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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

The gun laws are missing from these graphs.

How fast would America change its mind about them?

From its nadir in ~1994 with the federal Assault Weapons Ban, you've seen that ban expired, numerous states liberalize their rights to bear arms (either concealed, or since 2009 or so openly), and the Supreme Court rule in Heller that the 2nd amendment is a protection of an individual right. 4 or so states have bucked that trend, but the overall trend in the past 20 years is, if not fast, directionally clear.

I say it was more like a 30 year process, starting with the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, which prevented the BATFE from extinguishing US gun culture using the Gun Control Act of 1968, and Florida passing a shall issue law in 1987 which got the carry ball rolling after the predicted "Blood in the Streets!" and "Dodge City!" didn't happen. So if you accept my starting point, neither very fast nor initially directionally clear, nor directionally clear in the last couple or so years.

ADDED: and essentially none of it outside Illinois was forced by the federal courts to date, and that anti-trend looks to continue. Heller and McDonald were nice, but have resulted in very few changes on the ground, nor in the political debate. Although the changes in Illinois are dramatic, extremely so for Chicago and a few of its suburbs, which went from a complete ban on civilian ownership of handguns to shall issue concealed carry (and without automatic prosecution of self-defense cases) in 3 years (!).

As for details, there are currently 7-10 viciously anti-gun states as I count them: unquestioned are California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Connecticut and Delaware are shall issue concealed carry in practice, but that could change, and Colorado, Connecticut, and Washington state have gotten worse post-Sandy Hook. And of course, the District of Columbia, the subject of Heller, is practicing Massive Resistance, with the Federal court system not really interested in resolution or following the Supremes.

Gun laws are different from the things in the article, since they take away a freedom instead of adding one.

What would you chart? "Gun laws" are not as clear-cut as the issues listed in the article.

But their raw change has been massive. When I came of age, I could not: carry concealed in my home state or more than a hand full of them, or buy ammunition mail order, and the BATFE was in the process of exterminating US gun culture.

Since then I cannot buy a machine gun manufactured after 1986, nor an imported "assault weapon", nor buy a gun from a dealer without an "instant check", and as fiatmoney mentioned, nationally "assault weapons" have mostly cycled.

There's an animated gif somewhere that I'm having trouble finding at the moment, but for the most part, it's reflected in this article here:

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2011/0...

Long story short, acceptance of gun rights has been generally winning over gun control, though the patterns are almost the polar opposite of those reflected in the Bloomberg article.

Edit: It's worth pointing out that, true to form (for America at least), a lot of those states flipped colors as a result of a lawsuit, in which conformant legislation came after the fact.

Edit edit: I don't know how much editorial influence Michael Bloomberg has on Bloomberg News, but as Bloomberg News appears to be anti-gun, and Michael Bloomberg is quite obviously so, might there be a connection?

At the Federal level, only Illinois flipped as the result of a lawsuit, and I can remember only West Virginia flipping due to a state level one. Do you know of any more, not counting the in-process California, Hawaii (both probably doomed) and D.C. lawsuits?

Heller v. DC was like a beacon, basically. Many towns and cities abandoned their DC-like restrictions as a result of Heller, including towns in Illinois (that weren't Chicago, obviously).

Beyond that, you're right, federally there's been very little activity, but a lot of the cases are loosely correlated, such that the cases gradually eroded the resistance to gun rights which paved the way towards gun-rights-friendly legislation.

Or, perhaps I'm romanticizing it. While I'm not in cahoots with the NRA, I do follow gun cases fairly closely, and there's been a fairly constant level of activity since 2008.

Another big thing that I ought to have mentioned in my overall survey of the changes is that most, if not the vast majority of states enacted gun control preemption laws after the Supremes denied cert in 1981 in the lawsuit appealing the outright ban of handgun ownership in Morton Grove, Illinois. Almost needless to say, those didn't include Illinois, which per lawyer David Hardy (http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2008/11/winnetka_il_rep.ph...) included 6 municipalities with handgun bans. 4 surrendered, to my memory Oak Park with Chicago covering their legal bills and Chicago fought and lost in McDonald (resulting in multiple high six figure checks paid by Chicago to the plaintiffs).

I honestly cannot recall another municipality that reversed, although I wouldn't be surprised a few others did. Given how few major ones have/had handgun bans, just Chicago, D.C. and NYC (outside of a very few politically connected), and what a big deal it was nationwide when Morton Grove pulled their stunt, I'd be disappointed with my news sources if I'd missed any.

You're probably not wrong, but to put my earlier comments into light, Morton Grove was one of the ones who reversed their position legislatively as a result of the Heller decision.

I think it's fair to categorize Morton Grove either way, but perhaps it is errant of me to imply close correlation.

Edit: Actually, I recant. Many cities have overturned legislation as a result of suit, but looking at the context, we aren't talking about cities, we're talking about states.

As to the discussion on how states go from rights-restrictive to rights-permissive, I agree that it has predominately been done legislatively.

Errr, no, I'm talking about both states and cities.

Although maybe some other cities in non-preemption states, but the only ones I can remember are Illinois, Nebraska (it came up after the state went shall issue), and Colorado for Denver, but that was carved out by the courts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Colorado#Denver).

This is interesting enough that I checked all the Wikipedia pages after only finding vague "almost all states": Illinois has now preempted most regulations. Massachusetts has "limited preemption", but I remember it to be pretty general. Nebraska is in "most but not all", so I assume the shall issue issues were ironed out, as I vaguely recall. New Jersey is limited (no surprise, it and Massachusetts really would like to outlaw guns altogether and mere ownership is massively restricted), New York of course. Basically Morton Grove's handgun ban lit a fire under state legislatures, most date from the mid-80s.

The above excludes things like some states allowing some cities to outlaw carrying in parks and the like, the usual discharge laws, plus various grandfathered laws, none super-onerous as far as I know aside from registration in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas).

Then again, there's been a whole lot of lawsuits to enforce state preemption; that's not Heller based, but it is of course done in the courts. At least a couple of states have made it particularly expensive for cities to resist, legislatures don't like their authority being questioned....

This graph is focused on expansion of rights, not retraction.

Not if one considers the rights of the unborn.

With a few exceptions, gun rights have, for the most part, expanded over the past couple of decades. More and more states are adopting some form of carry laws, and to my knowledge, those that have expanded gun rights have never reversed. The one notable exception that comes to mind is Colorado, with its ammo capacity ban, but even that's sort of up in the air at the moment.

There's a new line of attack you might not be aware of. Well protected by his own armed security Bloomberg is now the most effective gun controller (he and his people engineered the Colorado debacle, and gerrymandering is likely to keep it all), and he's pursuing deceptive transfer laws through state initiatives, with initial success in Washington state.

These laws ostensibly regulate private transfers, but in the fine print are aimed directly at hindering the creation of new gun owners and otherwise trapping us in flypaper, by criminalizing the lending and renting of guns even under supervision. The Washington state officials say they won't enforce that part of the law, but....

Next up are Nevada and Oregon, last time I heard about this.

The Oregon situation was particularly questionable, and I was saddened that I591 was narrowly defeated.

The chaos agent in me was hoping that 591 would pass alongside 594, to see how the state would have to reconcile directly conflicting bills. Sadly, 591 was massively outspent.

When you're fighting the 13th wealthiest person in the world, who can also get other billionaires to join in at least for Washington state (note to others, there were Washington state initiatives), you're going to get outspent heavily. We haven't yet figured out how to counter him, and like e.g. the BATFE, might not until there are enough atrocities to wake people up to the threat. Which would require an anti-gun state's people passing one of these, and the state then using it as more flypaper. Less likely with less viciously anti-gun states like Washington.

On the up-side, at least you haven't run into the "confiscation through anonymous tip line" issue, yet.

I am hopeful that, eventually, for-cost registration schemes will eventually go the way of the dodo, as I personally equate them to a poll tax, so either the laws will be rescinded on those grounds, or FFL fees will be eliminated, which should ameliorate at least some of the issue.

I'm a long way from Washington. Is the current interpretation of I594 being applied to temporary transfers? I'm in Maryland, and we have a similar transfer limitation, but were at least able to press the AG into issuing a formal opinion on some aspects of the law, though the specifics of it currently elude me.

I'm in Missouri, so paradise compared to Maryland, and initiative wise better than Washington. Heck, our recent constitutional amendment on the subject (http://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Right_to_Bear_Arms,_Amendmen...) ought to make such an initiative impossible, but the one very bad thing about the state is our courts. So I'm not following Washington state closely, but as I recall there was an "on pain of lawsuit" AG opinion/pledge not to prosecute on temporary transfers. Or see Colorado where the authorities promised not to prosecute folks who left their guns with friends during the nasty flooding not long after the Bloomberg laws passed.

But of course each state's enforcement will be different, and subject to change. The really nasty states didn't start out enforcing their laws in truly nasty ways until the zeitgeist changed enough and laws aimed for blacks and disfavored immigrants were applied to all but the anointed.

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