Tag Archives: regulation

Gun Control Hypocrisy

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Colorado has passed its gun control bills into law.  Included in that set is a limit on the size of semi-automatic rifle ammunition magazines to a maximum of 15 rounds.  In response to Magpul Industries’ statement that they would leave Colorado if the bills were passed, those good Democrats passed an amendment:  Magpul could make any size magazine they wished so long as the larger ones were not sold in Colorado.

State Congressman Mark Waller (R) has the right of it, noting the Democrats’ monumental hypocrisy.

[Y]ou can sell [magazines] at any other place where any of these tragic shootings have happened.  …a monumental inconsistency in their thought process.

Yeah.  Can’t sell normal magazines in Colorado, but feel free to sell them in, oh, say, Newtown, CT.

That’s the problem with interfering with freedom.  The damage is far-reaching, and it’s tough to do without the dishonesty of hypocrisy.

Gun Control, Progressive Style

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Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has jammed into a gun control bill making its way through the Senate an amendment that adds Draconian Federal government control over our individual right to keep and bear arms.  Schumer first Dragoons the states.  Section 102 of the gun control bill, with his amendment, is aptly titled:

SEC. 102. PENALTIES FOR STATES THAT DO NOT MAKE DATA ELECTRONICALLY AVAILABLE TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.

Under this section, the US Attorney General is allowed to withhold up to 4% of Federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies in any state that respects its citizens’ privacy vis-à-vis the Federal government by refusing to provide its state’s data to the NISC.  After a five-year “grace” period from implementation of the Senate’s legislation, the US Attorney General is required to withhold 5% of that funding.

Charles Cooke, writing for National Review Online, provides a description of other parts of the Schumer Amendment.  On the matter of “transfers” of firearms between household members, Cooke summarizes thusly:

If, for example, a gun owner leaves his home for more than seven days—leaving his firearms with his roommate, or gay partner, or landlord—he’ll be committing a felony that carries a five-year prison term.  And while married couples are exempted from falling afoul of that provision, the family exemptions apply only to recorded “gifts” and not to “temporary transfers.”

Don’t take that business trip of eight days without incurring the hassle  of taking all of your firearms with you (or the jail term in New York, if you do).  If you leave them behind, you and your spouse will become Schumer-felons on the eighth day.  Unless you formally “gifted” those weapons to your spouse, using the attendant paperwork to effect the transfer, before you left.  After which, your spouse better not leave for more than seven days without exercising one of those same options.

Cooke understates the problem of “transfers” of firearms between friends, though.  Cooke summarizes thusly:

[I]t would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend so that he can go shooting.  Want to give your pistol to your neighbor so he can pop down to the range for a few hours but don’t have time to go with him?  Sorry, better make sure you look good in orange.

But Schumer’s amendment says, in SEC. 202. FIREARMS TRANSFERS, paragraph (2)(D), that the transfer must occur at the firing range.  The owner still has to take the time to accompany the friend to the range and effect the “transfer” there.

Moreover, Schumer’s amendment requires that regulations be written to require a paper record be created for every transfer:

(ii) shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee….

Want to lend your piece to your friend for his use at the firing range?  Go with him to the range to make the weapon loan, and then fill out a ream of Federal paperwork concerning that loan.  Every time.

Welcome to Progressivism.

Schumer’s amendments can be viewed here and here.

Obamacare…Gifts

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Welcome to ObamaWorld.  Health insurance premiums—which President Barack Obama has been promising for the last three years will be going down, courtesy of his Obamacare—are about to jump up.  High.  The AP is reporting that we can look forward to 20%-100% premium jumps beginning in just nine months—next January.  Here’s what some of those increases will look like, with my editorial comments interspersed.

  • Changes to how insurers set premiums according to age and gender could cause some premiums to rise as much as 50 percent, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans.  NOTE: this is because Obamacare drives insurers steadily away from market-oriented, risk-based premiums.  Age and gender drive differing risks for a given insured malady.  As the AP went on:
  • The law will prohibit insurers from setting different rates based on gender—something they currently do because women generally use more health care.  That means premiums for some men could rise, while they fall for women.  NOTE: this is a redistribution, and a subsidy of one group (here, women) by another.
  • Young people who currently have low-cost coverage may see some of the biggest hikes.  NOTE: or they may start out with no coverage at all, because they don’t need it.
  • In many states, insurers charge a 60-year-old customer $5 in premiums for every $1 they collect from a 24-year-old.  The logic behind that is that older people use health care more and generate more expensive claims than younger customers, so insurers need to collect more to help pay their bills.  …  But the overhaul will narrow that ratio to 3-to-1.  That alone could cause the premium for a 24-year-old who pays $1,200 annually to jump to $1,800, according to AHIP. Meanwhile, the 60-year-old who currently pays $6,000 will see a 10 percent drop in price.  NOTE: This is naked wealth redistribution and a subsidy.  Only this time, the victim has no wealth to redistribute—the 24-year-old is only just starting out.
  • Prices also may change depending on a person’s current coverage.  Many policies on the individual market (coverage not sold through employers) exclude maternity coverage, but that will be considered an essential health benefit under the overhaul.  That could mean higher prices for some.
  • Vikki Swanson, 49, of Newport Beach, CA, resents that the added benefit may lead to higher costs for her.  “I had a hysterectomy, I have no need for maternity coverage, but I have to now pay for it.  I have to pay not only my own premium but I have to subsidize everybody else[.]”  NOTE: Yeah….
  • A new tax on premiums could raise prices as much as 2.3% in 2014 and more in subsequent years, according to a study commissioned by AHIP.  Policyholders with plans that end in 2014 probably have already seen an impact from this.  NOTE: this tax on the top-line revenues of medical equipment manufacturers will suppress development and/or production of items ranging from pacemakers to suits that let paraplegics walk again.
  • Requirements that insurance plans in many cases cover more health care or pay a greater share of a patient’s bill than they do now also could add to premiums, depending on the extent of a person’s current coverage, according AHIP.  NOTE: because insurance companieswelfare agencies aren’t allowed to charge for elective items like contraceptives, they’ll have to recoup these losses from other areas.

Once again, coverage under Obamacare isn’t health insurance, it’s privately funded, Federally mandated health welfare.

More Regulation Foolishness

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This one isn’t as egregious as the idiocy described at Coyote Blog‘s place, but it’s bad enough.

Think about the expanse of…something…between the sidewalk in front of your house and the curb of the street.  Some towns have the sidewalk and the curb immediately adjacent to each other, but in most urban areas, this is a three- to five-foot wide strip in which most folks plant grass as an extension of their yard.  Ron Finley, though, plants a garden in his strip (parkway, as it’s known in Los Angeles) in LA, and he advises others on how to do the same.

Except that there are LA regulations against just up and doing that.

City code forbids residents without special permits to plant much of anything besides grass in curbside areas, making many of the gardens illegal.

After receiving citations from the city, Mr Finley persuaded officials to waive the $400 permit fee he was supposed to pay to install drought-resistant, aesthetically pleasing plants up to 36 inches tall outside his own home.  But he is still trying to get the city to approve a greater variety of plants for these spaces.

Never mind that such gardens are highly patriotic,

Urban farming isn’t new, dating back at least to World War I, when the government encouraged Americans to become more self-sufficient by planting “liberty gardens[,]”

they’re against the rules.

In fairness to LA, though, there is an effort to get a little bit more sensible here.

A spokesman for the district’s city councilman, Herb Wesson, said city staffers are working on revising current policy to let residents make more use of the parkways [those strips] “where appropriate.”

It remains to be seen, though, what the city’s definitions of “where,” “appropriate,” and “more use” will turn out to be, as well as the rationale for same.