In an effort separate from the bi-partisan movement on gun control, the Protecting Our Kids Act seeks to change the federal required age to 21 for semi-automatic, magazine fed rifles. It also adds additional gun trafficking violations, codifies the new ATF regulation regarding receivers and frames into law, updates the ‘untraceable firearms’ language, adds safe storage requirements and penalties, prohibits new magazines of larger than 10 round capacity, and adds a creepily detailed NICS reporting requirement to congress on denied persons.
Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, and annually thereafter, the Attorney General shall submit to the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate and the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives a report that includes, with respect to the preceding year, the demographic data of persons who were determined to be ineligible to purchase a firearm based on a background check performed by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, including race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, age, disability, average annual income, and English language proficiency, if available.
Ironically, this bill does a better job of outlining effective firearms than any “Assault Weapon” definitions that have ever been offered by the low neuron elites championing this stuff. The main difference is here they are talking about an age increase, not a ban, so they don’t have to talk about all the scary features that amount to creature comforts like the pistol grip and barrel shroud.
We can have that reasonable discussion about shifting the age of majority. Just everyone keep in mind that the courts, in California no less, through this law out as it leaves those 18-20 years old with no acquirable means of protecting themselves effectively. The court even acknowledged that manual action firearms are an inferior option for self defense and that mandating 18-20 year old adults to only those firearms was a violation of their civil rights.
So we can have this discussion. We can even end up changing the age of majority. But the shortest of short versions is that parents are going to be entirely legally responsible for their children for another three years, to include their defense.
The House passed this bill on party lines, and while it contains elements that could be placed into a sensible firearms regulation package its fundamental attack on gun owners for no gain far outweighs the positive benefits.
The most egregious of these attacks are the magazine ban, the removal of non-serialized firearms builds, and the creepy NICS report. Penalty fines for negligence in storage, discussing raising the Federal age to 21 for certain firearm types, and doing a refresh on straw purchase and trafficking penalties all have the benefit of some intellectual merit. Probably because they are tied to actions and not possession of an inanimate item. Weird how that works.
This is, likely, the Democrats showing the flag before midterms so they have a ‘what we TRIED to do’ when they realistically know that the Senate’s bipartisan package is the most likely to make it to a signature. Depending upon how obstructionist the house wants to be with the Senate, and vice-versa, this could result in no new laws. We need to see the Senate’s proposal in detail once it gets hit with revisions.
