March 10, 2013 – LonelyMachines

So Busted

Mark Kelly and his wife Gabrielle Giffords recently founded a gun-control group called Americans for Responsible Solutions. They advocate for the same three things as their peers: universal background checks, an arbitrary limit on magazine capacity, and a ban on military-style rifles.

So why did Mr. Kelly recently buy an AR-15 and “high capacity” magazines?

Even to buy an assault weapon, the background check only takes a matter of minutes. I don’t have possession yet but I’ll be turning it over to the Tucson PD when I do. Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loop hole.

I’m hoping somebody can help me make sense of this. So, because the background check only takes minutes, we should mandate it to cover private sales? It’s OK to buy an “assault rifle” as long as the intent is to immediately surrender it to the police?

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Civil Rights

Papiere, Bitte

Owning NFA items such as suppressors and machine guns can be a tricky proposition. They’re expensive, they’re subject to a $200 tax and a long approval process, and they’re illegal in Georgia unless you can prove otherwise.

Both the Form 4 and the ATF’s own opinion imply that proof of registration must be provided to an officer of the ATF upon request. No other parties are mentioned, so many owners assume the ATF are the only folks who have a right to demand it.

However, most states have their own spin on this. According to Georgia Code 16-11-122:

No person shall have in his possession any sawed-off shotgun, sawed-off rifle, machine gun, dangerous weapon, or silencer except as provided in Code Section 16-11-124.

The subsequent section levies a 5-year prison sentence for owning those items, and 16-11-124 provides an exemption if the weapon is registered “in accordance with the dictates of the National Firearms Act.”

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