Not necessarily.

But even if that were the case, just make it non-retroactive.

Other conditions aside for a moment, let’s say you want to ban all guns with polymer frames.

You could fulfill that specific condition with the provision that all poly frames currently out there are legal to own, use, and sell, but no more retail sales from manufacturers will be permitted.

Again, this is a nonsense hypothetical that wouldn’t make sense (then again lots of actual proposals aren’t much more realistic), but such a provision would ensure that everyone out there who’s already bought one of these guns wouldn’t be in a situation where they need to surrender or register their legal purchase now that it’s been illegal, or risk felony charges because they didn’t do so.

More to the point, many of these laws seem designed to create criminals where no criminals currently exist, as opposed to preventing crimes from happening.

It’s like trying to cut down on petty theft by requiring everyone to register all belongings, and then inspecting people’s homes and charging them with theft for everything in their home they didn’t register…then pointing to all those arrests as proof of the law’s success.