i have paranoia with weapon law as well...
Isn't it sad it's so difficult for two law-abiding citizens to transfer legal private property? There are a bunch of good suggestions here on how to make sure you do it correctly and don't get sideways with Fed, CA, or NE law. Good luck.
Regarding the "high capacity" magazine comment, I get your sarcasm regarding 30-rounders, but the reason I bring it up is because it emphasizes that words are important. I've studied anti-gun rights propaganda for years and testified at numerous public hearings against people who want to take away our right to self defense. That's one of the terms they love to use - you know that well from living outside the US, in California.
You see, they have made up words that have no real meaning but serve the purpose of confusing the general public and making those people unfamiliar with firearms scared of guns. If we use the words from anti-gun rights activists, then we give their nonsense words legitimacy and further confuse or scare people unfamiliar with guns.
Consider anti-gun rights definitions vs public perception for terms they've successfully mainstreamed:
"high capacity magazine" - Anti-gun rights activists consider this a magazine that can hold 11 or more rounds, while the general public envisions belt/box-fed Rambo guns. It's easy to get their restrictive magazine laws passed when the public is scared of Rambo militiamen running around on the streets. And if we accept this limitation, then the next limitation will be 6, "because a revolver only holds 6 rounds and why would anybody other than murdering criminals
need more than 6 rounds at a time?" And then they'll reduce it again once the maximum of 6 rounds limitation is mainstreamed. I can already imagine the Brady press conferences.
"assault weapon" - I hate this term. The Brady Campaign invented this term in the early 90s to push the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Anti-gun activists define these as scary, black, semi-auto rifles (
with a shoulder thingy that goes up). The problem is that the term sounds a lot like "assault rifles", which by definition are full-auto machine guns. It's pretty easy to confuse the public and scare the Average Joe into thinking an "assault weapon" is a machine gun (again with Rambo in the street images) and convince him to vote semi-auto rifles illegal (or vote for politicians who will). And that's exactly the reason the Brady Campaign came up with that term: to create confusion. Hell, look at this thread and count how many times "assault weapon" and "assault rifle" were used interchangeably. And we're the gun guys!
"offensive firearm' - The anti-gun rights activists came up with this to scare the public. Offensive sounds aggressive and if they are able to categorize guns under this term and mainstream it, I imagine they'll easily get that list banned from private ownership - at least in the less-free states.
There are many more terms the anti-gun rights activists want to mainstream - just spend 10 minutes on one of their websites or flipping through one of their books. Words matter. We've got a hard enough uphill battle educating the public on firearms, so let's work together and not help the anti-rights groups by making their nonsense words mainstream.
I yield the remainder of my soapbox time to Rick.
