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IN: Indianpolis City Council Passes Illegal Gun Ordinance
For a number of years, there has been an attempt to require people who exercise their Second Amendment rights to report to the government if any of their firearms are stolen. While this may seem innocuous to the naive, it serves much deeper disarmist purposes. The obvious purpose of this law is to make the exercise of Second Amendment rights more legally dangerous, in stark opposition to ownership of other common items, such as gasoline, vehicles, or common poisons. It singles out the exercise of a single Constitutional right for increased scrutiny, and it creates a reason for the state to have a registration list of all guns, so that it can determine when someone has violated this law.
The idea, of course is to push the meme that ownership of guns should be tightly regulated by the state; and that complete legal control of gun ownership is desirable.
Indiana passed a strict gun preemption law in 2011. It is unlikely that this ordinance will pass legal muster. From indystar.com:
Shrugging off looming legal concerns, the City-County Council on Monday approved an ordinance requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department or pay a fine.The proposal was sponsored by Democratic Councilman Kip Tew and passed 15-14, along party lines. But it appeared unlikely that it would take effect, with concerns out of the mayor's office pointing toward a likely veto.
Those opposing the ordinance had some of their arguments succinctly stated before the ordinance was passed. From wibc.com:
Relford says the proposed ordinance has three inherent problems: 1) It targets the victims of a crime by fining them for being robbed. 2) It is completely unenforceable, since there is no gun federal or state mandated registration, which would make it nearly impossible to prove individual gun ownership. And 3) It violates state statute, and opens the city up to nearly unlimited potential lawsuits.
I suspect that the law will be vetoed. It accomplishes nothing, at the moment, except to push the idea that it is in some weird way sensible. The only way that it is “sensible” is if you accept the idea that the state should have absolute control over all guns and all gun sales.
Once gun registration is in place, this law would remove one possible safety valve for Second Amendment supporters to evade an incremental confiscation scheme, such as has been implemented in California. They could no longer claim, without legal liability, that a gun had been stolen.
Nine states and the District of Columbia currently require gun owners to report stolen guns, under penalty of law. Those states are Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland (only handguns and some long guns defined as “assault weapons”), Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.
It is not surprising that most of these states are hotbeds of infringements on Second Amendment rights.
©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Link to Gun Watch
Source: http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2015/12/indianpolis-city-council-passes-illegal.html
