As many of you know, it is the policy of this blog to avoid political discussions. Frankly, many of us, including myself, are sick to death of politics. However, there are some topics that have a direct bearing on living history and reenacting, and gun control is a primary example. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Governor Cuomo of New York rushed a draconian gun control bill through the state legislature which may have a severe effect on WWII and other twentieth century impressions. According to the ‘USACarry” website, the law “amends Penal Law � 265.00(23) to ban all large capacity magazines that have the capacity to hold more than ten rounds of ammunition including those that were grandfathered in under the original assault weapons ban and creates a new ban on magazines that hold more than seven rounds of ammunition. Magazines that can hold more than seven rounds but not more than ten rounds and are currently possessed will be grandfathered in, but may only contain seven rounds of ammunition. Exceptions are made for large capacity magazines that are curios or relics.”
Most readers here know that an M1 Garand, the primary US infantry rifle of WWII, holds 8 rounds. The new law reduces the legal magazine capacity of rifles with non-detachable magazines from 10 to 7, which indicates that the jerk who wrote this bill had some familiarity with the Garand. Obviously they had it in for the owners of these old rifles. Also in question are the M1 Carbine, British Lee-Enfield and Russian SVT.
How this is supposed to improve the safety of the general public is a mystery. This seems to be a textbook case of ideological extremists exploiting a horrible tragedy for the purposes of furthering their already established agenda. The majority of legislators probably had no idea of what all was included in the bill and just went along with the emotions of the moment and voted for a bad bill in order to look good to the press. Apparently there was no significant oppostion from either party.
How this will affect the Odessa, New York WWII reenactments remains to be seen. I have emailed the organizers, but have not received a reply at this writing. In all probability, they are still trying to make some sense out of this mess. Hopefully, they will be able to salvage something, as these events have a reputation for being well-run, quality events. Hopefully, we will be hearing from someone in that area soon.
In all likelihood, we have not heard the last on this issue. I understand that lawsuits are in the offing regarding the new law. Hopefully, sanity will at some point, prevail.
I don’t know if New York, like many other states, sponsors any living history events, (of any time period) but if I lived there, I believe that I would be tempted to cease supporting state-sponsored events. Why feed the dog that bites us?
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