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I guess this is the first new gun law in the wake of Aurora. U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and U.S. Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) introduced bills, S. 3458 and H.R. 6241, aka “Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act.” The bill has four key points:
1.) A federal licensing requirement for ammunition sellers
2.) Recordkeeping on all ammunition sales
3.) Reporting of all sales of more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition to anyone without a federal firearms license within five consecutive business days
4.) A photo identification requirement for all non-licensees buying ammunition
Looking over this bill, I fail to see how this will help at all. The LA Times had an interesting quote about the bill...
| Quote: |
| Buyers would be required to present photo IDs, a requirement that the bill’s sponsors say would effectively ban the online or mail-order purchase of ammunition by civilians. |
...it's interesting because it's nonsense (unless I'm missing something here). Just take your driver's license, scan it with your computer and email the online store the image, and presto, you can now buy ammo online. I know of one online site that already does this and the process isn't hard at all. But then, maybe when they say "present a photo ID" they mean in person. Still, if it's as simple as showing the UPS man a photo ID, it wouldn't change anything.
That aside, the reporting of any purchase over a 1,000 rounds within 5 consecutive days is going to be a paperwork nightmare. I think some people fail to realize how much ammunition is sold every year and just how much people buy. Plus there's the little issue of tax payers' money being used to account for all this new reporting. I imagine someone is going to have to go through all the data, right? I mean it wouldn't make any sense to do all this reporting if no one was going to look at it.
And what sort of action are they going to take when someone without an FFL buys over a 1,000 rounds of ammunition?
Lots of questions and the only answers I'm seeing is political talking points. If they really want the measure to have any weight, the purchase of large amounts of ammunition has to be tied to other purchases, like firearms and firearm related equipment. They need to be able to correlate and tag anyone who buys ammo, a gun, and tactical gear over a short period of time. Even that data is next to useless, but if they could combine it with other flags like strange behavior reported about the individual or suspicious internet searches, they might get somewhere.
At the end of the day, they'd still need someone making phone calls to follow up on the person of interest. Right now, we simply do not have the money to implement such a system.
Edit: There's another proposal but it hasn't gotten any traction yet. Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and others have proposed an amendment on banning high capacity magazines.
| Quote: |
| The amendment would ban import, possession, and transfer of magazines that accept (or could be readily converted to accept) more than 10 rounds and that are manufactured after the enactment of the amendment. The ban only excludes tubular magazines designed to accept .22-caliber ammunition. |
Note that preban magazines would be excluded (you could still own them but you won't be able to sell or transfer them).
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