Article from Reason by Jacob Sullum.
As of Tuesday, adults younger than 21 are no longer allowed to buy semi-automatic rifles in Washington, thanks to a ballot initiative approved by 59 percent of that state’s voters last November. The initiative, I-1639, officially targets “semiautomatic assault rifles,” but its definition of that term is so broad that it renders the assault part superfluous, except for tendentious rhetorical purposes.
The New York Times, for example, describes the firearms restricted by I-639 as “assault weapons” (a term the initiative also uses) and implies that they are similar to the guns banned under that heading in “states like California and Connecticut.” While those laws do cover semi-automatic rifles, they do not cover all semi-automatic rifles—only specifically named models or those with disfavored features such as pistol grips, folding stocks, and flash suppressors.
I-1639, by contrast, defines a “semiautomatic assault rifle” as “any rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.” That category includes not just scary-looking, military-style rifles like the AR-15 but a wide range of firearms commonly used for hunting, target shooting, and competitions. The definition excludes rifles that are “manually operated by bolt, pump, lever, or slide action” but includes all the rest.
In addition to the new minimum purchase age, the initiative imposes a 10-day waiting period on buyers of semi-automatic rifles and bans sales to residents of other states; those provisions take effect in July. According to the initiative, the restrictions are supposed to help prevent mass shootings.
Read the entire article at Reason.
By Cory Doctorow (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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Liberal states do not need tourist or any other kind of business from the rest of us .
Possibly I’m being thick headed. I don’t think so, but that is certainly possible respecting the following. WHy is it, or how come it seems that “liberal states” seem to fall all over themselves via restricting individual rights? Anyone with any ideas, feel free to respond, and thanks for your thoughts.
Well if this keeps being allowed to happen and no one takes a stand we will lose our guns and all of our freedoms. Our 2nd Amendment is the Amendment that keeps all of the American people free. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Back then our forefathers knew that someday a government just like the one we have today will come about. So now as they lay their plans against us all we need to get ready and get together and get organized right now.
I was 14 in 1957 when I received my Remington semi-automatic .22 for my birthday. However, that was back when America was a much different country than it is now.