Absolutely no gun control law should get passed without getting a legal challenge. That is, thankfully, the norm these days, but it needs to continue. There needs to be a cost for trying to trample our right to keep and bear arms. The only downside is that the people who most need to pay it won't be footing the bill.
Still, we have to challenge them if for no other reason than the lack of a challenge gets taken as a green light for other infringements.
In Rhode Island, even without such a green light, the anti-gunners there are looking to enact a measure that is nothing more than the gun confiscation that the gun control crowd has always sworn they were against.
And Second Amendment attorneys for various gun rights groups are getting ready for a fight over this.
Pro-Second Amendment organizations said they would launch court challenges against a bill in Rhode Island that would give owners of modern semiautomatic firearms six months to dispose of them.
Democratic Rhode Island state Sen. Tiara Mack introduced S2710 on Feb. 27 with eight co-sponsors, legislation that tightens the state’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” by prohibiting possession of the firearms. Under the terms of the legislation, those who own prohibited firearms would have until Dec. 31 to either sell them to a licensed dealer or transfer them to an out-of-state resident who could legally own them, something pro-Second Amendment organizations say would violate Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
“This is pretty, pretty terrifying stuff as far as the Second Amendment goes,” a National Rifle Association (NRA) spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the bill, which has yet to advance out of the Rhode Island state Senate Judiciary Committee. Mack did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF, but on her campaign site, she called for numerous restrictions targeting gun owners.
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On her campaign site, Mack also claimed she “does not believe in taking away the guns of Rhode Islanders,” yet the legislation, if enacted, would force them to sell firearms to federally licensed dealers. She also claimed on her site that “while the freedom to own a gun is an American one, the freedom to live safely is even more so.”
There is no such freedom, in part because life has risks. You cannot ensure safety, which is why there's nothing in the Constitution preserving any such right. There is, however, a right to keep and bear arms.
Mack also says she doesn't believe in taking guns from gun owners, while pushing legislation to do just that. That seems a contradiction until you remember that, to the anti-gunner, gun confiscation can only mean taking every gun in private hands all at once. Since this is just those pesky assault weapons, it doesn't matter.
Of course, state anti-gun groups frame this as just being about closing some loopholes left by last year's legislation, the reality is that the bill grandfathered those existing guns in for a reason, and just like always, anti-gunners try the whole Darth Vader approach. "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
So groups like SAF, NRA, and the Firearms Policy Coalition are gearing up for the lawsuit, and the FPC isn't remotely playing nice about how they see it, which is pretty on-brand for them.
FPC President Brandon Combs was quoted as saying, “It’s insane. It’s evil. And it’s what depraved tyrants do.”
I can't think of a better way to phrase it, really, and yes, Combs was talking about this. He's also completely correct, because while Mack claims that self-defense isn't about guns that can fire multiple rounds per second, she clearly is unaware that both semi-auto handguns and revolvers can do that, as can a lot of non-semi-auto rifles. Once again, ignorance and stupidity collide in a gun control policy presented as common sense, but it ignores literally everything else about the topic.
But it's not about some guns being bad for self-defense. It's about taking all guns out of the picture. They just can't jump there right away, so they start with the much vilified AR-15 and similar firearms, and I guess they think it'll be allowed to stand.
I can't wait for the lawsuits if this passes.
I really can't wait for the legal decisions that come down that essentially asks Mack and her buddies in Rhode Island, "Do you all even have a semi-functional brain anywhere?"
