McAuliffe and Gun Control

NRO's Charles Cooke is spot on:

Apparently deterred neither by the recent and successful liberalization of state gun laws in Virginia nor by the clear message that Colorado voters sent to lawmakers earlier in the month, Virginian gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has added a gun-control plank to his campaign website.

You see, as this site shared yesterday, Terry McAuliffe has decided to come out of the shadows and post on his web site the kind of gun control he supports. As Cooke notes:

With the exception of the one-gun-per-month rule, a 1993 measure that was repealed last year, McAuliffe is effectively suggesting that the state of Virginia pass exactly the same package that led to two state senators in Colorado being recalled: the extention of background checks to private sales and limits on the size of magazines. If McAuliffe is elected, it will be interesting to see how successful he will be in convincing skittish state legislators to put their careers on the line for such a fringe issue. My suspicion is not very.

Cooke also makes a good point that McAuliffe should tell us if he supports the 1993 version of handgun rationing, or the law as it stood in 2012 when it was repealed. By 2012, most people had already been exempted from the law including ncluding anyone with a concealed-handgun permit, all law enforcement, all private security companies, and anybody who “lost” a firearm within 30 days and needed to replace it. As Cooke concludes:

To go back to the latter would simply be silly; to go back to the former, on the other hand, would be radical.