_DTC_EUROP
NFA is funny, because OLD short barrel rifles can be exempt because they are old…. My local Cabelas has a 15″ Stevens rifle on the shelf which is just a rifle.
The .50cal NFA limit is not hard and fast in implementation. There is eithere “nonsporting” clause, or a “sporting” exemption. A 14.5mm russian is NFA, but a 14.5mm JDJ is non-NFA. 99.99% of 12 & 20 gauge shotguns are “sporting” unless you get to the ugly guns like the Striker and Sweeper which are NFA.
arbitrary and capricious, at best.
Someone also posed the Q (VC?) of what happens when you take a 10-rd 50Beo mag and fit 20 rounds of .223 in it. It’s now a 10-rd mag holding 20 rounds….
That was me on VC, and I was talking about the .450 Bushmaster, which is the same idea.
I belive you can buy as many 10-round .450 Mags here, and of course owning followers isn’t an issue. But assembling them. GO TO JAIL!!
Makes perfect sense to me….
Unfortunately, I am starting to fear that the KSG will fall under the same “nonsporting” bullshit clause as the Striker and Streetsweeper… odd/crappy shotgun or not, that would just suck.
I’d like to see somebody put that in legal writing post Heller/McDonald.
I’ve recently stumbled onto another funny numbers game: “gun death” and/or “murder” statistics. As I was trying to compare Vermont’s murder rate with that of Great Britain’s, the fact that 7 people died in 2009 in Vermont, out of 490,000, and about 1,700 died in an unidentified year in Great Britain, out of about 57 million…we’re talking about very small numbers!
Will any amount of gun control, or knife control, or baseball bat control, or even gasoline control, really affect these numbers?
I’ll just say I regularly visit Vermont, and I will argue against the idea of visiting the UK, dispite the fact that my ancestors and Scotch Whiskey come from there….
That’s the funny thing: crime is rare enough, that anyone can say “we have gun control here, but blood isn’t running in the streets!” It’s kindof maddening, and it’s why we should distrust using statistics as a justification for banning guns.
Having said that, the only place I’ve ever been mugged was in “gun-free” England. And no, guns weren’t used, so it doesn’t count. 🙂
Also remember (IIRC) that Britain doesn’t count a crime in it’s statistics until it’s been solved – if no one has been convicted, it’s not included in the crime statistics – so their numbers are artificially low compared to the US, which bases the statistics on crimes reported.
Unless the crime statistics are gathered, counted, and reported in exactly the same way, comparing one country to another is meaningless.
I think we need to to research on that Jake, if that’s true that could be a HUGE number swing. I know Boston has an unsolved murder rate of around 70%. That’s a LOT of bodies to not count given that you don’t have a person to pin it to.
http://www.metro.us/boston/local/article/732803–hub-murders-rise-more-go-unsolved?rand=967
If you can dig up that source that would be a big deal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/crimewatch/
Found this, but nothing about crime statistics.
Arbitrary and capricious is correct… We had (I’m STILL pissed that it got turned in), a .410 H&R Handi Gun, it was a single shot .410 “pistol”
http://www.fourten.org.uk/mwhandygun.html
Now you can buy a Taurus PISTOL in .410…
Well NFO, the H&R is smooth bore so it is verbotten, but the Taurus is rifled so it is approved.
Please pay no attention to the fact that a smooth bore .410 is common, typical, and reasonably smart – whereas a rifled 410 pistol is nothing other than moronic.
“These numbers are intentional, S&W has prepared for a new ban so that if they are going to make a non-compliant magazine, they’ll make the “High-Capacity” a significantly higher number than 10, or exactly 10.”
Even though the federal AWB is gone, some states still have implementations with the ten round limit. So it still makes sense to design to them even if the federal bans is gone.
The barrel length restrictions are there to make weapons less concealable (obviously). I wonder if the 16″ requirement is there because that’s almost the same length as the gas system on a BAR.
I heard that 16/26″ came from what you could conveniently conceal under a trenchcoat. But the BAR theory fits right into the NFA timeframe…
I had heard that CMP had just sold a buttload on M1 Carbines…but the M1 is 18″
The BAR makes sense since Clyde Barrow had a cut-down BAR as his weapon of choice. The word is a lot of NFA law has Clyde and Dillinger to thank for.
Great timing – I hear that a certain Brazilian manufacturer with dubious quality just introduced a 28ga revolver. And I believe that is a 0.550″ bore diameter.
Oh wow, I didn’t even look it up, but you are correct! That could be interesting.
I’ve been waiting for someone to take a whack at the “sporting purposes” clause since Heller…
I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, given that Washington was NOT crossing the icy Deleware River to get to the duck blind before sun-up.
Why is the NFA limit on minimum barrel lengths 18″ for shotguns and 16″ for rifles? Why is a handgun with a stock an NFA (i.e., “Title II”) Short Barrelled Rifle? Why can’t you take an AR15 rifle, slap a “pistol buttstock and 14.5” barrel on it still considered a “rifle” (only now, it’s an NFA liable “Short Barreled Rifle”).
Simple, if you know teh history of the NFA.
First off, handguns were originally covered exactly the same as Short Barrelled Rifles, Short Barrelled Shotguns, machineguns, etc. Short rifles and shotguns were covered, because it was realized that the gangsters would just saw off the barrel of rifles and shotguns (which they were already doing) if they couldn’t get handguns. (And that’s why you cannot legally take a standard AR15 rifle, 10-22 rifle, Remington 700 rifle, and alter it to EXACTLY the same configuration as the factory produced handgun equivalents.) The NFA was INTENDED to ban (under the guise of a “tax”) machineguns, silencers, and ALL concealable firearms.
The “Evil, Sellout NRA” successfully lobbied to get handguns dropped from NFA coverage.
Originally the NFA’s barrel and all over lengths were the same for both rifles and shotguns — 18″ barrel and 26″ overall.
Eventually, DCM was selling surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines to people — through the mail, yet!
The M1 Carbine has a nominal barrel length of EXACTLY 18″, by spec. However, given manufacturing variations and armorer repairs (such as recrowning the barrels, often repeatedly and aggressively) mean that a LOT of them had barrels just a skosh under 18″.
In other words, the US Government had sold (and was continuing to sell) unregistered NFA firearms to the American people.
So, DCM lobbied to get the minimum barrel length for non-NFA firearms (i.e., “Title I”) changed to 16″, which ensured that there was no chance a DCM-sold M1 Carbine unknowingly turned the owner into a felon.
I should point out — handguns were in the PROPOSED NFA legislation; NRA lobbied to get them dropped out of the NFA before the bill was passed.
Thanks for all that info! I had heard it was because of the M1 Carbine, but I couldn’t figure out why as they have 18″ pipes on them. I hadn’t thought about Barrel re-crowning!
I was aware of the handgun “ban”.
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