Critics Claim ‘Common-Sense Gun Laws’ Are a Trojan Horse for Nationwide Restrictions

“We don’t want to take your guns – just common-sense laws.”

That line has dominated the gun debate for years. On a recent segment of Gun Owners Radio, host Michael Schwartz – along with co-hosts Alisha Curtin and Dakota Adelphia – argued that the reassuring language is a polished PR mask for a long, incremental campaign to outlaw lawful ownership piece by piece.

Whether you agree or not, their case is worth hearing out, because it traces three decades of policy fights and shows how language, not just legislation, shifts public opinion.

And yes, they bring receipts from both the federal and state levels.

The “We’re Not Taking Your Guns” Promise, Under The Microscope

Schwartz opens with what he calls the myth: anti-gun politicians insist they don’t want a confiscation scheme, just “reasonable restrictions.”

Then he plays a clip of Barack Obama, as a candidate and later a president, rejecting the idea that Democrats were “hellbent on taking away folks’ guns,” noting record gun sales during his tenure and insisting he never proposed confiscation from responsible owners.

Schwartz’s response isn’t to argue that a one-day, door-to-door seizure was ever on the table. Instead, he focuses on accumulation – how limits on categories of guns, magazines, and features add up. 

In his telling, the absence of a single sweeping ban is beside the point if the end state is effectively the same.

That’s the crux of the show’s thesis: a patchwork of “reasonable” rules can still amount to a comprehensive prohibition in practice.

Frankly, it’s a savvy way to frame the debate. Big, scary bills are easy to rally against. A series of carefully branded steps, each sold as “just this one change,” is harder for busy voters to track.

The Long March: Bans, Rosters, And Feature Tests

Schwartz then walks through a timeline familiar to policy nerds but not always to casual listeners.

He cites the 1994 federal assault weapons ban as a clear example of banning an entire class of semi-automatic rifles. 

He points to state-level measures too: California’s AWCA (1989), New Jersey’s 1990 law, Connecticut’s 2013 update, Massachusetts 1998, Maryland 2013, New York’s SAFE Act (2013), and magazine restrictions such as Colorado’s 2013 law.

The details vary, but the pattern, Schwartz argues, is constant: redefine “assault weapon” to capture popular semi-autos; set magazine limits that criminalize common configurations; and, where an outright ban won’t pass, use indirect methods like “safe handgun rosters.”

He’s particularly blunt about rosters. If the state requires technologies or test standards that don’t exist – or are prohibitively expensive to implement – then the roster becomes a back-door freeze on new models. Labels aside, that functions like a ban.

As a matter of logic, the argument resonates: a rule that no current product can meet is a ban by another name. The real political question is whether those standards are genuinely about safety or strategically set to choke the market. 

Reasonable people will split on that – but it’s tough to deny that some “standards” have been moving targets.

Wordsmithing The Ban: “Common Sense,” “Responsible,” “Assault Weapons”

Dakota Adelphia picks up the cultural side. She argues the push relies on focus-grouped vocabulary designed to sound moderate and soothing.

“Common sense.”

“Responsible.”

“Gun safety.”

“Assault weapon.”

Adelphia’s point isn’t that messaging is evil; it’s that it’s effective. If you can smuggle a strict policy under a cuddly label, you win the framing before the fight begins.

She shares a telling anecdote: someone told her, straight-faced, “I don’t want to take all guns – just AR-15s.” That’s the slippery-slope concern in a nutshell. Start with the most demonized class today; redefine the next class tomorrow. And so on.

Alisha Curtin underscores it with a California example. Regulators didn’t “ban all handguns,” but the roster and “microstamping” rule effectively kicked many Glocks, one of the most common pistols in the country, off the shelves for years. 

Schwartz adds a striking stat from his notes: at one point, Glocks made up about 15% of firearms sold nationwide. Remove a slice that big, he argues, and you can’t claim you’re not banning – at scale – you’re just doing it by brand and model.

Here’s where my own view lands: if you’re going to defend a constraint as “narrow,” it ought to be narrow in effect, not just in legal framing. Otherwise, you’re asking the public to ignore real-world consequences because the statute’s prose reads politely.

The Aggregate Effect: A Ban By Any Other Path

Schwartz’s larger claim is mathematical. If every major “common-sense” proposal of the last 30 years had passed – and survived court challenges – what would be left?

He says, not much. Semi-auto rifles captured. Many semi-auto pistols excluded via rosters. “Sniper rifles” (i.e., scoped hunting rifles) demonized as public-menace tools. “Saturday night specials” (cheap revolvers and pistols) targeted in the 1990s. And magazines throttled to limits that hobble common defensive configurations.

Even if each plank sounds limited, the sum is comprehensive.

Now, to be fair, supporters of these policies would dispute the conclusion. They’d say each step reduces risk and preserves rights. 

But Schwartz is right that the aggregate is what matters in the end. Policy doesn’t live on press releases; it lives in what’s legal to buy, carry, and use.

What This Means For Gun Owners And Voters

If you’re a rights-first voter, the show’s takeaway is straightforward: judge proposals by mechanics, not marketing.

Ask practical questions:

• Does this law ban products in wide, common use?
• Does it hinge on technologies that aren’t commercially viable?
• Does it rely on subjective categories (“military-style,” “assault”) that can be expanded at will?
• Does it criminalize ordinary capacity or features that are standard for self-defense and hunting?

If the answer to any of those is yes, the “common-sense” branding deserves a hard second look.

Adelphia’s warning about messaging is also wise: when a campaign invests heavily in euphemisms, it’s a tell that the underlying policy polls poorly when described plainly. That doesn’t automatically make the policy wrong – but it should make us cautious about approving it on vibes.

A Note On Crime And Accountability

One thing the show clip touched only briefly but that always looms large: enforcement. The audience question to Obama years ago asked why not focus on “rounding up thugs, drug dealers and gang members” and holding them accountable.

Whatever you think of that framing, there is a broad coalition – from urban residents to rural gun owners – that wants violent offenders prosecuted swiftly and consistently. 

If the political energy spent crafting a new roster requirement went instead to improving prosecutions of gun-involved felonies, we might have fewer tragedies and fewer fights over what catalog page is legal this year.

That’s not a dodge. It’s a reminder that process crimes for possession and configuration too often eclipse consequences for violence itself.

Read The Fine Print, Not The Slogan

Michael Schwartz’s segment isn’t subtle. He says the quiet part out loud: if the movement could pass everything it has proposed under the “common-sense” umbrella, lawful gun ownership would be a shadow of itself – maybe gone.

Alisha Curtin and Dakota Adelphia add texture – how branding makes bans palatable, how model-by-model exclusions feel surgical but operate like amputations, how there’s always a next target after the “just this one” win.

You don’t have to share their politics to learn from their analysis. When policy is sold with soft words, read the hard lines. 

Look at the aggregate. And if defenders assure you it’s limited, ask them to quantify the limits in terms that matter: number of models affected, percentage of current sales, the real cost to compliance, the plain-English effect on a first-time buyer in a normal town.

That’s not extremism. That’s citizenship.

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