Posted on 12/23/2012 2:51:37 PM PST by neverdem
Golden State legislators join the gun control chorus in the wake of Sandy Hook.
It took only days before California’s lefty legislators reacted to the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy with a fusillade of bills designed to take California closer to Democratic leaders’ unstated but obvious goal: making it essentially illegal for citizens to own firearms in California.
I write “essentially” because the strategy isn’t to ban guns outright, but to mire ownership in so many layers of regulation that owning a gun becomes even more frustrating and costly than operating a business in this state. Legislators aren’t stupid. Direct assaults on gun ownership generate pushback, but killing this right through a thousand cuts works fine.
California already has the toughest gun regulations in America, yet legislators (including a numbskull Republican) have introduced a long list of new proposals at press conferences where they used the Connecticut tragedy to grandstand.
“They were mowed down,” said Los Angeles Democratic Sen. Kevin de Leon. “I think that viscerally it will give a lot of political officials around the country the political courage to do the right thing.” But it’s not clear what de Leon means by the right thing. California has passed 45 gun-control laws in the last 23 years. (Liberal Connecticut has tough gun laws, too.)
California has long waiting periods, background-check requirements, limits on the number of gun purchases, bans on gun sales to people with mental illnesses and felony convictions, bans on high-capacity magazines, and on concealed carry. The governor recently signed a law banning the open carrying of unloaded long guns. The list goes on. That’s in addition to myriad federal restrictions.
If you think we’re safe from gun violence because of all those rules, check out the murder rates in Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Bernardino.
Now de Leon is targeting ammunition. “We don’t think about the fuel that feeds the violence, and that’s ammunition. If you want to fish, you have to secure a license to fish. If you want to cut down a Christmas tree in California—this is legally factual—you have to secure a permit at a cost of $10. Yet anyone who walks into any gun store in California can buy all the ammunition they want.”
That statement is more of an indictment of the kind of society we’ve become—so regulated and taxed that one isn’t allowed to cut down a Christmas tree without getting government permission—than about firearms. But I digress.
Like everyone, I’m still shaken by the school-shooting. I’m all ears when it comes to finding real solutions to violence, but am tired of cheap, predictable attempts to turn tragedy into another assault on our liberties and wallets.
After this week’s legislative frenzy, I headed to one of the largest Sacramento-area gun dealerships to purchase that 12-gauge shotgun I’ve been considering only to find the shelves virtually bare. The Daily Beast reports on a similar situation throughout the country.
Americans realize that an assault on private gun ownership is coming and it’s best buying a weapon now while they still are available at a store rather than only on the black market.
Perhaps de Leon and others might ask constituents why they would want a gun. This morning, my wife handed me the local newspaper with a story about three men who were arrested for murdering one of my neighbors in October during a robbery. Is it unreasonable to want the wherewithal to defend one’s family? The cocking of the shotgun—the international sound of “you’re not welcome here”—would be all it takes to dissuade most intruders.
Gun-control advocates are utopians. Their perspective is that if guns no longer are readily available, that violence will evaporate. But there are so many guns in circulation it would take decades to reduce their availability—unless legislators adopt the police-state policy of sending cops door-to-door to confiscate them. Even then, there would be black markets and other methods for evil folks to commit mayhem (bombs, knives).
It’s better to let people arm themselves. An operator of a private school told me that California’s 1995 Gun-Free School Zone Act banning guns within 1,000 feet of schools is making it difficult to hire an armed security guard.
There’s a reason criminals are more likely to ply their trade in “gun free” zones than in heavily armed neighborhoods. There’s no better check on a diabolical gun owner than decent gun owners. I personally don’t like guns and wish everyone were peaceful and kind, but it’s better to be realistic than to pursue a fantasy world.
Gun-control laws exempt groups of government officials. Anyone who believes working for the government relieves people of the tendency to do bad things has never heard the phrase “going Postal.” There are endless stories of authorities misusing their firearms on- and off-duty, which is a reminder of the main reason the founders gave gun ownership the second spot in the Bill of Rights.
Californians crazy enough to believe these new proposed laws will make them safer ought to be happy. The rest of us should find a well-stocked gun store as soon as possible.
Only one on the streets with guns are the crips bloods ms13 and a slue of other gangs with easy pickins. The politicians are disarming the public!
Only one on the streets with guns are the crips bloods ms13 and a slue of other gangs with easy pickins. The politicians are disarming the public!
So, what will be a legal way to get a shotgun from Point A to Point B? If concealed carry is generally illegal, and open carry of a long gun is illegal, what does that leave? Turning it in? -- is that what this bozo lawmaker is gently and coyly suggesting?
On the other hand, maybe they intend to leave Ahnuld-style trenchcoat-concealed carry of shotguns legal, like the opening scene from Kindergarten Cop. If you've got a couple of cool underarm sling rigs to carry your short 12-gauges around, you're legal-beagle.
</sarc>
But there are so many guns in circulation it would take decades to reduce their availability—unless legislators adopt the police-state policy of sending cops door-to-door to confiscate them. Even then, there would be black markets and other methods for evil folks to commit mayhem (bombs, knives).
Fifteen years ago, as the vast civil wars in Africa slackened momentarily, the price of a high-mileage, fully-automatic AK-47 fell to about $10. The price of a fully-automatic weapon Stateside was about $1500-4000 at the same time. A shady brigade of smugglers and profiteers stand ready to arbitrage price spreads like that.
And how long will it be before new Venezuelan-production AK-103's begin to make their way from Chavez's militia armories to El Norte?
These liberal politicians are living in Loon-Land.
Good point. Stalin was preparing a pogrom of Jews of his own, when (supposedly) his Jewish doctors got him first.
Stalin's plan for life was relatively simple: Kill your way to the top, then keep killing people to stay there. He was like that cartoon-character "Vigo" from Ghostbusters II: "Atop a mountain of skulls, I ruled from a throne of blood!!"
Hollywood lampooned power-mad personalities, diseased dominative types, with that film -- but nowadays they enable people like that, by dumping on their neighbors' right to arm and defend themselves against diseased personalities.
Most, if not all, the Sandy Hook school children who were lost, would instead be alive right now in their parents' arms, if enough personnel at the school on December 14th, had been armed and well trained for the common defense of the school.
No gun law would have stopped the perp, and certainly no gun law would have stopped, nor will it stop, an attack by Islamic jihad.
The fact is, that the people who should be armed and well trained, in and around schools as members of the administration and teachers, instead chose to be disarmed as and playing a game of political "magical thinking" that they preach will make people safe under a police state.
The adults who should be armed and ready to stop the bad guy(s), instead are selfishly interested in asserting their political ambition to create that police state; and it is very unfortunate, that in addition as teachers, they purposefully are not relating to whom they are preaching, the long and terrible history of oppression - what life is like, and what death is like - living in a police state.
The short of it is, that leftists and liberals do not want to be held accountable for their failure to defend, so they insist that other people also be disarmed, in order to hide amongst greater numbers ... rather than stand out as cowards, who are afraid of the light, and seek to compromise the souls around them.
They are as the kapos who betrayed their neighbors to the German police state, and other "kapos" who betrayed their neighbors to the Russian communist police state, and other "kapos" who betrayed their neighbors to the Red Chinese police state.
Here in the United States, it is tough for we who are free for the moment, to now find so many leftists and liberals hell bent on re-creating a nationalizing socialist police state --- the very instrument of government that has killed 10's - make that 100's - of thousands of young children of early school age, and those numbers of tragic deaths occurred repeatedly, in *repeated* episodes throughout the 20th century: Armenia, Russia, Germany, Red China.
Against which forms of tyranny and government abuses, our fathers and mothers fought.
Here, we have the so-called "individualists" of the 1960's and 1970's who were ostensibly against 'the police state' ... but they are now lustily promoting a police state!
Worse now, is having to feel the painful grief, sometimes outwardly showing on the countenances. of free Americans who *do remember well, World War II,* but who must now suffer the near-criminally negligent "intellectual-isms" by the left in American, hammering away at the Jewish state of Israel.
Sadly, there will not be much left of a *free Israel* with whatever the next theft is from our Bill of Rights, stolen by leftists, foreign and domestic, and tragically by those who are Jewish - that is just incredible - for them to know better but refuse to acknowledge
That the holocaust against Jews and non-Jews before and during WW-II, was the creation of a nationalizing socialist police state.
It did not matter, that the police state was German.
It did not matter, that the police state waved black, white, and red flags.
It did not matter, that the police state wore jack boots.
What mattered, was that the source of power over life and death and more, was *in the hands of a police state.*
Against which, our parents fought.
Our parents, who have been the subject of ridicule and political accusations hurled from the leftists for decades.
The leftists / liberals / progressives and particularly the Jews in the United States, should be ashamed of their disgraceful rejection of freedom, and their disgraceful rejection of *the opportunity of freedom,* as they now advocate yet another police state!
An ordinary brick of .22LR contains 500.
Not being a gun owner, I would not necessarily be aware of that. However, I’d still be willing to sneakily buy them as I was able.
How will you protect yourself against an armed predator?
I almost wish the lefties that have taken over the entire government of California would go ahead and ban weapons. It’s a big state to lose, but it would be great for the nation to see how disastrous and useless the left’s “solutions” are.
I don’t fish, but it still amazes and disgusts me that if I want, I can’t grab some string, and a hook, and a stick, and a worm, and throw it in a river, without risking getting a ticket.
Like it’s MY fault that the fish eats the worm and gets stuck on a hook.
So many damn laws against gun ownership in California. But people still own and carry them, despite it being illegal. On numerous occasions in and around San Francisco I've encountered them. I've had guns pulled on me and stuck in my face. I have friends who have them in their cars, in the glovebox or under the seat. I have seen them in co-workers desk drawers. Co-workers have pulled them from their purses to show me. Oh, none of them have permits (near impossible to obtain). With the exception of a couple punks, these are all good honest working people. The criminals carry far more guns. If good people are totally disarmed, criminals will be having a good day.
Keep your running shoes handy. You'll be needing them.
I’m Canadian. It’s somewhat difficult acquire a gun, if I wanted one.
That's a real point. Those guys came loaded for war at Beslan, with fully-automatic weapons, grenades, and a lot of high explosives, det cord, and even, iirc, claymore mines. It would take a militia or a military force, armed with timely intelligence, to stop them short of their objective. Intel would be critical, since the Beslan attackers approached by stealth in a built-up area.
One of the first crises our political system would face in such a confrontation would be, who has the authority, and would that authority see his way clear, to invoke posse comitatus and mobilize the Militia or federal forces.
Interesting problem. I wouldn't want to stand on formality, if the SHTF, and deny you your human right to defend yourself; but your approach would have to be indirect and very discreet. Possibly involving an anonymous neighbor who's a citizen and a street-person drifter/wino/hobo as a cutout, who could provide a signature on a bill of (private) sale. You'd have to stash the weapon(s) discreetly someplace that would be unlikely to be searched in a general confiscation such as Andrew Cuomo is trial-ballooning on another FR thread, and such as you know Barack Obama wants and needs to accomplish if he's to take down the 25th Amendment and embark on an unconstitutional third term.
I wish they'd go ahead and launch a coup d'etat and just declare their Paris Commune "experiment in more human government", so we could get on with the teachable horror show.
That's a hell of a thing to wish on California FReepers and JR, but somehow I think they'd manage to come through it okay .... and all the mushheads out there would get a very valuable education.
And I think that in the "recovery" of public order, about 2,000,000 Mexican nationals would be leaving -- voluntarily or not.
Hell, we ought to go ahead and take Baja just as "just compensation" for the grief and b.s. the Mexican intellectuals in Mexico City have foisted on us over the last 40 years with their decidedly unfriendly "reconquista" policy, and fomenting groups like La Raza, MeCha, and NALEO.
What?! I’m a Texan who moved here for biz 10 months ago, am done with that, and am leaving the pit.
GTH.
“California Lawmakers Aim to Restrict Gun Rights”
Should Read:
“CAlifornia Lawmakers Aim to Amend The Constitution”
IMHO
You had to came here to make money, but it sucks, as your commenting on a CA site... Oh yeah.
bttt
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