Posted on 10/18/2014 6:34:03 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA
For a relatively historical red state, I could not believe what I recently learned about one of Ohio's laws regarding AR's. You can use 30 round AR's all day long, and you are good to go. But insert a mag containing 31 or more cartridges into the gun, and the state considers this a machine gun.
WTF?
If any law ever needed to be changed, this is it.
Don’t mess with it. It could be 10 rds!
The way the Ohio definition of machine gun can be read is that 30 rounds in a magazine inserted in a semiautomatic firearm PLUS one in the chamber equals 31 and makes it a machine gun.
Apparently, Ohio lawmakers make things up as they go.
Hey, stop picking on my schizophrenic state! JK
This law is over 30 years old. I ran into it the first time I bought a Mini-14 in 1982?+/-. The dealer said the extra 10 rounds wasn’t worth the hassle anyway as a Mini would melt somewhere around 15 rounds, and the box style mag was ridiculously long.
Frequently you would/will see the 40 round+ mags and the firearms they fit in the same store or on the same table.
You could buy them together for years without an eyebrow raised...still can as far as I know though it is years as well since I have been around anyone into that type of system.
The drum mags for AK come to mind and the betas for the AR as something I still see routinely around shows and at ranges.
Knowledgeable gunnies always said when I asked them about it was something akin to just don’t put a 30+ round mag into a rifle in a police station while pointing to the little known and less enforced law.(sarcasm I guess)
I also know it does not apply to 22LR.
Only recently, have even a few mail order companies ceased shipping 40 rounders into Ohio. I noticed Sportsman Guide changed their policy about 5 years ago.
It’s greater notoriety recently is no doubt due to the internet availability of the laws on line.
There was a bill to fix this not too long ago but it seems to have stalled. It definitely needs changed.
FWIW
Ohio is also open carry, but has a marked lack of wide reciprocity agreements and onerous travel-through restrictions.
Ohio has in the past had even crazier gun laws. In 2004, the Ohio legislature passed what was arguably the worst concealed-carry law in the nation (filled with poison pills insisted upon by then-governor Taft). Among other things, a “concealed” handgun had to be “in plain sight” when its carrier was in a vehicle. This led to the “Buckeye tuck”: one’s coat had to be tucked up under one’s armpits when in a vehicle to put the holstered pistol “in plain sight” (btw, there was no definition of “plain sight” anywhere in the law). Thankfully, this is no longer the case.
Then there was the “loaded weapon” problem. For years there was no legal definition of a “loaded weapon”; a loaded weapon was whatever a particular court said it was. Some years ago a definition made its way into the law: a “loaded weapon” in a vehicle was defined as a weapon which had a loaded magazine or speedloader anywhere in the vehicle. In other words, if I had my totally empty AR15 (no magazine in it) locked in a safe in my trunk, and a magazine with one round in it locked in a lockbox in my glove compartment, that AR15 was legally loaded, and I was committing a felony. This also has been changed, but the new law has complications as well.
I could go on, but this post is long enough already.
Zeko
I don’t know, 31 rounds is pretty heavy to carry around, 30 is better, easier to carry, not so heavy.
Don’t live there, but this is the goofiest one I’ve heard about recently —
“Multnomah County, Oregon... requires that openly carried guns must be unloaded. The ordinance also makes it an offense to possess a loaded magazine or speed loader if you don’t have a concealed carry permit.”
All I can figure is that someone was trying to honor the Second Amendment by letting people have guns, while catering to anti-gun guys by insisting those guns be unloaded, but that law can’t have made anybody happy when it passed.
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