{"id":34324,"date":"2013-02-18T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34324"},"modified":"2013-02-18T07:51:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T13:51:12","slug":"alice-hausmans-illiterate-obsession-cosmetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34324","title":{"rendered":"Alice Hausman’s Illiterate Obsession, Part I: Parts Is Parts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

HF 241 – Alice Hausman’s gun grab bill focused on so-called “assault weapons”<\/a> – has morphed from a list of ugly-looking army-type guns into a recipe book written by people who don’t understand much about guns, but know they really really don’t like them.<\/p>\n

Rather than write one long article about this deeply stupid bill, I’m going to break it down in terms of its pure, specious illogic over the next day or so.<\/p>\n

The first part of the bill bans any…:<\/p>\n

(1) semi-automatic rifle that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and\u00a0has one or more of the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

(i) a pistol grip or thumbhole stock;<\/p>\n

(ii) any feature capable of functioning as a protruding grip that can be held by the\u00a0nontrigger hand;<\/span><\/p>\n

(iii) a folding or telescoping stock; or<\/p>\n

(iv) a shroud attached to the barrel, or that partially or completely encircles the\u00a0barrel, allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being\u00a0<\/span>burned, but excluding a slide that encloses the barrel;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Put briefly, if the rifle has a detachable magazine (the thing that holds the bullets) it can’t have a pistol grip, a forward handgrip, an adjustable stock or – this is confusing – the wrong kind of thingie wrapped around the barrel.<\/p>\n

So in other words, this Ruger Mini-14 is legal…:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…while this one is illegal…:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…even though the two are functionally exactly<\/em> identical.<\/p>\n

Exactly. As in,\u00a0there is no difference<\/em>, down to and including the magazine size.<\/p>\n

Oh, it gets dumber. \u00a0Yes, the bill would ban this rifle…:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…which is functionally exactly identical to this rifle here:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Both are Ruger 10\/22s, perhaps the most ubuquitous .22 caliber plinking rifle in the country. \u00a0They are mechanically identical – but one has furniture that offends Alice Hausman’s sensibilities.<\/p>\n

Dumber still? \u00a0If you like sniping at varmints, this 10\/22 is just as illegal as the “tacti-cool” one above:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It’s the same gun, with the “thumbhole stock”. \u00a0And if you want to have an adjustable stock, so your kids can shoot the same rifle you do?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yep. Banned.<\/p>\n

Every last one of them is precisely mechanically the same; same ten-round detachable magazine (it pops out of the stock just ahead of the trigger guard), same low-power .22 round.<\/p>\n

In other words, Hausman’s gun grab isn’t aimed at even the most tangential definition of “Deadliness”; it’s entirely focused on cosmetic features that have\u00a0nothing<\/em> to do with a weapon’s effect.<\/p>\n

They get dumber. \u00a0 More later today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HF 241 – Alice Hausman’s gun grab bill focused on so-called “assault weapons” – has morphed from a list of ugly-looking army-type guns into a recipe book written by people who don’t understand much about guns, but know they really really don’t like them. Rather than write one long article about this deeply stupid bill, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,22,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mn-legislature","category-victim-disarmament","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34324"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34357,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34324\/revisions\/34357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}