Here’s the Latest Bright Idea for Regulating Guns.

So, yesterday I get an email from Everytown asking me to contact my Representative in D.C. and ask him to support a new bill called The Federal Firearms Licensing Act (FFLA.) According to this email, which was signed by someone named Monisha Henley, Senior V.P. of Government Affairs for Everytown, this law will “strengthen and modernize the laws that licensed gun dealers must follow — like implementing measures to prevent theft and loss — and would hold sellers accountable when they fail to follow them.”

I never heard of this FFLA bill, so before sending an email to my Rep, who happens to be Jim McGovern (a good guy, btw) I went to look at the details of the proposed legislation itself. You can read the entire text of the bill — H.R.1478 — here, but I’ll save you the trouble and summarize it right now.

Basically, the bill clarifies one of the major issues which has been floating around the gun world since the federal government created a comprehensive system to regulate gun dealers in 1968. The issue is this: How do we define an individual who deals in guns, as opposed to someone who just buys and sells guns as a hobby, the way that other people buy books or records or toys?

This new bill defines a gun ‘dealer’ as anyone who makes purchases or sales of guns more than 5 times within any 12-month period of…