Of course, that’s only surprising in the fact that they found new gun control laws to pass in the first place. Yet this bunch? They’re dumber than most.

The motion approved today directs county counsel to draft ordinances to ban the sale of .50 caliber handguns and .50 caliber ammunition in unincorporated LA County, to implement zoning regulations with a buffer zone between gun and/or ammunition dealers and sensitive areas (e.g., schools, day cares, parks) in unincorporated Los Angeles County, and to prohibit the carrying of firearms on all Los Angeles County property.

The motion also advances amendments to the county code to require gun stores in unincorporated Los Angeles County to implement common sense measures including maintaining a fingerprint log, submitting annual sales reports, maintaining and reporting inventory in real-time, installing and maintaining security cameras, limiting minors’ access, and providing gun purchasers with information about current gun laws.

The measure, which passed unanimously, also issues county support for a No-Fly, No-Buy law.

Good to see they’re big fans of due process in LA County.

Now, let’s get into just why these measures are particularly stupid.

First, banning handguns in .50 caliber.

This one is stupid because, for one thing, there aren’t that many firearms that are actually in .50 caliber. Further, while criminals often are fascinated with guns like the Desert Eagle, these weapons are huge, unwieldy, and terrible for carrying concealed.

In a way, if every gangbanger in LA County carried one, it would make it much easier for the cops to find them.

Plus, as we can see in this 2016 study, .50 caliber weapons aren’t exactly used particularly often in homicides.

So what LA County has done here is ban something that will have no appreciable impact on crime, homcides, or anything else except for the right to keep and bear arms by law-abiding citizens.

Now, about buffer zones between gun stores and schools, parks, etc.

**sighs**

Where to start with this one?

I guess we should start with the idea that a buffer zone would actually do anything. Even if you ascribe to the idea that crime surrounds gun stores–which is far from proven–it should be noted that crime almost never happens at the gun store. That means a buffer zone between a gun store and a school or other “sensitive place” would arguably make those places less safe.

The only good side of this is that gun stores tend to be surrounded by crime, not because of the nature of the gun stores themselves, but the nature of where many are forced to be located. Anti-gun sentiment pushes them out of places like shopping malls and into less savory parts of town in some places.

So the impact on schools or parks would be minimal.

However, that doesn’t mean this is a good policy. Instead, it’s another attempt at stigmatizing gun ownership, treating it like it’s sinful; like there’s something wrong with exercising a constitutionally protected right.

“But the kids…”

The kids aren’t buying guns. They’re not able to lawfully buy guns. There’s no way for a child to buy a gun from a gun store.

Kids get guns, but they either steal them or buy them off the black market. They’re not getting it from Bob’s Guns.

This won’t do anything except make it harder to open a gun store in LA County.

Of course, considering they want those gun stores to keep things like fingerprint logs–which this report unironically calls “common sense” measures, it should be noted–it’s unsurprising that they’d do this.

Again, criminals don’t go to gun stores. They have other ways to get guns, and no amount of making it difficult for law-abiding citizens is going to change that.

So yeah, these measures are dumber than most LA County comes up with, but the only surprising thing here is that they hadn’t tried this stuff already.