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A thought on history
The original Gun Control Act made it very easy to get an FFL license; $10 a year fee, as I recall, no requirement that the applicant have premises in an area zoned for business, etc. The reasoning was simple: private sellers don't have to keep records of sales, which FFLs, and so letting lots of people have FFLs meant lots of sales "on the record." A person simply claimed a room in his house as his business premises, could buy interstate, kept records of sales, with no great burden. As I recall, at the peak there were about 200,000 FFLs.
Then under Clinton, Violence Policy Center staged a media pitch that there were so many FFLs out there, more gun dealers than gas stations. And a private group, National Association of Stocking Gun Dealers, or something like that, attacked the in-home FFLs, seeing them as competition. The result were amendments making it harder to get an FFL. Your premises had to be in area zone for business, had to have certain security, and the fees were increased. The result was that the number of FFLs shrank, I believe to about 25% of what they had been.
Now the pitch is... "there are people who make private sales, and they don't have to keep records, that's terrible and ought to be stopped."
As the saying goes, make up your mind.... unless of course the only objective is to make acquiring guns as difficult as possible. Drive 3/4 of the FFLs out of business, and then complain that non-FFLs shouldn't be allowed to transfer guns.
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Obama as 'Ruthless and Indifferent to Rule of Law' as Bush (tinyurl dot com/bjga2oy).
I was a FFL dealer back then and I still am but I hated the National Association of Stocking Gun Dealers with an absolute passion. It was protectionist and anti business, they did a great deal of harm to the industry.
Hell, I'd get an FFL and manufacturer's SOT so I could do R&D work, but the Clinton changes (including the ITAR fees) have made it unworkable.
This is the proverbial camel's nose under the tent. Gun owners are always portrayed as paranoid about sensible laws. It's not paranoid if they really are out to take away your weapons.
The reality is, history has proven time and again that the government will take away arms from its citizenry under any pretext it can. The thought that it can't happen here is dead-wrong. Your post is but one example. What's happening in NY is another. What is pending in the legislature is further proof.
There was a reason for the Second Amendment. It was because King Goerge III's army came to take away the arms of the colonists. He tried to institute gun control the very same way our state and federal legislatures are doing now.
The Second Amendment isn't about hunting. It's about self-protection and preventing the very tyranny that started the American Revolution. The Second Amendment is about government control, plain and simple.
However, the Bill of Rights is just words on paper. The people have left the interpretation of their Lockean rights up to those who have no concept of "Two Treatises of Government" and their influence on Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. We have lost what the colonists took for granted via "Cato's Letters."
We are destined to reap what we sow.