One Hundred Days Remain for California RKBA Petition Drive

The Unofficial California RKBA Petition Web Site ^

[William Tell]

Seventy-eight listed volunteers are leading the state-wide effort to gather signatures in 31 of the most populous counties in California to put the right to keep and bear arms into the California Constitution. The current volunteers are listed on the volunteers web site, rkba.members.sonic.net. These 72 volunteers are collecting signatures state-wide to qualify the initiative.

Petition form files are available at the main web site of The Alliance for Civil Rights or on the back up server at www.reformcagunlaws.com.

Volunteers are requested to send their contact information to Dave at rkba@sonic.net.

Volunteers have stepped forward in the five critical counties previously identified, leaving only two counties with populations exceeding 200,000 without volunteers. Those two counties are Tulare and Stanislaus. Over one and one-quarter million people live in those two counties, making them the two counties now on our "critical" list. Counties with volunteers now account for 94% of California's population. Please spread the word to people you know in Tulare and Stanislaus counties that their help is needed now.

Twenty-five much more sparsely populated counties also require volunteers. These counties contain four percent of the state's population and could be expected to generate over twenty thousand of the required signatures.

This proposed Initiative Constitutional Amendment will prohibit government infringement of the right of Californians to keep and bear arms. The initiative is carefully crafted to instruct the courts to treat the right to keep and bear arms in the same protective fashion that currently applies to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The proposition reads as follows:

---

The inalienable right to defend life and liberty as set forth in Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution includes the fundamental right of each person to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family and home. This right shall not be infringed.

1. All State government action regulating the right of law-abiding persons to acquire and possess arms for the defense of self, family and home shall be subject to strict scrutiny, in the same respect as the freedoms of speech and of the press. All county, city and local government action on this subject is preempted by state law and this Amendment.

2. This Amendment does not limit the State from regulating the acquisition and possession of arms by: felons, minors, the mentally incompetent, and any person subject to restraining orders based upon their own violent conduct.

---

Signatures must be gathered from approximately 800,000 registered voters by April 15, 2006 in order to qualify the measure for a place on the November, 2006 general election ballot.

[William Tell]

As indicated in yellow on the map below, activities have begun in 31 of the largest California counties to get the word out regarding the upcoming petition drive, to recruit volunteers to gather signatures, and to distribute petition forms. Those 31 counties contain 94% of the California population.

The map indicates in red and gray the counties where volunteers have yet to be identified.

Volunteers are urgently needed in Stanislaus and Tulare counties. Volunteers are requested to contact Dave at rkba@sonic.net to be added to the list. Only then can coordinated county level activities begin.

Volunteer if you can, no matter how limited your time or abilities, or pass the word to people you know in Stanislaus or Tulare counties or the many less populated counties with no volunteers.

If volunteers are already listed for your county, contact them now to offer whatever help you can.

[Scribbz]

how many signatures do we have at this time?

[William Tell]

Scribbz asks: "How many signatures do we have at this time?"

We won't have any kind of official count for at least several weeks. (That's because Dave hasn't yet created or carried out the counting process yet.)

All of the petitions are to be mailed to a central location in San Jose, where they will be counted, sorted by county, and prepared for submission to each county Registrar of Voters.

I would hope that the number is somewhere between twenty to thirty thousand. I know that the gun show in San Diego generated about 750 signatures and the gun show in San Jose about 460. I'll be making my second mailing myself in a couple of days.

I am less concerned by the actual number submitted so far, and more concerned with whether the submissions are coming from all the counties where we have volunteers. It takes time to visit these gun businesses and set them up with materials. It takes encouragement to get them to actually collect the signatures.

Keep in mind that we expect an exponential growth in numbers of signatures gathered. The rate at which signatures are being gathered on the last day of the drive will be the chief determiner of our success. We need to ramp up collection activities such that the rate of signature gathering in one hundred days is at the level of approximately 12 thousand per day. For a county like mine, with about half a million people, that would translate into about 200 signatures per day.

[William Tell]

Scribbz asked: "How many signatures do we have at this time?"

I should have turned the question around.

How many signatures have you gathered? Are you one of the 78 listed county volunteers? If not, and you would be willing to volunteer, contact Dave at rkba@sonic.net.

If your county has volunteers, contact them to offer help and to get copies of the petition. Get your family and friends to sign. Locate a nearby gun business and supply them with petitions. Find a friend who belongs to a gun organization and ask that friend to get the members to sign and also ask to have the members get their families and friends to sign.

The "product" we are attempting to produce is just a signature of a willing voter. The challenge is that we must do this simple task over half a million times. From each of these voters we require just half a minute of time. But that is an expenditure of many months of effort using a less than perfectly efficient process.

[William Tell]

Calling California Freepers. If you live in Tulare or Stanislaus County, we need you to volunteer. If you know people in those counties, please ask them to volunteer.

And regardless of where in California you live, more volunteers are needed in every county. We have just a hundred days to get this job done.

To volunteer, contact Dave at rkba@sonic.net.

[tame]

bump

[djreece]

BTTT

[editor-surveyor]

"Calling California Freepers. If you live in Tulare or Stanislaus County, we need you to volunteer. If you know people in those counties, please ask them to volunteer."

Diver Dave, aren't you in Stanislaus county?

[Scribbz]

just got back.

to answer your question i have gathered zero

i could sign my whole family though!

i will be emailing dave asap

i'm in San Diego by the way

[Beachcomber]

how's it going, now?

[William Tell]

Not well. Due to insufficient participation, the effort
is being shut down early. We will want to get a faster start next time. It just seems like the volunteers never recovered from the holidays.