Various levels of government have, at various times, introduced safety requirements for various products. Seatbelts, for example, are mandated on all cars. This was the case long before wearing them was required, too. Cars are notoriously the target of a lot of safety requirements, but they're far from the only product that gets hit with them.

Guns have seen such requirements recently, such as laws in states like New York and California that seek to mandate various bits of technology be included in guns sold in the state.

The difference is that there's no constitutional right explicitly preserving one's right to own or operate a car.

So, a couple of members of Congress from notoriously anti-gun states--states with these exact measures on the books--decided to try and do something about it.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has introduced a new bill in Congress that would essentially undo some of New York’s recent gun regulations, and bar similar measures across the country.

This past Tuesday, Stefanik announced in a news release that she had joined Congressman Darrel Issa, R-Calif., in introducing the Modern Firearm Safety Act, which would bar both New York and California from maintaining some of the most recent safety requirements for handguns and other firearms.

The act, which is relatively short with only 47 lines of text, would bar any state in the U.S. from passing or maintaining legislation that requires firearms have technology like a loaded chamber indicator, magazine disconnect mechanisms, or microstamping.

...

The bill has not yet been formally introduced in Congress or assigned to a committee in the House.

It has no companion legislation in the U.S. Senate, and if it doesn’t see action before the end of December the bill will die and need to be reintroduced in the new Congressional term next year.

Let's be realistic for a moment. It's going to die sooner or later anyway, even if the House jumps all over this one.

Democrats control the Senate and they're not going to pass a bill like this. They're going to watch it flounder until December and then pretend it never happened.

But they shouldn't.

See, part of the issue here is that states are mandating "safety" features that either don't work as advertised, that have potential downsides for law-abiding gun owners, or that are just ridiculous.

Let's look at the three examples provided above for a moment.

Loaded chamber indicators sound like good things, but there's a potential problem with them. First, let's remember that every gun should be treated as if it's loaded. One shouldn't need an indicator to warn them that they should do so. That should be the default assumption.

But mandating that they be included means that many people will get used to them, so when they encounter a gun without them, they may well not realize that not every firearm has them. They become conditioned to assume that there will be an indicator that they don't act responsibly when there isn't one. This could well lead to more negligent discharges than would have happened without them.

Magazine disconnect devices are something that many gun owners like and many others don't. On one hand, it doesn't matter if there's a round in the chamber or not, if you take the magazine out, it won't fire.

Yet there are times that a magazine could be dropped while grappling for one's life, this means the gun can't be used to defend yourself afterward. I don't know how common that is, but the truth is that if you treat a gun as if it's loaded anyway, there's no need for a disconnect.

Finally, we have microstamping. 

The technology doesn't really exist. It won't do what proponents like to think it will do. It's nothing but a way to create more of a burden on gun manufacturers and potentially make guns more costly for prospective gun owners.

None of this actually makes guns safer. They arguably will cost lives.

So, I'd love to see this bill become law. It's just not going to happen this year and, unless gun owners get out and vote in droves, it may never happen.