In Rhode Island, SB 2710 seeks to ban ownership of so-called assault weapons throughout the state. These are the same guns that were grandfathered in last year when the same legislature voted to ban the sale and import of such firearms. At the time, it was one of those, “We’re not coming after your guns, just stopping any more people from owning them. You’re safe,” kind of things, but it’s now clear as crystal that anti-gunners were never going to let that stand.
And, sure enough, they’re trying to ban them all.
But as NRA executive director John Commerford notes at Fox News, the bill seeks to create an entire blueprint for both gun seizures and infringements to such a degree that the right to keep and bear arms will be meaningless.
Rhode Island lawmakers are back at it — pushing a sweeping gun ban that should set off alarm bells far beyond the Ocean State. Their latest proposal, SB 2710, would outlaw the possession of some of the most commonly owned firearms in America, targeting semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns that millions of law-abiding citizens rely on for self-defense, sport and tradition.
What makes this proposal especially alarming is not just what it bans, but how it leaves enforcement hanging in the air. The bill is conspicuously silent on how the state intends to deal with currently owned firearms that would suddenly become illegal overnight.
That silence is not reassuring. It opens the door to exactly the kind of heavy-handed enforcement Americans have long rejected — the forced surrender or even door-to-door confiscation of legally acquired property.
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And if the potential of forcible confiscation were not enough, Rhode Island lawmakers are also advancing schemes to require gun owners to carry million-dollar liability insurance policies. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with cost. It is a calculated effort to price ordinary Americans out of exercising a constitutional right — turning the Second Amendment into a luxury good reserved for those who can afford to comply.
We’ve seen this playbook before. Just last year, Rhode Island banned the manufacture, sale and purchase of these firearms but allowed owners who previously acquired them to keep them. Now legislators want to finish the job — give gun control advocates an inch, and they take a mile, targeting commerce in firearms today and the firearms already in your safe tomorrow.
Commerford goes on to note that while Rhode Island is a small state, the implications are national. It may well provide a road map for other anti-gun states to follow, which might not survive judicial challenge, but will create more and more need for pro-gun groups to challenge the laws in court, draining resources from them that could be used to fight other battles.
And let’s be real here, these fights aren’t finished overnight. A law like this will remain on the books for years before it’s overturned.
This bill is particularly disgusting to me because it was just last year when they passed the first part of the ban. They grandfathered in existing guns, likely figuring it would be an easier sell to the public, and now they’re trying to undo that. They’re not even pretending that wasn’t part of the plan from the start. One lawmaker claimed the work from last year wasn’t done, meaning this was always on the agenda.
Yet, if something had happened with one of those grandfathered “assault weapons,” you could almost see why they’d pivot so quickly. Yeah, it would have just been them jumping at the opportunity to do what they always wanted, but it would be harder to convince your middle-of-the-road voter of that.
Here, though, they’re not waiting. They immediately jumped to this and expect it to go through to complete the job they started in 2025, and we know it won’t stop there.
The million-dollar insurance requirement is yet another part of that, even though we already know that such a policy would only cover accidents at one’s home. It’s nothing but an expense to make it untenable for regular people to purchase firearms.
They can’t ban guns outright, so they’re trying to create a structure around gun ownership to make it virtually impossible for any but the elites to comply. This is the groundwork that is being laid and expanded upon, not because guns are too dangerous to society, but because they’re too dangerous to tyrants.
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