Why Everyone Should be Concerned About California’s Glock Ban

California isn’t the only state to have banned Glock handguns, but it was the first and the largest. While anti-gunners and their media buddies have termed them “DIY machine guns,” the truth is that the Glock isn’t anything of the sort. The auto sears, which are illegal under federal law and have been since the moment they were invented, are the machine guns. Still, anti-gun states don’t care, and with California, that lack of care impacts all of us.

See, the problem isn’t just that residents in California are prohibited from buying the most popular brand of handgun on the market today, the one you’ll find in a whole lot of police holsters. No, the problem is that bad ideas don’t stay put.

That’s the point that Paul Erhardt, the managing editor of The Outdoor Wire, noted recently.

The first problem is the most obvious. Blue state legislatures will follow California’s lead and push through their own bad laws designed not to protect the public but to reduce the number of guns available to law-abiding citizens.

They will simply cut and paste the California legislation, add a line or two to give it that home-town flavor and, voilà, the Glock ban is coming to a state near you.

…

The second, and more concerning aspect of the California Glock Ban—not that for gun owners this isn’t concerning enough—it also gives governments a new standard by which products can be banned, companies brought to heel, and citizens controlled.

If a legally made and sold Glock pistol is banned because of what alterations might happen, then it opens the floodgates to attack any product based solely on a possible negative outcome completely out of the hands of the manufacturer—not unlike suing gun makers for the criminal misuse of their product by others.

This kind of legislation will be used to force companies to alter a product’s design—which only works until someone develops another workaround.

Or, it will be used to pressure manufacturers into financial settlements. Money that will go into a state-controlled fund and be doled out to address the very issue that arises from either bad actors or idiots.

Incremental creep by the government is a thing. The idea that once the seal is broken on a concept and allowed to stand, yet will go no further, is a fantasy that would make J.R.R. Tolkien blush. While I can’t say the government never restrains itself, it’s unlikely to ever do so on a topic where lawmakers want to take things further. It won’t stop with banning Glocks because California wants to ban a whole lot more.

And so do a lot of other anti-gun states, to say nothing of anti-gunners in the halls of Congress.

Since there are drop-in auto sears for AR-style rifles, how long before someone crafts legislation banning anything resembling an AR-15 for the same reason? Not based on “evil features,” mind you, but the mechanisms themselves, so that there’s little chance of working around them? How long before someone else picks it up?

Bad ideas are a lot like a virus. They enter a state, take hold, destroy a viable host (again, the state), then burst outward to infect other states. They don’t make things better for anyone except for the powers that be, all because it lets them pretend they’re accomplishing one thing, keep getting elected, all while (potentially) laying the groundwork for something far more sinister.

If these concepts stayed put in California, I think a lot fewer of us would care all that much, except in a “sucks for you, brother” kind of way. They don’t, though, and that’s why everyone gets worked up about whatever weapons-grade stupidity comes out of the legislative session each year.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.