Pro-gun Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) is getting set to chip away at the mountain of gun control laws and regulations that are hampering gun owners in this country.

Under current law, a person who travels to, say, a gun show out-of-state and buys a handgun from a licensed dealer must have the firearm shipped to a second gun dealer in the buyer's home state.

As gun control laws have been added piecemeal over the years, it has forced gun owners to deal with conflicting and redundant requirements. Furthermore, the interstate requirements for buying a gun have needlessly forced gun dealers to ship firearms via commercial carriers, thus subjecting them to being lost, damaged or stolen.

To counteract this, Rep. Renzi is set to introduce the Firearm Transfer Improvement Act in the next few days. Renzi says that because gun dealers must comply with the laws of two different states in addition to federal law, these regulations are both "redundant and costly." It is bad enough that the national government has created an unconstitutional federal background check system, but we still have this 1968 interstate ban left over.

"My legislation simply states that federal law and the law of the state of the seller must be complied with for all firearms sales," Renzi said. "It also applies the same rules to rifles and shotguns, which are currently handled differently than handguns."

In other words, the Renzi bill will allow you to travel out-of-state to purchase firearms in a way that you have not been able to do since 1968. Imagine that you live in Virginia and you are traveling to Missouri for Christmas. You stop at a gun show in West Virginia to buy your mom and dad a matched pair of commemorative Colt .45s.

I've been following the debate. One point always seems to go unexplained. Once some concerned police chief declares that semi-automatic rifles are dangerously easy to convert, the discussion leaps elsewhere. No details of the conversion task are forthcoming.

So I called a spokesman for Gov. Blagojevich in Chicago. Could you explain, I asked. How do you do this job anyway? Do you need a screwdriver? A power drill? How long does it take? Could the governor's office be a little more explicit about the mechanics of the threat?

I gave the helpful spokesman a day to do a little research, then called back. He told me had learned the root of the problem is the "conversion kit," something that allows you to replace a certain part in the rifle and make it a machine gun.

I see. Do you know the name of this part? He didn't. In fact, as he readily acknowledged, he knew almost nothing about guns at all. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He did tell me: "It's very easy if you follow the instructions."