As we noted on Monday, a bill from Gun Owners of America introduced in West Virginia would allow political entities to sell machine guns to the public. There’s nothing I can think of that would be illegal in this measure, and it would do a whole lot to increase the number of full-auto weapons in the market, thus potentially driving down prices.
But my question is, just who else might go down this road?
I’m sure a lot of pro-gun legislators may look at this and think about introducing it in their states, but introducing bills is the easy part. Getting them passed is where it gets tricky.
So, assuming that it’ll pass in West Virginia–and looking at their makeup, that’s a strong possibility–where else might it pass?
At the top of the list would have to be Missouri. They’ve tried nullifying all gun control laws from the federal government, which would include the National Firearms Act. Clearly, they don’t mind lawful citizens owning machine guns.
Because this doesn’t violate federal law, at least so far as I can see, I could see an enterprising Missouri lawmaker introducing a version of this bill and it actually passing. It’s not like they’re not looking for more ways to be pro-gun, and this is a great way to make that happen.
Wyoming seems to be doing all it can to follow in similar footsteps, so I could see them passing this as well. The same is true of both Dakotas, which seem to be pretty pro-gun.
Montana would be another possibility.
An interesting prospect would be New Hampshire. Its “live free or die” motto is often reflected in its gun laws. It’s one of the best in the nation as things currently stand, so I couldn’t rule out this one making the cut there. However, I also see it being a much tougher fight than we’re likely to see in West Virginia.
Then, of course, let’s look at some ostensibly pro-gun states where there’s not a snowball’s chance in Lucifer’s living room of it passing.
One is, unfortunately, my home state of Georgia.
While we’ve gotten some pro-gun measures passed of late, the tide may well be shifting on that. Plus, we have a lot of Republican lawmakers who are way too squishy on gun rights. They might not want to pass gun control, but they’re not interested in upsetting the status quo, either, and selling machine guns to Georgia residents is probably enough to give them an aneurysm.
Let’s not even talk about Florida. “The Gunshine State” won’t even let legal adults under 21 buy a shotgun for home defense, so there’s no way they’ll sell machine guns to law-abiding citizens.
I can also see it not quite making the cut in Alabama, which recently passed a law that mirrored the feds on illegal machine guns. It’s likely untenable for those lawmakers to decry machine guns one year, then a couple of years later, start selling them to people. It’s a different matter entirely, of course, but politics is often more about perception than reality.
So I’m going to be watching what happens in West Virginia going forward, and it’ll be interesting to see who else jumps to follow.
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