Thursday, March 12, 2009

Martin M. Looney, Will You Please Stop Now

In Connecticut, ignorance of a subject is apparently no impediment to making laws.

Martin Looney grew up, got himself elected to the Connecticut Senate and is now introducing some highly technical legislation that would regulate the mechanics of handguns.

But he doesn't know what a revolver is.

Thats the only thing that could explain his proposal for microstamping legislation on semi-automatic pistols. His bill requires that every semi-auto sold in CT after 2011 would have to have a little gizmo inside it that stamps a code unique to the pistol onto every cartridge casing.

Amazingly, Looney thinks this is a crime stopping measure. I guess he has visions of cops picking up spent casings from an alleyway, running the serial numbers through a computer and heaving the bad guy into the slammer 30 minutes later. To which I respond: "Har har har."

This is when we get to revolvers. A revolver carries 6 (or 7 or 8) cartridges in a 'revolving' cylinder. Every time you pull the trigger, the cylinder rotates and brings a new cartridge in line with hammer and barrel. (Remember Dirty Harry?)

And here is the clever bit: unlike a semi-auto which ejects each shell as it is fired, spent casings from a revolver stay in the cylinder. So you could stamp War and Peace on each one, for all the good it would do you.

Should the legislature fall prey to some collective spasm of idiocy and pass this offal-masquerading-as-legislation, criminals will immediately switch to revolvers, or pick up one of the many pistols that was made before 2011, or spend 5 minutes with a screwdriver and belt sander to disable whatever widget is doing the microstamping. Or maybe replace the firing pin, or swap parts from another gun, or steal a gun from someone else.

What's Looney's next move? Make it illegal to sell firing pins? Make it illegal for me to fix my own firearm when the parts wear out? Make cleaning guns illegal? Ban belt sanders?

I think its pretty clear that Martin M. hasn't fired a revolver, but I'm starting to wonder if he's ever seen a pistol at all, ever.

2 comments:

cnick said...

This is ironic given that Samuel Colt (yes, he is actually a distant relative of mine) was from Connecticut.

Atom Smasher said...

He's got an appropriate name at least.

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