Gun Liability Bill: Update for Saturday

Nothing much happened on Friday. A number of amendments were proposed, but no votes. The latest skinny on scheduling says that the Senate will vote on the amendments Monday, and the final bill Tuesday. So: on Monday, everyone calls their Senator to say "No amendments." On Tuesday, we take stock of what got attached to the bill on Monday (if anything) and call our Senators to let them know whether to kill it or pass it.

Here's what's still on the table (and significant in some way) regarding guns:

• Assault Weapons Ban amendment
• Armor-Piercing Ammunition amendment (thanks to KeepAndBearArms.com)
• Law enforcement concealed carry
• Gun show background checks

• Child Safety Lock Act of 2004

The gun lock amendment looks fairly tame on first glance, since just about every manufacturer and dealer are doing this anyway. There have been some hints that it would provide for liability to individual gun owners who did not use their locking device, but I can't find that in the bill -- granted I could easily have missed it.

The armor piercing amendments are a little worrying. The one proposed by Senatory Kennedy could be construed to ban just about any rifle round. The one proposed by Senator Craig contains a justice department study, prohibitions on manufacture, and penalty enhancements for using "armor piercing ammunition" but doesn't define armor-piercing ammunition so far as I can tell. That definition appears elsewhere (see the analysis from KeepAndBearArms.com). This amendment is troubling but probably acceptable -- and with luck we can get it stripped out in conference committee.

The other armor-piercing ammunition amendment is much worse (it could easily be read to ban just about all rifle rounds); if that one gets included, I think the whole bill should die.

The gun show bill would essentially ban gun shows completely -- the organizations would be criminally liable if all provisions, including some fairly minor ones, were not followed exactly, even if they were not the ones responsible for the problems. I don't think anyone would be willing to take that risk.

National concealed-carry for law-enforcement is OK, but not something I consider desirable; I'd rather not hand out more special rights to police officers. But it's not worth opposing the bill for.

I hope I don't need to say anything about the assault weapons ban itself. Hopefully we can keep that out of the bill.

At the moment, I'd say we have a tentative "go forward" so long as we don't get any further amendments. .

There are a few amendments from the Bizarro World where amendments are really "I want to pass my bill too", but I haven't seen anything especially scary about them.