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What's not clear to me is the state's cause for concern about the selection of firearm. Is it because they believe the state is so built up that any rifle of long-range capability is dangerous to people near their houses?
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My guess is yes, that is exactly what they're concerned with. Whether it's legitimate or not, I don't know. They want to limit the velocity, so the bullets don't carry as far. But the muzzleloaders are the allowed exception to this, since they are limited to one shot. They ALSO want to limit the number of shots (they said the rule of 3 or less has in fact - they believe - reduced the number of "incidents" - presumably meaning injuries. How they correlate this I don't know - perhaps they have recorded incidents of a hunter firing off 2 or 3 shots at a deer, and someone was wounded on the 2nd or 3rd miss, instead of the first miss.). Rifles in handgun calibers have BOTH more velocity than handgun rounds, AND the high capacity - and they are difficult to PLUG - say, a levergun - how do you plug it? They don't want people breaking the rules and carrying 8 rounds in their .44 mag levergun, but they also don't want to create a burden on people who trying to jerry-rig some kind of plug. The proposed idea of allowing SINGLE SHOT handgun-caliber rifles is a good one, and one which they *ought* not to be able to articulate a valid objection to. Maybe next year. Or the next. Baby steps - keep writing them.
