Back door gun control is the phenomena where an entity will enact a law that indirectly affects your right to keep and bear arms. It’s easier to pass legislation that harms Second Amendment rights when it does not directly require the citizen to surrender a gun.
Examples of back door gun control are:
Define ammo components as an unhealthy threat. Environmental laws designed to outlaw the use of ingredients that comprise components of arms related materials. The easiest example to point to is lead. Lead has long been the primary ingredient of bullets. Designating lead as an environmental hazard means that its use can be tightly controlled, and therefore restricted. Restrict lead and you restrict bullet production. Restrict bullet production and you dilute the ability to purchase ammo through increased materials cost.
Tax it if it shoots. In 1993 New York Senate Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, proposed that taxes on handgun ammunition be raised to 50 percent on most handgun ammunition and 10,000 percent on 9mm hollow points. Taxes are the quick and dirty way to legislate something out of existence. Currently there is an 11 percent tax on ammo.
Engineer the practicality out of it. Force manufacturers to have a biometric mechanism that prohibits anyone but the owner to operate the firearm. Effectively you need a computer chip somewhere enclosed in the firearm that is smart enough to recognize one user from the other and will enable the gun to fire by the proper finger. I hope the gun is forgiving enough so that when your wife grabs your gun to stop a bad guy that just broke in the house it fires.
Excessive tracking measures for guns and ammo. The most frequently discussed measure is micro-stamping components and mandatory ballistics sampling for tracing purposes. Micro-stamping is a unique identifier on the bullet and the case so that the bullet can be matched up to the case which can be matched up to the gun. This method will make ammo more expensive and put onerous responsibility to track every round manufactured and sold. It also will be one giant leap toward outlawing hand-loading. Getting a fired round from every gun so ballistics matching can be done sounds like a reasonable action but as soon as a bad guy gets his hands on a gun he will take a file to the bore and ruin the ballistic fingerprint.
Shut down guns shows to kill private sales. Let’s face it; closing down gun shows is about curtailing private gun sales. The “gun show loophole” is a wonderful catch phrase to demonize private sales but it’s about me not being able to sell my .22 to you. On the next level it is about someone not being able to give a gun as a gift and worse, it means that when Grandpa passes on he can’t leave you his rifle.
Call in the lawyers and bankrupt a gun owner. I once read that there are more lawyers in Washington DC, than in all of Japan. Yes, we live in a litigious country and most of us are certainly not capable of self-representation in court. I recently talked to a former private investigator and claims investigator on the subject of defensive shootings and he said “I won a lot of cases I should have lost and I lost a lot of cases I should have one.” What? Losing cases you should have one just doesn’t seem right.
Sad, but true, justice often goes to the best legal team and the best legal team does not come cheaply.
Consider this true scenario: You’ve legally checked your firearm at the airport of the state where you’re permitted to carry concealed. After flying into New York City, you’re greeted by two cops. They tell you to put your hands behind you back and throw the cuffs on you. You have just been arrested. After sitting in jail for 18 hours you have just found out you are there on felony charges. Yes, you are in big trouble and it is going to be expensive. It doesn’t matter if you are in the right, you now need legal help.
Call in the United Nations to grab small arms. On July 2, 2012 the foreign affairs ministers for France, Great Britain, Germany and Sweden called for the ratification of the UN Small Arms Treaty saying “We have studied and discussed the issue in all its aspects. The overwhelming majority of UN member states have shown a true desire to address the problems posed by unregulated trade in conventional arms. This month, we are faced with the responsibility of fulfilling this commitment by crafting and agreeing a robust, effective and legally binding arms trade treaty. Now is the time for us to deliver.”
It takes a two-thirds majority in the United States Senate to ratify this treaty. The likelihood of the Senate passing this treaty is low, but stranger things have happened. If the citizens of foreign nations want to be disarmed that is fine. The UN needs to stay out of the gun lockers of the 80,000,000 US gun owners.
Back door gun control takes place in every level of government from townships to counties and states all the way to the United Nations. Don’t fall for terms like “common sense gun control.” We already have 14,000 gun laws on the books in the United States. Try enforcing the existing laws against criminals before trying to make criminals of law abiding citizens in order to disarm them.