UPDATE:The Florida teen 'infatuated' with Columbine and made threats as she went to Colorado is dead

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29. Actually, my argument against that law is significantly more nuanced.

In my opinion, the problem is not the restriction. It's that they restricted the WRONG THING.

Going well beyond the issue of an end run, if you're going to regulate ammunition, you need to understand the relevance of the weapon by which it is being fired. Pistols, by virtue of having a short barrel, have a limited range of accuracy. Something like 50-75 yards. The .22 lr round itself, however, is effective to at least double that, at 150 yards. So it seems to me that there's a more legitimate ground for regulating the chambering of pistols in .22 lr, on the basis of the round being deadly far beyond the range at which it is accurate when fired from a pistol.

It basically comes down to the lawmakers having had an acceptable and even support-worthy goal, but also having inadequate knowledge of the subject to address that goal well. We're seeing the same thing right now with the focus on AR-15's and other similar style "assault rifles", when what actually makes the rifles suited to assault is not the pistol grips or semi-auto actions. It's the stupidly large extended magazines. The more often you have to reload, the less suitable the weapon is for assault, regardless of any other feature.

It really is that simple, but it's easy to fail to recognize that truth if you don't understand how firearms work.