Sandy Hook Commission Shows Why Gun
Registration Requirements Must be Defied
By Kurt Hofmann, January 21st 2015, 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Dannel P. Malloy
The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, set up by Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy in January 2013, has apparently spent the entire two years between then and now finding creative new ways to infringe on that which shall not be infringed. Given that length of time, it is hardly surprising that they dreamed up some real doozies.
Just one such doozy (of many) was unveiled last Friday, when the commission announced that when its final report is ultimately released (planned for the middle of next month), it will include a recommendation to ban all guns that can fire more than ten shots between reloads. From the Associated Press:
An advisory panel charged with looking at public safety in the wake of the deadly Newtown school shooting agreed Friday to include in its final report a recommendation to ban the sale and possession of any gun that can fire more than 10 rounds without reloading.
Notice a few terms that do not show up in that recommendation? Terms like "semi-automatic," phrases like "larger than .22 caliber," etc.? Certainly nothing about "assault features." That means that any gun that can fire 11 or more shots between reloads--a lever action, tubular magazine-fed .22, for example, would be banned.
That would seem also to mean that any gun that uses detachable magazines would be banned, because any detachable magazine-fed firearm can accept a ten-round or larger magazine (the usual ten-round magazine limit is apparently too generous for the commission, because a gun with a round loaded in the chamber, and with a full ten-round magazine, could fire 11 times before the next reload). That would eliminate just about every modern semi-automatic handgun.
But the even more conspicuous absence is the lack of any mention of a "grandfather clause," whereby someone who had already owned the now-banned firearm could keep it. The recommendation is to ban all possession of such guns, with no exemptions (except of course, for the government's "Only Ones" hired muscle). The draconian (but far less oppressive than this heinous atrocity) "assault weapon" ban Connecticut passed in 2013 had such a clause, although owners of the banned guns were required to register them--
something that scores of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Connecticut residents have refused to do, making them felons. The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission apparently wants a new law that gets around all that complexity, by simply making all of them illegal, whether registered or not. From Guns.com:
Specifically, it would prohibit both the sale and possession of any firearm capable of holding 10 rounds of more without the provision to grandfather guns that are currently registered under Connecticut's already strict Assault Weapon's Ban. This would effect a defacto ban on many guns that escaped registration after owners changed cosmetic features of their firearms. Law enforcement and military would be exempt from this ban.
CT News Junkie makes a similar observation:
The commission's ban differs from the law approved by the legislature. The 2013 law allowed residents who legally owned prohibited weapons before the law was passed to keep the guns so long as they registered them with the state. The commission's proposal does not include such a "grandfather" provision.
If the state follows the commission's recommendations, and implements this confiscatory ban, all those who did obediently register their so-called "assault weapons" and "high capacity" magazines have told the state just where to send its gun confiscation raiding parties.
According to the Associated Press article cited above, the commission is blissfully unconcerned about the Constitutionality (or more accurately, the lack thereof) of their recommendations:
"Whether or not this law would stand the test of constitutionality is not for this commission to decide," said former Hartford Police Chief Bernard Sullivan, a member of the panel. "The commission has expressed very strongly that this is a statement that is needed regarding the lethality of weapons."
In other words, whether or not it complies with the supreme law of the land, we need to do it, apparently. Oh, and they also don't want this limited to Connecticut:
"We're not writing proposed legislation, we're writing end results, saying this is where we think you guys need to go," said Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, the commission's chairman. "We're hoping that some of our recommendations will go far beyond the borders of the state of Connecticut."
And have no doubt that if this does become law in Connecticut, gun ban zealots in other states and in Congress will point to it as an inspirational model for the rest of the country.
Registration precedes confiscation--maybe by years, or even decades, but that's the only purpose it serves, and no government can forever resist the seductive siren song promising the opportunity to secure ever more power to itself, by putting that purpose into effect. The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission has helpfully reminded any of us who may have forgotten that axiom.
A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He also writes the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner column. Kurt Hofmann Archive.
