Remember, no one is trying to take away your guns:
Ban the sale, use or possession of 50-caliber or larger weapons, and creates a program to recall those currently legally owned
Granted, this idiotic law is being proposed in New York, and according to the United States Constitution, ex post facto laws like this one are illegal… but something tells me it is only a matter of time before some national lawmaker gets a similar moronic idea, legal or not.
Oh, and for all the Fudds out there, I would point out that every single shotgun bore except .410 is larger than 50-caliber (.5 inches). So they are not coming for hunting guns, eh?
Close the muzzle-loader loophole! These .50 caliber rifles cost only hundreds, and leave no records, yet they can down a flying airplane from miles away!
we wish. unfortunately, in order to be an ex post facto law, it would have to say something like “people who owned any of these weapons before this law was enacted are now criminals for having done so, and will be imprisoned for X years”.
even the Lautenberg amendment manages to squeak by as not ex post facto, although by a much slimmer and more technical margin than i’d like to see allowed if i were king.
all this proposed law says is you’d end up a criminal if you tried to keep a fifty-cal after the law was enacted. that’s despicable and wrongheaded, but not ex post facto.
That is an excellent point to make about .50 cal or bigger shotguns. A 12 ga. is the crescent wrench of long guns, every other hunter has at least one.
JD: You jest, but I can so see some hoplophobic idiot running with a line similar to that…
Nomen: Ok, I have read what you wrote about four times now, and I am going to have to plead stupidity and ask you to explain it again. As far as I know about this particular law, it basically says that at X date, ownership of Y firearms is illegal, transferring them is illegal, selling them is illegal, and we are going to take them away from you. Now, if selling and transferring are illegal, how does one not become a criminal, short of allowing the government to steal your property?
Ride Fast: The point is especially strong considering that a significant number of hunting shotguns have rifled barrels, and thus are equivalent to actual rifles (especially to politicians who might not know or care about the distinctions).
you avoid becoming a criminal by allowing the government to steal your property, of course. much like what happened to booze inventories when prohibition was passed, or heroin on drug stores’ shelves when that was banned. so long as there’s some out for you to avoid becoming a criminal, even if it’s intolerably tyrannous, the law can’t be ex post facto. it might be wrong and harmful any number of ways, possibly unconstitutional some other way, but not that way.
an ex post facto law is one that makes you be already a criminal, right now, for something you did last year, even though that something wasn’t a crime then. far as i know, no such laws have been passed by congress ever.
well, the Lautenberg amendment comes annoyingly close to it. that one says “if you were convicted of, or plead guilty to, a misdemeanor domestic violence charge before this amendment was passed into law, you will now lose your RKBA for life, even though you weren’t sentenced to that then.” yet even that seems to skate on by as being a mere sentence-enhancer, which apparently is enough to make it not ex post facto. if my whim was law i wouldn’t let that kind of thing fly, but i’m not dictator, so…
Ah, thanks for the explanation, Nomen… Just did not catch on to the details the first time around.
So, basically, this is legal, legislative theft, on top of abridgement of basic, Constitutionally-protected rights. Well, that sounds about right for our government these days.
As for the Lautenberg amendment, yeah, that is pretty much ludicrous. And I can definitely see how they would use the technicality to squeeze it by review… *sigh* I wonder if people understand the country we are creating.