This is Why Registering Your Guns is a Bad Idea

California man ends up charged with multiple felonies after trying to register his guns. He failed to understand that this is not about putting criminals in jail. This is about putting _you_ in jail. He played their game and they screwed him. Don’t play their game.

California man tries to comply with California’s new and improved assault weapons ban, and ends up with a rash of felony charges when authorities start looking at the pictures. It’s going to be better to fly under the radar in California. I would not register anything without talking to an attorney first. I’d note that this is not one of California’s densely populated counties: if it can happen to a guy in Kern County for trying to do what they tell you is the right thing, it can happen to anyone.

Remember, they want you in prison. That’s the goal. This has nothing to do with putting criminals in jail. This has to do with putting you in jail. You’re far better off not playing this game. I know people get tired of gun owners getting told to move, but it’s really the thing to do. Go somewhere your vote matters and continue the fight. Nevada needs you. I’d say the same thing to New Jersey gun owners: Pennsylvania needs you. We need people to offset the tax refugees who will come here and keep voting for the same kinds of assholes that ruined New Jersey and California in the first place.

36 thoughts on “This is Why Registering Your Guns is a Bad Idea”

  1. My problem is, I *like* living in NJ, and while I’m passionate about gun rights, I’m not terribly interested in being a gun owner.

    1. Aren’t you excited for the upcoming Tax Hikes in the Garden State?

      By 2021, Phil Murphy and his Democrat Lackeys in Trenton will be robbing you Jersey Folk of the last tooth in your mouth.

      1. And you get your Obamacare tax back! As if anyone needed any more reasons to leave NJ…

    2. “I’m not terribly interested in being a gun owner”.

      With thinking like that your wish will come true. If I was from PA I wouldn’t want you even near my state. People who live in shit hole states should stay there. It’s a sad commentary that the people who live in the original 13 colonies now are mainly a bunch of modern day Torrie’s, screwed out of their rights and their money with nary a whimper.

      1. “If I was from PA I wouldn’t want you even near my state.”

        I would.

        My casual observations (unrecorded, so not translatable to statistics) have been that non-gun-owning, non-hobbyist supporters of gun rights are far more principled about it than people who are merely pursuing their own self-interests. Hobbyists in particular are most adept at crafting excuses for why limiting (or even abandoning) someone elses rights is justified, as long as their own convenience is served.

        And for the record, I’m a gun owner who lost count of how many guns I own, long ago.

      2. Gee, thanks. I invite you to read my commenting and posting history here to find out how dedicated I am towards firearms rights. And I am a firearms owner, in one of the most hostile states I could be a firearms owner in. But I was passionate about the 2A before I bought my first gun, and I haven’t been moved to buy many more.

        I’m staying in NJ and fighting for my 2A rights, but it’s not because guns are my hobby.

        1. Good for you. I’m glad to have you on our side, and you should be able to choose whatever you want with your own life.

        2. That is great, Ian, but for many of us guns are _not_ a “hobby”. They are a right we refuse to give up, one that we know will mean that when that line in the sand (which differs from person to person) is crossed we will be able to do as the Founding Fathers did – reject tyranny, and fight for liberty.

          The Second Amendment was never about hunting, to put food on the table or otherwise. It was not even about defense of self or family. It was written to tell government that we will remain armed so that we can revolt when the abuses are no longer tolerable. Yes, we tolerate a large number of infringements already, but registration – which always leads to confiscation – will not be accepted.

          I am a Life Member of Gun Owners of America, and a former member of the NRA until I discovered that the NRA helped write every major piece of gun control. The NRA has a very long history of compromising your rights away in order to be seen as “reasonable”, “willing to compromise”. It started even before they helped write the NFA (National Firearms Act) in 1934, included the GCA in 1968 and the Lautenberg Amendment, and continues to this day. They even bragged about it in the August 1968 American Rifleman. So I quit after twenty years as a member.

          I also quit my JPFO membership when Aaron Zelman of JPFO passed away and the remaining owners struck a secret deal selling out to the Second Amendment Foundation without notifying the members that it was happening).

          I don’t disrespect those for whom gun ownership is a hobby (like collectors), but I hold more respect for those who understand and support what is codified in the Second Amendment, whether they own guns or not.

          1. Have you not been reading a single thing I’ve been typing? Before and after I bought my guns, I’ve been a passionate supporter of firearms rights.

    3. I was born and raised in NJ, but I liked my guns and hunting, so seeing the way the state was getting worse by the year (this was in the 80) I got out ASAP. Took me til 1990 to get it done but I moved my family to PA and have never wanted to go back.
      I do visit occasionally to see old friends and family but feels about the same as walking into a prison crossing the bridge.
      Also note, they let you into NJ across the bridge for free, but you got to pay to get back out.
      This should tell ya all you need to know about NJ…..

  2. This literally reminds me of the posters that Nazis would put up in Germany for Jews, and later in France for Frenchmen, telling them that they had 24 hours to submit their arms, or they would be subject to arrest.

    The funny thing about these posters: they never had a date for when those 24 hours are up. So you could literally show up an hour after the poster was put up, and the police could *still* arrest you for having not turned in your guns in a reasonable amount of time.

    1. From my understanding, they barely had a 50% compliance rate even with that.

  3. “I’d say the same thing to New Jersey gun owners: Pennsylvania needs you.”

    I’d say that guardedly, if I were you. This is probably a kind of PA chauvinism, but NJ residents have always seemed collectively statist to me, and much older relatives told me that dates back to the beginning of the last century, at least. I think evidence can be found of it in history dating back to the founding, if not earlier.

    Just because gun-owning statists can identify the personal difficulties for them, with their one issue, doesn’t mean they’ll see it for any other, and we have plenty of right-leaning statists in PA already. In fact, if we could work out some sort of exchange program with NJ, it might be of mutual benefit.

  4. They don’t want you in prison. That’s not there goal just a stepping stone what they really want: you to die. They want you dead. They want me dead. They want ALL gun owners dead. And they want the government to do it.

    1. You forgot your pets. They want them dead too. They also want to burn your home to the ground, and go back and find where all your ancestors lived, and burn their homes too.

      1. Yes, “sippenhaft” includes your pets, as well as your family. And the Left is indeed insane in the steps they will take. Just like when the dug up Oliver Cromwell’s body so they could remove his head, _after_ he had died and been buried. (Yes, monarchists reside on the Left, too. Just look at Britain today.)

  5. I know people get tired of gun owners getting told to move, but it’s really the thing to do. Go somewhere your vote matters and continue the fight.

    Me and HappyWarrior6 had a spirited debate that.

    My question to him: when would you leave PA if it got bad?

    His answer: never.

    My answer: when fighting seemed like a lost cause.

  6. I endorse this. Nevada really does need you. I will be as welcoming as I can be to gun refugees from CA. They will likely be tax refugees too though the opposite may not be true.

  7. “Kirschenmann is out on $150,000 bail, accused of 12 felonies for possessing assault rifles, silencers and a multi-burst trigger activator. ”

    I wonder which of those are actually accurate, if any?

    (Did he foolishly have non-CA-legal ARs and not even know?

    “Illegally modified” in the writeup [deep link via above to the original story] is pretty vague, but … I see vertical foregrips in the picture.

    Those have been illegal in California on a semi-auto with a removable magazine since 1999.

    Or on a semi-auto with a fixed magazine over ten rounds, which his appear to be.

    Thus I suspect his perfectly ordinary AR and AK pattern rifles probably are illegal “assault rifles” under CA law and have been since 1999 and he never noticed?)

    1. I haven’t been obsessively following the case, but… it’s complicated. And he got caught in the ridiculous minutia of multiple State laws.

      My limited understanding is, he was a resident of multiple States including Commiefornia. He had various legally registered items, including 1999 era CA AW, including ATF registered silencers. When he tried to register some bullet-button guns as required by the latest expansion of the CA AW ban, the photograph he is required to use for registration caught the eye of the California DOJ. And when the DOJ sent gun cops to investigate his “inappropriate” AW they stumbled upon the silencers while they were at it. There is no legal silencer ownership in Commiefornia.

      This whole story is a warning: that no matter how conscientious you are to abide by gun-control laws, odds are you will still trip up over those arcane and arbitrary rules and you will end up in jail!

      1. That honestly leaves me less sympathetic to this specific person, while I remain sympathetic to the general case of “CA laws make no sense and are hard for normies to follow even when they try”.

        Because you don’t get NFA tax stamps without figuring out that you can’t fool around with them, and that State regulations vary and need to be checked.

        (And you don’t “register the bullet button ones” without having to know that “the non bullet button ones” aren’t kosher in CA – that’s the entire point of bullet buttons, after all.

        At least, I don’t see how you can manage it, especially if you managed to navigate the suppressor registration and tax stamp situations.)

          1. Exactly, Mike. A real conservative, and Second Amendment supporter, would never say an Anerican citizen “deserved it” even if he was knowingly violating a dozen Federal and/or state laws. I am guessing that Sigivald doesn’t believe in G-d-given, or natural, rights. If the government hasn’t given him permission – along with a permission slip – then he believes it is wrong. Which would mean he either doesn’t understand the Constitution, or doesn’t believe in it. Just as Ruth Bader Ginsberg doesn’t.

        1. He had to have gotten the silencers before moving to CA; otherwise no CLEO signoff.

          Maybe he got his firearms law advice off the internet…

  8. Kern County, California……One of the few remaining Republican Strongholds in the Golden State. This goes to show you that you CAN NOT trust LEO’s to engage in “Irish Democracy” on the Firearms Issue and be as “pro-gun” as you are.

    California Gun Control Laws are at the point where they are specifically designed to instigate conflict between the Police and Firearms Owners in that State…..All. By. Design…….Courtesy of the California Democrat Party.

    1. Siskiyou County was a very conservative county when I lived there (1987 to 1995), and is probably still so. I think it was a year or two back when the Sheriff of Siskiyou County stated – in public – that he would not enforce any new state or Federal gun laws. I don’t remember the Sheriff of Kern County ever being so bold.

  9. This won’t end or even slow down until people start decorating the trees and overpasses with the body’s of communist and anti-gun vermin. Kill a few million of these scum and this crap will slow down for a while. Its past time to water the tree.

  10. We left California five years ago. It was one of the best decisions We’ve made. Unless you are caring for a sick relative, there is realistically not a damn thing keeping you in California or any of the enemy states. Find a place, make a plan, and do it.

    Gun rights aside, the low crime, low cost of living and general quality of life are worth it alone. You will return to visit and and say “How did I ever put up with this shit?”

    There are only a few down sides; you will be resigned to mediocre sushi, dismal Chinese, and barely acceptable Mexican (unless you move to Arizona, and let’s face it, there isn’t any good Mexican food North of Santa Barbara anyhow.)

    1. Sprocket, I live in Southwestern Montana now. A bit south of me, in Gibbonsville, Idaho, there is a small resort called “Broken Arrow” that serves excellent Mexican food, equally as good as what I used to get in Old Town in San Diego, when I was a police officer there, many years ago. My wife and I ate at the Broken Arrow just a week ago for the first time, but it won’t be the last. Their homemade tortilla chips are absolutely delicious, too.

    2. Me and Mrs. BC are biding our time in the Bay Area while planning a move to Utah or North Carolina. I’m an engineering manager in a late-stage startup; I’m waiting for a liquidity event, and then we’re out of here.

  11. So they are harassing a peaceful citizen who has lots of money to fight the state. Let him (and anyone else left who is serious in CA about defending liberty) fight. It sucks he has to pay to fight for his rights. This is generally the kind of fight that pays dividends.

    I also think we need a strategy to deal with this from the civil disobedience standpoint. When a sizable majority in society believes that they won’t live under tyrranical laws (whether guns or war on drugs), it’s go time as far as I’m concerned.

    1. Civil disobedience? Oh, I got one better. You know the old Alinsky trope of “make them live by their own rules?” Anti-gunners could be ratted out for violation of gun-control laws.

      Plenty of gun-banners who live in Commiefornia own guns. Yes, that is hypocritical, but it provides opportunity. Commiefornia truly is another country when it comes to laws, and we should force the enemy to live by their own gun-control.

      For example, Bill Maher is probably a prohibited person who owns guns. It wouldn’t surprise me if the husband of Alyssa Milano falls into the same category.

      Even police in Commiefornia may be vulnerable to gun-control laws (plenty of high ranking cops here, publicly support gun-control). For example, did you know that the standard flash-suppressor (M16 through M16a2 types) on an AR-15 is technically a Commiefornia illegal “grenade launcher”? If any of those cops privately own an AR at home, oops! Felony crime!

  12. In late 2010 I lost a job I’d had for a decade in my home state of NJ and moved to north TX for economic opportunity. Eight years on, TX has been very good to me economically and spiritually with abundant, high paying jobs, low cost of living, no state income tax and far fewer infringements on Rights. I don’t miss the northeast and will never voluntarily live there again missing only my parents and a couple lifelong friends. While I moved for the money, and stay for it, the Rights have grown in importance as I carry, hunt hogs with friends, attend classes and enjoy living in America. In Spring of 2019 I will semi-retire and move again, hopefully to UT, NV, WY, MT; somewhere open and free. Never again a subject!

  13. It depends, the government wants to better control everything, but the people don’t hope to give the control for personal items like guns.

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