See California bans single-shot handguns:
California has banned the sale of single-shot handguns that can be altered into semi-automatic weapons, handing a modest victory to proponents of tougher gun laws while striving to protect antique collectors.
Now I was only vaguely familiar with this practice:
Under existing California law, semi-automatic weapons must have an indicator showing when there is a bullet in the chamber. But many manufacturers do not include the feature, leading some dealers to convert guns to single-shot weapons before selling them, though they are later reverted back, Dickinson said.
This was a simple work-around California’s “Safety Roster” laws. Take a GLOCK, affix a solid block with a raceway so single cartridges can be fed into the action, and voila! A legal gun under the law.
Later the owner can remove the block to open up the magazine well for standard use. This really is a true “Loophole” in the law, as unlike removing features from So-Called “Assault Weapons”, this was designed so that the features could be added back by the end user.
A similar workaround is often done in Massachusetts. Guns are required to be sold with a heavier trigger than factory specs. Since the “Safety” Roster laws only apply to guns being sold by FFLs not by guns owned by private citizens the Mass Legal parts can simply be swapped with factory original, after market, or simply modified by a gunsmith and away you go.
Still the bottom line is the stupidity of these laws. The idea that a gun with a loaded chamber indicator (LCI), or some other optional feature is pure pseudoscience. Many of my guns have LCIs of some sort, and I refuse to use them, and won’t teach new shooters about them. Instead I choose to teach new shooters and use myself the much more reliable method of press-checking the gun for a gun presumed loaded, and clearing the action for a gun presumed unloaded. The idea that you would simply pull the trigger on a gun simply because the LCI indicates that the gun is empty, or trust your life with a gun because the LCI indicates it’s loaded is foolish, and in both cases it could get you killed. The most common LCIs are pieces that protrude when they are in contact with the case of a round. A worn, broken, or stuck part may not protrude even if the gun is loaded, and a dirty, worn, or stuck part might protrude all the time independent of what status the chamber is.
Also what I see in a lot of guns that weren’t designed to have an LCI is the practice of drilling a “Witness Hole” in the chamber hood so the rim of the chambered round can be visually inspected. This is a small hole, so good light is needed, and the hole needs to be aligned with your eye. In playing with this feature on guns loaded with dummy ammunition for safety I find it is VERY easy to lose track of where your muzzle is pointed as you try and inspect your chamber. DANGEROUS!
The bottom line is the law is crap at it’s core, so rather than STRENGTHENING bad laws we should just repeal it. Of course California doesn’t care about safety or logic, all they care about is banning guns!
There are regiments of lawyers working in legislative drafting services in D. C. and state capitals. They have buds in think tanks, universities, and the press. They get paid to crank out the legalistic verbiage. You can’t count on them to actually understand what they’re writing about. A lot of their work is cut-and-paste, and a fair chunk of it is written by genuinely expert industry insiders who may have their own axes to grind. Even if they’re writing laws they know are crap, they don’t care because they just assume debate and public hearings and what-not will sort things out. That puts a hell of a burden on honest citizens who get sandbagged by the latest bullshit law.
(I spoke to a woman who once asked a few questions about a non-gun bill we were both thinking of supporting. When she mentioned that revenues under the bill would be way short of what was needed, she was told, “You don’t have to worry about what’s actually in the bill. We just need you to gather support for it.” Jill was and is pretty prominent, too. She passed the word on to me about the quality of people involved, and I got the hell out, too.)
Long story short–no big surprise that the anti-gun agenda attracts junk legislation.
The federal Switchblade Act of 1958 may be one example of junk legislation that’s sort of gun-related. The tool itself was given moral agency (“the toy that kills”); there was a strain of bigotry involved, because spring-loaded stilletos were associated with big-city Italian gangs; the legislation seems cumbersome, intrusive, predatory, and pandering to the worst instincts among people.
You’d need to be a real expert (I’m not, and I’m not a lawyer), but I’ll guess there’s a fair case that a lot of gun laws ought to be just plain repealed. (My Mom bought a revolver mail order; I packed my Mauser in my flight luggage in the late 1970s and early 1980s without a second thought. How in the heck do current restrictions help with ordered liberty?)
My Walther PPQ has a loaded chamber indicator at the rear of the extractor cut. It’s so “useful” that I didn’t even notice the gun had one for the first several months I owned it.