Navigating gun laws in the United States can feel like walking a legal tightrope. With regulations existing at both federal and state levels—and thousands of laws covering everything from permits to discharge rules—it’s no surprise many first-time gun owners feel overwhelmed. The legal landscape becomes even more complex when you consider that each state, county, and sometimes even city can enforce its own unique set of firearms regulations.
We’re looking at 8 regulations that are often outright stupid, no matter how well-intentioned they may seem, and can often end up creating more problems for law-abiding gun owners than the criminals they’re supposedly targeting.
8. Gun-Free Zones
Gun-free zones are often touted as safe havens, but a sign on a wall doesn’t stop criminals from doing what they choose to. For instance, after the tragic shooting in Tucson, a proposal was made to create a 1,000-foot no-gun zone around elected officials – ignoring the fact that shooting people in general is already illegal. In practice, a gun-free zone disarms people who would otherwise be armed in the event of an emergency, which at worst simply creates more easy targets.
7. Concealed Carry’s Patchwork Status
Concealed carry varies wildly across the states, with places like Illinois and Wisconsin slow to recognize the right to carry firearms discreetly. While some states have embraced more lenient laws, others impose stringent requirements, including local police approval. This patchwork of regulations can lead to confusion and unintentional violations for law-abiding citizens. Concealed carry permit reciprocity (where having a permit in one state means another state that requires permits recognizes and accepts your permit) is also equally patchwork. One state may recognize another state’s permits, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true.
6. ATF Firearms Definitions
Certain types of firearms aren’t necessarily illegal to own, but they do require a $200 tax stamp. Getting the stamp, however, requires filling out paperwork and submitting it to the quagmire that is the BATFE. Expect very long wait times (on the order of months) before you receive approval (if you do) in order to own a weapon that looks only vaguely different from something you could legally purchase without waiting months. Do you own a rifle? If you cut the barrel down a few inches, it’s now a short-barreled rifle and illegal to own without the stamp. Unless you pull the stock off and put a pistol brace on it instead, which makes it a pistol. Just don’t put a vertical foregrip on it or it becomes Any Other Weapon and illegal. Makes sense, right?
5. Shooting Range Restrictions
In states like New Jersey and Massachusetts, shooting ranges are facing increasing restrictions, down to the types of targets you can use. In Massachusetts, for example, targets that resemble humans are banned, which undermines the very purpose of practicing safe firearm handling and training for self-defense. Except… not really. The targets themselves aren’t actually illegal to use in gun clubs provided they don’t have a Club LTC. So why do some clubs ban the targets if they don’t have to? They misunderstood the law and did so to avoid problems. That might seem unreasonable, but regulations are often such a mire and penalties so stiff that overcorrection becomes “better safe than sorry.”
4. Assault Weapons
The definition of assault weapons has been a contentious issue since the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. The criteria for what constitutes an “assault weapon” has been in some level of flux ever since the ban, and arguments over the danger they pose continues filter through the discourse across every level of the country. “Assault weapon” is a frabricated term, but it sounds very similar to an actual firearms term: “assault rifle.” An assault rifle is a select-fire rifle, meaning it can shoot both semi-automatic and fully automatic, and they are usually closely tied with intermediate cartridges (while battle rifles are tied with full-power rifle rounds.)
Assault weapon, as a term, generally gets applied instead to semi-automatic only weapons, typically rifles, that “look” the part of an assault rifle. The AR-15 is a ubiquitous rifle in the United States – but it’s only semi-automatic, and often labeled an “assault weapon” because it looks like an M4 (the actual assault rifle used by the US military.) It can accept attachments much like an M4 can, and it fires thes same round and uses the same mags, but it’s not fully automatic. It gets the label that it does over cosmetic features – but cosmetics don’t kill. Consider Ruger’s Mini-14; it has wooden furniture and a traditional rifle profile instead the pistol/stock profile of an AR. But it fires the same round out of the same length barrel an AR-15 does. It has the same effect on target… and it has basically never been singled out as an “assault weapon.”
3. Purchase Limits
Some states have implemented laws that restrict gun purchases to one per month. This regulation is intended to curb illegal gun trafficking, but it disproportionately affects law-abiding citizens who wish to expand their collections. The assumption that criminals will adhere to such limits also fails to recognize that criminals are criminals. If a once-per-month scheme is in place, that doesn’t do much to change the fact that many criminals commit the crimes that they do with stolen weapons.
2. Microstamping
California’s push for microstamping technology has sparked significant debate – though the state appears to be on the losing end of it. This requirement mandated that firearms leave a unique mark on spent casings, supposedly aiding law enforcement in tracing guns. However, critics argued that traditional ballistics already accomplish this task effectively, and the practicality of microstamping was such a blocker that virtually no firearms manufacturer produced weapons that used it. Ultimately, microstamping proved to do little more than make it nearly impossible to introduce new handguns to the state – including newer versions of handguns already legal in the state with improved safety records.
1. More Red Tape, Longer Wait Times
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was designed to expedite background checks for gun purchases. However, many states impose additional waiting periods, undermining the system’s intent. This delay can be frustrating for responsible gun owners who have already passed the background check, leading to unnecessary wait times in the purchasing process. Arguments for the waiting periods being essential for “cooling off” what could be crimes of passion have been met with counterarguments for those purchasing a firearm to defend themselves from potentially imminent threats, including stalkers who have made their intentions clear.
