I didn’t jump right on Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey’s bill, because any idiot Senator can introduce a bill. Introduction doesn’t mean it has any legs, or will get anywhere other than referred to committee to die a quiet death from utter neglect. Bob Owens took a look at the bill and notes that it would apply to all future handguns two years after the date of enactment. It’s actually worse than that. It would also require any gun sold, after three years, whether privately or from a dealer, to be a retrofitted smart gun, meaning there would be no grandfathering for current stock. All handguns would have to be retrofitted if with smart gun technology if you wanted to sell, offer for sale, trade, lease, transfer, ship your handgun. Markey might as well mandate we all use phasers, for all the science fiction going on with this bill.
To make matters worse, Markey’s bill would put all regulation in the hands of the notorious nanny state killjoys at the Consumer Products Safety Commission. They’d get to decide the “smart gun” standard. It guts the PLCAA, and allows the persons, states and the federal government to bring suit against gun manufacturers for “unsafe handguns.”
Though, one silver lining to Markey’s lunacy that it does not exempt law enforcement. He does exempt firearms owned by the department of Defense, but I notice he does not provide exemption for manufacturers to manufacture for the Department of Defense, nor exemption to sell non-compliant firearms to the DoD, but I suppose that was just his staffers having no clue how to write legislation. Or maybe not, it’s always hard to tell how much they live in their own world, and think the unicorns can just fart out new technology on command.
18 USC 922(o) doesn’t provide an exemption for SOTs to possess post-sample machine guns either, but unsurprisingly, the ATF’s written a bunch of regulations that ignore that fact. They’d do the same thing in the highly unlikely circumstance that this bill was passed any time soon.
Look for the law enforcement exemption to be added. Otherwise, this bill is DOA.
If enacted, it would destroy the handgun industry in the U.S.
And thus be shot down in challenges at the Supreme Court level as effectively banning ownership, which is forbidden under Heller.
If the court maintains its make-up. Heller was 5-4. Do you expect any doctrinaire leftist judge to respect precedent? They’ll overthrow Heller in a heartbeat. After all, “It’s for the Children(TM)!”
Ah, Senator Markey. A gift to all of us from the people of Massachusetts.
This why I like it when gun owners go after S&W/Guns & Ammo/Recoil/Armalite/CTD/Troy etc with torches and pitchforks when they fail to give full respect to gun rights. I want gun companies to be terrified their customers.
Otherwise I could see Ruger coming out with some crappy “smart gun” that requires the user to wear a watch with a proximity chip or something. Anti-gun politicians would get instant erections from such a gun.
But I think manufacturers know we’d have their heads on pikes if they did such a thing.
Which is why this new smart gun is being manufactured by some unknown German company.
I believe several unknown entities have produced some “smart gun” tech, but obviously none have gained any traction. I think it would be a completely different story if someone like Ruger made a smart gun.
It picks on 3 of their favorite topics, 1, smart guns, 2. giving CPSC jurisdiction of handguns, 3 guts LPCA. Non starter. Even with the senate in the hands of the dems, this will never see the light of day.
So I guess I’m going to have get anti-virus software for my guns now. Wunderbar.
Do you think they’d stop there?
I can see my senator, Amy Klobuchar mandating the guns have kill switches installed, so they can be remotely disabled if they are stolen. Or if Big Brother or a hacker decide to disable them.
She is pushing cell phone kill switches big-time. The governments of Venezuela and Ukraine would love to have kill switches in their subjects’ cell phones right now. It makes isolating and killing the protesters so much easier if they cannot call for help or describe their deaths.
Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey (both Dems from MN) are probably rolling in their graves at the very beings of Franken and Klobuchar. Why can’t Minnesotans realize McCarthy and Humphrey are gone and so is the Democrat party? They are the communist party now.
I really hope you guys can have Franken packing up his office after the next election.
That NYC Communist swine that is Al Franken must be thrown out of office.
I’m sure the Democrat nominated to run against Pat Meehan (R. PA) wouldn’t have a problem mandating that ALL guns be retrofitted to be smartguns:
http://www.delcotimes.com/government-and-politics/20140220/la-salle-professor-to-take-on-meehan-brady-gains-backing
“…Balchunis said she favors equal pay, sensible gun laws and upholding the Affordable Health Care Act.”
“Sensible gun laws”….Sigh…..Democrat Codespeak for total confiscation