Brand spanking new, made-up gun term
Assault handgun. Apparently, they’re also known as revolvers. And what’s the hubbub about:
Mr. Winik said his client did not willfully violate Maryland gun laws.
“This case involves Mr. Vaisman’s failure to properly perform paperwork and administrative functions required by firearms laws,” he said.
January 11th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Don’t know what it is but it sounds good.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:38 am
Dang, you beat me to it. Note also the types of guns they recovered. They have scary assault names like “Colt Cobra” and “Colt Diamondback”. Unfortuneatly for them, they have no idea what these guns look like. Have a quick look on google/images for those guns and have a good laugh. In fact, how about putting a pic or two of those scary named guns on a post?
January 11th, 2007 at 3:57 am
[…] […]
January 11th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I looked up the Maryland Code. They actually do criminalize possession of “assault pistols” but the affected weapons are identified by model. Colt revolvers are not on the list.
Armed with this information, I emailed the author of the piece yesterday and asked her about it. She replied that it was the editor’s fault. The editor called her at 7:00pm and requested that she put in “those details”. She said that the two named weapons were the ones that the attorney general’s office “mentioned from the warrant they had at their fingertips”.
I responded that the phrasing indicates that the two named firearms are examples of “assault handguns” and that the paragraph implies that their mere possession indicated criminal activity. I further mentioned that, out of the 143 firearms seized, the most “scary” ones they could come up with to specifically name were two revolvers?
She has not, at this point, responded to my second email.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Certain handguns were deemed at some point to be too evil to be possessed by mere mortals in Maryland. These include the Uzi and the Mac 10. However, I believe that if you just registered them with the benevolent state, you would be allowed to keep them until the next round of legislation (probably coming this session). These are referred to by the name “assault pistols”.
There’s also laws that require all handguns and some rifles to be registered with the state when they are sold from one private party to another. I buy guns, I don’t really sell them, so I’m not 100% up on the details. This looks like the law he violated.