Weer'd World

They’re trying to ban online ammo sales:

The proposal was introduced outside New York City Hall by New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg and New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, and it marked the latest development in the gun control debate rekindled after 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded in the July 20 shooting inside an Aurora, Colo., movie theater….The Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act would require buyers who are not dealers to present a photo ID at the time of purchase, “effectively banning the online or mail-order purchase of ammo by regular citizens,” according to a summary of the legislation provided to Fox News.

The three other provisions are: Only licensed dealers can sell ammunition, the licensed dealers must keep records of ammunition sales and they must report the sales of more than 1,000 rounds to an unlicensed buyer within five business days.

Lautenberg and McCarthy said they will introduce the legislation later this week.

First up this won’t fly. Lautenberg and McCarthy are two of the biggest losers on the hill, and everybody knows they come from extremist districts of anti-freedom moonbats, and to tie in with them is the political equivalent to grabbing a boat anchor in the deep end of the pool.

He also said the legislation is a “common sense” effort to flag suspicious activity and help prevent such sales to “a terrorist or the next would-be mass murderer.”

Or maybe not. Let’s say you bought a Nagant revolver because you like history, and they’re cheap. Then you want to shoot it. Privi Partizan is NOT boutique ammo, its fairly cheap stuff from Croatia, but that’s 50c per round.

But the Nagant is a miliary sidearm, so they have surplus ammo! Buy that can and you’re looking at 30c per round! That adds up quicky. Hell just one string in the 7-shot Nagant you’re saving $1.40!!! Hey, but that’s 92 rounds over 1,000!!!! You must be a terrorist!!!!

To comply with the law the house will have to open the sealed tin (which is a bit of a selling point in itself, as while the tin is sealed its preserved from the effects of time) and sell the packs in multiples under 1,000…and of course they’ll charge for their time re-bundling the ammo packs!

And of course this isn’t a safety factor. I’ve bought thousands of rounds online, often in large multiples (generally in lots of 500 or 1,000 because most standard packs of ammo come in boxes of 20 or 50, but odd deals get odd numbers, like my crate of 900 rounds of 7.62×51 NATO, that could have easily been 1,100 rounds, it was a good deal for a good number of rounds, so I bought it!), and of course with shipping costs its not uncommon for two or three people to go in on one bulk deal for a common caliber.

This is not terrorist or criminal acts…its not even an uncommon act. Thankfully people already know that and this bill will go nowhere.

My last post had me dig up my Numbers Game post. It reminded me of a recent discussion I had with my wife on my fairly libertarian views on drugs. While I may let the wookie howl, I certainly make sure to put the small-L in “libertarian”, as I may break a bit from the purist.

You see Mrs. Weer’d was surprised that when I was talking about legal heroin dealers (I like to use heroin and cocaine when talking illegal drugs because things like marijuana don’t really put much fear in the average drug-war supporter, and I see the legalization in some fashion of marijuana to be politically inevitable at this point), I mentioned that they should probably hold a license of some sort to sell the product.

Yeah, small-government me is talking about licensing drug dispensaries. Why? Well I see two problems with the illegal drug trade (besides the big one, being that they can’t rely on Police to protect their interests, so they need to self-enforce their own unwritten “laws”, often seen as inner city gang violence) is that A) The drugs are of questionable content and purity, which can result in overdoses and poisoning. (You’ll note the same thing happened during prohibition, Feds would raid a house and find everybody dead because they were consuming alcohol that had poisons in it from poor craftsmanship, or were drinking toxic stuff like Sterno) B) Drug dealers are breaking the law selling drugs to ANYBODY, so selling to minor children isn’t much different than selling to grown adults.

The Numbers Game came up when discussing selling to minors. Now if you read the above gun post you’ll note that I point out that the Numbers Game is a pointless exercise…but “minors” fall into that too. Let’s face it, You can’t buy a pack of smokes when you’re 17 years old and 364 days old…but the next day you can buy a whole carton and smoke them in the parking lot! Same goes to the common practice of a 20 year old going to a bar the day before their birthday, and start drinking as soon as the clock strikes midnight. Of course nothing changes in those hours and days or even years. Also it seems rather foolish to be able to smoke, vote, enter binding contracts, enlist in the military, buy a long-gun, work full-time, and live on one’s own at 18…but you need to wait until you’re 21 to drink a beer, or buy a handgun.

Now obviously we can debate those numbers….but that being said we can agree that say, a 13 year old SHOULD NOT be engaging in any of those adult behaviors. They’re too young, too inexperienced, too ignorant of the world, and still rapidly changing into an adult.

There’s the HUGE difference between between gun control and legal definitions of minority and majority. People will agree that there are definite times when a person is a minor, and when a person is an adult. Certainly a 5-year-old is most certainly a child, and a 40-year-old is an adult. Now the question is where to draw the line, and frankly that can be debated forever, as no two people are the same, so some bit of arbitrary notation is needed.

But what about the gun control laws. Has anybody declared a perfectly safe number of rounds to be stuffed into a gun? Of course not. Many laws have the round-number of 10, but really will the antis stay quiet if somebody shoots up a school using 9-shot single-stack pistol, or a five-shot shotgun, or a four-shot hunting rifle? Of course not!

Same goes for any other regulation we can mull over. Just look at the ban-compliant rifles during the “Assault Weapon Ban”. Companies quickly started removing the banned features from guns, often leaving a gun with just the extended pistol grip and a 10-round magazine. Did the antis agree that this new-and-improved AR-15 and AK-pattern rifles were fine for public consumption? Of course not! They called the compliance a “Loophole”. By that definition the whole law was one big loophole, as there was no way for a company to comply with the law without consulting the arbitrary opinions of an anti-gunner. Further I doubt the antis much liked guns that were naturally compliant with the law like the M1 Carbine or the Ruger Mini-14. Plus there’s the silliness that you can hang a million features off of a non-auto-loading gun, like an Enfield rifle (say a model that has a grenade launcher adapter, bayonet lug, and a removable magazine), or an Yugo SKS which is semi-auto with a FIXED magazine, but has a grenade launcher, flash hider, and bayonet lug…but that fixed magazine exempts it.

Really they’re just against all guns, but can’t take them all, so they’ll go for the divide and conquer approach!

Sorry guys, we’ll hang together, and let YOU hang individually!