Yes, Barbie has the right to own a pink Glock! (In New York State, at least.)

When I was a kid, squirt guns and cap guns were made to look fairly realistic. It became something of a problem, in that some bank robberies were committed using realistic toys. And there was also the case of "The Assassination Game", something of a fad on college campuses in the 1980's IIRC. A student playing the game was stalking a dorm hallway carrying a toy assault rifle. A college security guard shot him dead.

So the toy companies began to make all their toy guns brightly colored, and that's why they're all now bright pink or bright green.

It seems that the Long Island statute in question, which banned ownership of real guns which were "non-traditionally colored". I wonder whether the motivation was to avoid a return to the ambiguity of my childhood. If real guns can be pink or green, then in a fighting situation where you have to make snap decisions, you (or the cops) can no longer rely on the fact that the whatever in his hands is colored green or pink to determine if he's got the capability of shooting you.

Fact remains, that kind of control really shouldn't be applied at the local level. Arguably it shouldn't be applied at any level, but turning the entire nation into a bewildering array of different rules which kick in at arbitrary unmarked boundaries certainly isn't a good thing.

James says that Ohio's Supreme Court recently decided that localities in that state don't have the legal authority to enact local ordnances relating to private ownership of guns or when/how/where they can be carried by those with legal concealed-carry licenses. (Such as James himself.)

Progress, folks. Progress! But lots left to do. We'll know we've really won when we start getting decisions like this in California. And that ain't gonna be any time soon.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 04:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 329 words, total size 2 kb.