Taken together, the gun show loophole and repeal of one handgun a month could easily be called something else: The Strawman’s Bill of Rights.
Except that straw purchasing will be just as illegal after this bill is repealed as it was before it was repealed. How many people have been prosecuted under the one-gun-a-month law anyway? And for all their talk about the “iron pipeline,” I don’t hear East Coast mayors complaining any less loud about Virginia being a source of crime guns. The law is useless and infringes on a constitutional right. Get rid of it.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch seems to be OK with the idea:
One-gun-a-month served a practical function. But it also compromised important principles by infringing on the right to bear arms enshrined in the Constitution. Like Del. Joe Morrissey, who asked whether the law truly inconviences anyone, advocates of the measure stress that one gun a month should be enough for anyone; no one “needs” to buy more than that. Perhaps. On the other hand, rights are not supposed to be constrained by what some people think other people need. It could be argued that newspapers do not need to publish more than once a week, that nobody needs to buy more than two books a month, that the faithful do not need to attend church more than twice a year, or that no woman should need more than one abortion in her lifetime. Those are not decisions government should make.
Wait a minute, this is from a MSM news source? Do I need to go read that again? I’m going to guess their editorial board won’t be on the Brady Christmas Card list after that one.
Wow, did a civil libertarian just get a job at the Times-Dispatch?
The TD’s editorial staff has long been favorable to gun owner’s rights – I still have a cutout editorial excoriating the then-proposed Brady Act from almost twenty years ago. While not perfect, they routinely piss all over what the antis want to do.
The reporting staff, not so much.
My dearly beloved statist mother absolutely hates the TD. I’ve always found them to be the rarest of things: a newspaper that actually prints news. You’re always going to have slant, but the opinion pieces are all on the Op/Ed page where they belong.
Yeah, it’s been a crappy week personally, but good on gun rights. Though once the Gun of the Month Club law is repealed, I’m going to have to actually control myself and not rely on the law to do it for me…..