Six round magazine gets you 364 days in jail

Via email from Drew.

Oregon is demonstrating what they want for the future of gun ownership. These legislators are the want-to-be tyrants sponsoring Senate bill 501:

Senator Rob Wagner
503-986-1719
Sen.RobWagner@oregonlegislature.gov

Representative Andrea Salinas
503-986-1438
Rep.AndreaSalinas@oregonlegislature.gov

They are proposing you spend 364 days in jail and/or pay a $6250 fine if you are caught in possession of a magazine which holds more than five rounds. No grandfathering. Furthermore, you would be prohibited from purchasing more than 20 rounds of ammunition in a month unless you purchased it and used it at the range.

I remember when the 1994 AWB was being proposed. It restricted magazine size to 10 rounds. Gun rights activists pointed out that if it was constitutional to limit the magazine size to 10 rounds there was no real limit and that in the future we would see seven, five, two, and zero magazine size limits. The anti-rights people dismissed the concerns.

The New York SAFE Act restricted magazine size to seven rounds or put a maximum of seven rounds in larger capacity magazines but the courts struck that down and “allowed” people to load ten rounds into ten round magazines.

We now have a state, in the more “liberal” 9th Federal Circuit, proposing a limit of five round magazines and that you destroy, permanently modify, turn over to police, or transfer any higher capacity magazines out of state.

The 20 rounds per month limit is totally unenforceable. Each dealer is supposed to keep track of each of their customers to make sure no more than 20 rounds are sold to them each month. The customer can just go to the store next door and buy another box (or part of a box in the case of many types of ammo). There are numerous other loopholes as well.

The five round magazine limit makes nearly all semi-auto firearms into single shot firearms because there are no five round magazines for most semi-autos. This is the slippery slope we predicted in 1994.

This law cannot possibly be viewed as serving any compelling state interest. It can only be viewed as a deliberate infringement upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

These people need an legal education. I propose prosecutors educated them by enforcing 18 USC 242.

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16 thoughts on “Six round magazine gets you 364 days in jail

  1. What about a 6 shot revolver? Or those 22s with a tubular magazine? How about shotguns?
    Have they explained what this is supposed to accomplish?

    • The purpose is to harass, bully, marginalize, criminalize, threaten, and beat down gun owners, to make them the enemy, to empower and embolden government employees so they can coerce the people to do their bidding. That should be obvious. They want you helpless, hopeless, and dependent. Slaves are easaier to control if they have low moral as well as no weapons.

    • Reading through the bill, it would appear that 6 shot revolvers would be made illegal. Same for shotguns of all types with a fixed (including tube fed) magazine capacity of 6+ shells. Exemptions are made for tube fed 22s and lever action rifles, which appear to be permitted unlimited magazine capacities. Otherwise, as far as I can tell fixed magazines are treated the same as detachable mags. I could be wrong. Double check me please.

      • 22s don’t seem to be excepted; the bill has an exception for “caliber 0.22” weapons, not for “caliber 22”.

        • So, a gun that shoots pine needles does not not have a magazine capacity restriction?

  2. No grandfathering = ex post facto law. Add that to the stack of constitutional violations currently on the table.

    • From this crowd…

      Constitution, shmonstitution…

      Do what we say or we’ll jail and bankrupt you.

      For my part, I’m not getting onboard and I’m not going to jail.

    • That’s not what “ex post facto” means. It would be ex post facto if it applied a punishment for actions (or possession) that took place prior to the effective date of the “law” in question.

      • Yes. I owned the magazines legally yesterday and now you’re punishing me for what I owned legally then today.

        • The Volstead Act.
          Whatever Act that outlawed over-the-counter medicines containing cocaine.
          That law in 1938 that outlawed marijuana.
          What was legal before the law was passed is irrelevant to what is legal to do after the law is passed.

        • That’s not what is meant. It means that you cannot be prosecuted for something which the only way you could obey the law is if you were to be able to go back in time. An example would be if they were to put up a stop sign at an intersection and then prosecute you for failing to stop when you went through the intersection the day before the sign went up.

          In this case you can avoid prosecution by destroying or modifying the magazines, transporting them out of state, or giving them to the police. A case can be made for uncompensated taking and infringement of the Second Amendment, but not for ex post facto.

  3. 364 days specifically seems like an amazingly precise penalty. Is there some sort of difference in standard of review for misdemeanors versus felonies? In California if this were to get suspended sentence and parole, it could later be expunged upon demonstration of successful completion of parole. These anti-liberty thugs never do anything accidentally. I wonder why it’s one day less than a felony, when the 1994 AWB provided for penalties that were greater than those for theft.

    • It’s the difference between time served in State Prison (over 364 days) and time served in County Jail. One of the definitions of whether the charge is a felony. Obviously, this charge would be a Class – A misdemeanor then.

      The interesting part will come if the supermajority rams this bill through, then adds an “emergency clause” to prevent an Initiative from killing it. If that happens, it might just kill the emergency clause permanently.

      Note that the bill is aimed to gain the approval of the Elmer Fudds. Virtually no old-style hunting weapon will be affected, but virtually ALL defensive and or/militia-capable weapons WILL be affected. We need to turn the Fudds, people. Might have to carry a big stick to do that.

  4. Handguns lack the stopping power of a rifle, so both the OSS and SOE during WWII taught agents to fire double taps. This effectively reduces your ammo capacity by half. Weaker calibers like .380 might even require more shots to incapacitate a bad actor.

  5. Hmm, so they want to emulate BC Canada, except that in BC we can have 10 round pistol magazines…

    The laws up here in BC are looking somewhat lax compared to OR and WA at this time…

    Still can’t bring my SVT over the border though, damn…

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