Tag Archives: regulation

California Gun Control

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California has a new law, with effect at the start of this year, that requires semiautomatic pistols sold there to have microstamping capability on the pistols’ firing pins. The tech would stamp the brass when the pistol discharges a round, and from that, the brass could be tied back to the pistol that fired it.

As part of the implementation, the California Department of Justice now asks Firearm manufacturers and Interested Parties a number of questions about how the rule should be implemented. These questions include

  • Who is best suited to provide the microstamp to the DOJ?
  • When should the microstamp be provided to the DOJ?
  • How should the microstamp be provided to the DOJ?
  • If a microstamp part needs to be replaced, should the regulated replacement part have the same microstamp as the original?

This Interested Party offers some answers, even though I’m not a citizen of California, being glad instead to be a citizen of Texas:

  • No one
  • Never
  • N/A, see above
  • N/A, see above

California’s move is just another in a long chain of efforts by gun control…persons…to build up a database of who has what firearms so they can be seized at a later date.

Overreach

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The New York banking regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services, has announced “rules” that would require banks of all sizes to consider climate change in their risk assessment considerations. NYSDF’s rules are made the worse because it has outsized influence due to the plethora of Wall Street institutions in the State.

Banks would be called upon to look at climate-related risks when bringing on new clients and when extending credit.

This is naked government overreach, even at the State level, and it’s one more reason financial institutions should leave New York. I can suggest Miami, Austin, Dallas, Sioux Falls, and Fargo as alternative locations.

It’s more than that, though. It’s an…inaccurate…goal. The only climate-related risk any American business, banking or other, faces is Government behavior vis-à-vis government bureaucrat-perceived climate situations.

Works for Me

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Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) has his gun control panties all knotted up because lots of county sheriffs have said they won’t enforce intrinsically unconstitutional gun control laws.

I think we have to have a conversation about whether we can continue to fund law enforcement in states where they are refusing to implement these gun laws[.]

I’ve addressed whether local and county jurisdictions should accept State funding for this or that purpose or whether they, instead, should decline the funds and free themselves from higher government’s controlling strings.

At the national level, Murphy’s terms are acceptable.

In Which a Judge Gets It (Mostly) Right

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Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled at the end of the summer that the Obamacare requirement that health coverage providers must provide coverage for particular aspects of health care—and do so at no cost to the individual being covered—was unconstitutional. He’s currently considering whether to make his ruling permanent and if so, whether to make his ruling applicable only to the litigants in the particular case or to make it nationwide. (As an aside, I have trouble seeing how a ruling of unconstitutionality can have any range less than national.)

Michael Cannon, Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies, testified as an expert witness in the case that

People have a right to choose whether and what kind of health insurance they need and want. The government shouldn’t be requiring people to buy coverage of any service, whether preventive or otherwise.

O’Connor’s ruling to that extent would be partially correct. However, Government also shouldn’t be dictating to private companies what they must or must not produce. That’s textbook fascism.

There’s also no authority in our Constitution for government to determine what private companies can and cannot produce.

Whose Choice Is It?

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And whose property is it?

A new law being seriously considered by lawmakers in New York City could strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.

Because landlords shouldn’t be able to control who rents their property, shouldn’t be able to protect the interests of their existing tenants—who have, by dint of their rent agreements, have some property of their own in the landlord’s buildings.

This law means it’s city government property; landlords possess the buildings only in fee from the city lords.

Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov has the right of it:

A bill which would prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks of potential tenants. Murdered someone? Beat up your girlfriend? Robbed? Stabbed your neighbor? No problem. Come live among us!

Certainly felons, even violent felons, shouldn’t be blanketly denied a second chance, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve rehabilitated themselves, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity at redemption.

But that should be the choice of the property owner, the landlord; it cannot be, legitimately, a choice forced upon the property owner, in a one-size-fits-all diktat by the Lords of the city.