The Senate's on the move.

Wall Street Journal has the article.  (Which may be behind a paywall).

Basically they'll go for Magazine Bans and Private Sale Bans.

Weerd comments on the same article

Magazine restrictions are just foolishness. It restricts the lawful home owner, who might be defending the home (and not wearing a gun belt with several magazines), or carrying concealed on the streets and not wanting to carry multiple magazines. Meanwhile we have the Virginia Tech Massacre, which is the most deadly school shooting, and all but two of the dozens of magazines used held only 10 rounds. Also I must note that the most deadly attack was in 1927 and used explosives.

You can get info on Senators here 

For Indiana. Here's Coats and here's Donnelly.

And at Hot Air some more thoughts on the "modular" plan Reid is going for.  Basically get whatever'll stick.

Why does this matter?  Basically, it gives Democrats in the Senate — especially red-state Democrats like Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, and others facing voters in 2014 — the opportunity to cast a high-profile vote against the ban without damaging the core bill.  In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at this point if the magazine capacity issue got broken out into a separate amendment, if that loses steam in the Senate, so that they can do the same with that issue.  The assault-weapons ban probably won’t get 40 votes in a separate floor vote.

This is quite a clever move by Reid.  Public polling shows that voters aren’t keen on the assault-weapons ban but want background checks expanded and intensified.  Reid is protecting the most vulnerable Democrats by letting them split their vote so that the red-state Democrats can claim that they blocked the gun banners in Washington, perhaps diluting a GOP attack line next year.

Sebastian has more thoughts.

And here's his Monday News Dump

A few bits that struck out at me:

“Guarded optimism,” is the watchword for the suit by NYSRPA/SAF against New York City over excessive gun license fees after oral arguments seemingly went well. I think our victories in Court are partly responsible for the current backlash. We have the wild animal backed into a corner.

And a warning:

Don’t get complacent. If they win on any issue, it’s going to make a follow up victory much more likely. Don’t forget after Brady passed, they finally got their “assault weapons” ban. Next time that bridge too far won’t have a self-destruct mechanism built into it. They won’t fall for that again.

And more on why the AR's hated:

The AR is just damned comfortable to shoot, which is why it’s popular. Because it’s popular is, of course, the reason they want it banned. It’s like if the obesity advocates decided to help people exercise more by mandating that comfortable chairs and sofas be outlawed.

It's popularity is what the Antis hate.   Even this NBC/NYT article groks that.

“The AR-15, it’s kind of fashionable,” says Frank Loane Sr., the proprietor. His shop has a revolving waiting list for the rifles, and a handful of people are now on it. “The young generation likes them, the assault-looking guns.” 

Via Glenn Reynolds who notes: Gun Control is  a Movement of Old, White People.

The article is interesting as it notes that these guns aren't machine guns and can't do full auto fire.

And this bit if history:

The AR-15 isn’t the first military-style weapon to gain a consumer following. After World War II, some people bought surplus German service rifles made by Mauser and repurposed them for hunting and competitive shooting. But the selling of the AR-15 represents the first mass marketing of a military-style semiautomatic rifle made by a number of different gun makers. Its success has led to an increasing militarization of the entire consumer firearms market, says Tom Diaz, a gun industry researcher and gun control advocate. 

Or

"Despite such reservations, the AR-15-style rifle — which is fast, modern, ergonomically designed, relatively easy to handle and produces little recoil — soon found a wide audience, be it Vietnam War veterans who had used the military version or first-time gun buyers. 

“End users with minimal firearms exposure can learn to quickly become safe and proficient with the platform regardless of prior firearms experience,” Mr. James, the editor at Guns & Ammo, wrote in an e-mail. 

Another feature of the AR-15 is that it can be easily personalized and accessorized.
“You can take the whole gun apart and replace any part you want to without special tools, without knowing a whole lot,” says Tim McDermott, a range officer at the Personal Defense and Handgun Safety Center in Raleigh, N.C. “They are Legos for guys.”  "

You mean a comfortable, easy to customize gun with low recoil that's easy to use and has a mass amount of aftermarket parts and supplies?  Yeah, why would people want a gun like that?


And of course the article has Sugarman's complaining:

The ban made the rifles only more desirable for some consumers. To meet the demand, gun makers removed prohibited features, like bayonet lugs, and marketed them as legal alternatives.

“It was unfortunately an industrywide event where companies were openly bragging about their ability to sell guns in circumvention of the law,” says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a research and gun-control advocacy group in Washington. 

The industry produced an estimated one million modified AR-15-style rifles during the ban — more than it had produced of the original version in the previous decade — says Gary G.

Mehalik, a former marketing executive at the National Shooting Sports Foundation and at Taurus USA, a handgun maker in Miami. He denied that gun makers circumvented the law.
“If you drive 40 miles an hour in a 40-mile-an-hour zone, are you exploiting a loophole or following the law?” Mr. Mehalik asked. "

Yup for the antis compliance with the law is circumvention.

This ties back into something that Sebastian notes today.  It's not the guns they hate.  It's the gun owners.  Specifically the wrong sorts are getting into guns:

I think this is absolutely correct, and everything we’ve been seeing in the media and from the gun control organizations seems to back that up. It fits with the article I did earlier on the cultural changes the coastal elites are seeing being the root cause of this latest backlash. We’ve been too successful for our own good. As long as gun ownership were confined to old, fat white guys (OFWGs), they were content to tolerate it. The changing face of gun ownership worries them, not because of a fear of guns, but for fear and loathing of the people who enjoy them, who increasingly are looking like them. If something isn’t done soon, they may have to take the opinions of gun owners seriously. Gun control is a movement of old white people, but they aren’t going to go down without a fight.

And that's why you've gotta contact your reps and Senators, and keep an ear to the ground.   The Gun Grabbers will use every trick and emotional grab they have to get their power.

Getting rid of guns is the gravy, the real meat and potatoes is marginalizing of the gun owners.