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Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

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schemes will eventually go the way of the dodo, as I personally equate them to a poll tax, so either the laws will be rescinded on those grounds, or FFL fees will be eliminated, which should ameliorate at least some of the issue.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