Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in. Jerry Brown has vetoed a lot of gun control bills (and signed a few too), and it would appear that Gavin Newsom, who is planning to run for Governor, is determined to get some of these failed bills via ballot measures in 2016. The magazine confiscation measure isn’t everything. The initiatives would also mandate background checks and new licensing for buying and selling ammunition.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you they aren’t after your guns. First they came for the magazines. A ban on semi-automatic rifles entirely is coming. You can count on it. California is lost. The only thing that can save it is either Congress acting under the 14th Amendment or the Courts, and the Courts have pretty much left Heller and McDonald to the buzzards.
Still no word on Highland Park eh?
Don’t think it can never happen in your state.
Californians leave the state by the hundreds every day looking for lower costs of living, and more than enough of them bring these attitudes with them. California gun laws are a cancer that needs to be treated aggressively, or it will spread to the rest of the country, and kill the Republic.
I just took a rifle class at a school in NV that gets a lot of Cali students.
A large number of them have Stockholm Syndrome, I think. For every rabidly pro-gun 2A person that has been PO’d by the laws, there were 2-3 that were accepting enough and had been conditioned to think that their nonsense was in some way acceptable. And these are AR-15 owners who care enough to take a class.
I get that there are some truly pro-2A people escaping California. But a large number of “pro gun” Californians would be moderate or even slightly anti on the issue in other western states. And many of the “pro-2A” people have voting age family members that will move with them.
One way that can stop this is a Voting Rights Act type law to protect 2nd Amendment rights in states that are flagrant violators of civil rights. Won’t happen anytime soon without a Republican president though.
Oregon, too. They’re going to try to go full 1995-era Illinois or Washington, D.C.
Yeah, Oregon is the place to watch. Thanks for the tip.
Stay alert, but know that all kinds of bills are introduced in every legislature that have no prayer of going anywhere. Pay attention to bills that garner broad sponsorship or who get committee hearings.
“Committee hearings” is a low bar, particularly in the Senate. “Gun control” bills always go to Judiciary, and the Chairman there is a committed anti-gunner. Every “gun control” bill gets a hearing.
Sponsorship is a better indicator. We’ll see how they do. Getting rid of intra-family transfers (a key exemption in the UBC bill) and not allowing grandfathering or police exemptions for standard-capacity magazines are going to be big hurdles.
My worry is that by asking for so much, the urge will be to “compromise” and give them something, when the reality is they’re all terrible ideas, and none of them would have prevented the UCC mass murders.
Why an initiative? The Democrats have more than enough votes to pass this load of crap.
Is it because of Brown? Governor Brown has actually vetoed on rare occasions some anti-gun bills. Is the initiative to get around a Brown veto? Because these policies are too much even for Brown to swallow?
I strongly suspect an initiative like this may be too much even for deep blue California. Especially if Brown is against it.
One must remember that the popular vote in California is not as liberal as the makeup of the legislature might lead you to believe. Our districts are crammed with many residents who are ineligible to vote. It wasn’t that long ago that anti-gay marriage proposition 8 won the vote.
Until last year I lived in California, and I am familiar with 2nd Amendment issues in the state. I now live in Missouri, which is wonderfully different than California in so many ways, including gun laws.
This initiative will be an interesting test case about the 2nd Amendment climate in California. First, it will be a test of fund raising. It costs millions of dollars to get an initiative on the ballot. If Newsom can raise the money, then there is a good chance that this will get on the ballot.
Second, if it does get on the ballot, it will be a test of California state gun rights organizations. Can they rally opposition to the initiative, and will enough pro-gun people turn out to defeat it? It is really unclear just how many pro-rights people there are in the state, but there are a bunch, and they tend to highly resent the political power of the coast and Sacramento.
Most people in California do not think about guns very much, and do not shoot or own guns. These people are the ones who will be easily duped into thinking that this initiative is a “reasonable” gun control measure. If enough of these people can be convinced, then this initiative will pass.
CRPA, the FPC, and Calguns will have a huge job to defeat this initiative.
I agree. (I plan on getting out myself, sooner rather than later)
One factor that will probably help the anti-gun initiative pass, is placing it on the ballot during a presidential election year when the proportion of Democratic voters is higher than in off year elections. Proposition 8 did pass by a hairs margin during a presidential election year, but it is thought the black vote which turned out for Obama also provided the margin for the victory of 8.
Upon further reflection, I now think I know why they are using a proposition instead of the legislative process, and if I’m right then money won’t be an issue for them.
It’s because of Bloomberg. This initiative effort is probably his baby, as his mouthpiece astroturf anti-gun organizations have embraced the idea of using propositions to advance gun control at the state level. In which case all the money needed to collect signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot, along with the expensive state-wide advertising to pass the initiative will come out of his pocket.
When cases like this come down the pike, I can’t help but have this statement echo in my head:
“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.”
Except that, at least some of the time, it seems that the courts are gleefully going along with the trampling of our rights, in concert with the Legislature and the Executive. (And gun rights aren’t the only issue that is making me worried…)
I do not like the look of this forest that this road is taking us into. Can we please turn back? Please?