Thursday, December 31, 2015

Ammunition Bans

Recently offered legislation has suggested that certain calibers of ammunition can be banned within a state (New York) along with some really severe limits on the amounts of other calibers you might be permitted to purchase. Totals suggested in New York wouldn't get me past the first of 5 stages in the matches I shoot and certainly wouldn't cover any training ammo.

The National Review has a good article on owning guns, worth a couple minutes of your time. Here's what I saw as the money quote as regards the proposed ammo limits:
The “right of the people” that is mentioned in the Second Amendment is not “to keep and bear guns” or “to keep and bear ammunition” but “to keep and bear arms,” which, per Black’s Law Dictionary, was understood in the 18th century to include the “musket and bayonet”; “sabre, holster pistols, and carbine”; an array of “side arms”; and any accouterments necessary for their operation.
 Plainly this covered powder and shot keeping in mind that the brass cartridge was invented in the early 1800's.

Seattle now has a $25 tax on every gun sold and a $.02-.05 tax on every round of ammunition the argument being that the monies raised will go to cover the costs of gun violence or something. This tax will, next year be the topic of a lawsuit as I understand it claiming that the tax in an infringement on the citizens right to arms. Think about this for a bit.

Let's say the Seattle city council decides to go for broke here, takes this to the SCOTUS and loses. So an egregious tax is then an infringement and thus unconstitutional. What does this say about the NFA 34? Hmmmm.

2 comments:

David Aitken said...

Since the purpose of the Second Amendment is "being necessary for the security of a free state", I suppose the founders might have contemplated that the citizenry would be going up against whatever standing army the government might employ, and therefore wanted them to be as well armed as that standing army.

Billll said...

Several of the founders expressed exactly that position. I wonder if the antis don't interpret the words "free state" to mean something like "feral government", free and in the wild.