\nFree idea for someone who cares about gun control: only assault rifles should be legal, handguns should be outlawed.
I’m 100% sure I’ve heard this before, not sure from who though. An “assault rifle” isn’t really a thing, but, yeah. Outlawing handguns but not rifles doesn’t seem like an altogether bad idea if you’re coming at it from a “reduce gun death but also respect the spirit of the second amendment” angle.
Uh don’t look now but with the US civilian carbine boom proceeding on parallel “legally a pistol” and “short-barreled rifle” tracks the handgun/assault rifle binary isn’t looking too hot these days
The 1934 National Firearms Act was originally trying to restrict machine guns and pistols as\u00a0\u201ccriminal weapons\u201d, with the\u00a0\u201cshort-barreled rifle\u201d stuff filling a loophole, and but the pistol part got removed before the law passed. Everything about about it has been kludgy nonsense from the beginning:
It sure seems like everyone important who wants to restrict guns doesn\u2019t know shit about guns.
I just love the part where the tax stamps are set at prohibitively high prices as a getaround for “we do TOO have authority to promulgate this law!” and then never updated so inflation eventually renders them moot
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