California, one of the most virulent anti-Second Amendment states, just became even less friendly to gun owners.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed six new gun control bills into law on Friday and vetoed five others that came across his desk, according to the Reason.com. These bills were introduced in response to the 2015 terrorist attacks in San Bernardino.
The new laws include nearly everything gun control advocates claim will stop gun violence:
- Require an ID and background check to purchase ammunition and create a new DOJ database of ammunition owners (SB 1235).
- Ban possession of and confiscate ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, exempting retired police, of course (SB 1446).
- Broadly defines the term “Assault Weapon,” as a “semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds,” among other things (AB 1135).
- Criminalizes the loaning of guns without background checks to close family members or other sportsmen (AB 1511)
- Makes falsely reporting a firearm as having been stolen a prohibiting offense (AB 1695).
- Bans common and constitutionally-protected firearms that have magazine locking devices (SB 880).
“My goal in signing these bills is to enhance public safety by tightening our existing laws in a responsible and focused manner, while protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” Brown wrote in a message.
The bills Brown did not sign into law include provisions to limit buying more than one firearm every 30 days, and another that made the theft of a firearm grand theft and punishable to up to 3 years.
One bill that was vetoed criminalized victims by making it a crime to not report lost or stolen guns in five days. Another sought to expand the government’s reach by allowing nearly anyone to petition the government to seize an individual’s firearms, regardless of whether a crime had been committed.
The last bill would have broadly defined firearms as “a frame or receiver blank, casting, or machined body that requires further machining or molding to be used as part of a functional weapon so long as it has been designed and is clearly identifiable as being used exclusively as part of a functional weapon.”
Do you notice a pattern here?
Regardless of Brown’s assertion that he was “protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” these laws only put needless burdens on citizens who own firearms.
The NRA-ILA rightly condemns the legislation, with their California spokesperson Amy Hunter calling the bills “Draconian,” stating that “[t]he governor and legislature exploited a terrorist attack to push these measures through even though the state’s already restrictive laws did nothing to stop the attack in San Bernardino.”
These bills, the ones that are now law and the ones that were vetoed, are everything that pro Second Amendment advocates warn about when they speak of government overreach. They are the worst kind of legislation: the kind that strips innocent people of their rights and criminalizes things like loaning your brother a rifle for a deer hunt.
But all in the name of common sense.
