CA’s 14 anti-gun bills target legal gun owners

Criminals don’t register their guns with authorities. Despite this indisputable fact, the California Legislature recently passed 14 gun control bills, taking aim at citizens who legally own guns.

California lawmakers are ignoring the historic recall last week of two Colorado state legislators who backed new gun restrictions. And they are ignoring the Bill of Rights.

Second Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” says the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The gun control debate waged during the last eight months in the California Legislature has been an attack on the Second Amendment.

Democratic lawmakers claim the legislation is needed to address acts of gun violence. But who are they trying to control?

Increase in violence, or media hype?

Never letting a good crisis go to waste, California’s Democratic lawmakers reacted en masse to the Dec. 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults. By January 2013, the Legislature introduced 40 gun control bills.

But as I wrote in “Gun control laws would not make us safer,” the worst deadly massacre at a school in American history was not the Newtown shootings, or the Columbine shootings.

The worst school massacre took place before there was even a television in every home — in Michigan in 1927 when a school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary school, then blew the school up.  When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, killing more people, including himself.

While the media and politicians respond purely emotionally and opportunistically, they have ignored that these incidents are not new, and are certainly not indigenous to America.

Despite media claims that these types of mass killings are on the rise, criminologist James Allen Fox, of Boston Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, said “the random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest,” Fox said. “Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.”

Experts who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common or on the rise.

In April, the U.S. Senate killed measures to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and require background checks during the purchase of guns at gun shows or on the Internet.

Study after study has shown that between 6 percent and 10 percent or criminals are responsible for up to 70 percent of all crimes committed.

Interpretation of the second amendment varies between those who believe it protects citizens’ rights to own guns, and those who do not.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protected the individual right to keep suitable firearms at home for self-defense. This case overturned Washington D.C.’s ban on handguns.

Naming names

Listed are the lawmakers who authored the gun control bills — all Democrats:

AB 48 by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, bans ammunition and gun parts. Skinner infamously said, “bullets are the very thing making guns deadly.”

Also by Skinner, AB 1131, increases prohibition periods after credible threat of violence from 6 months to 5 years.

AB 170 by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, prohibits anyone who owns a business from getting assault weapon permits.

SB 374 by Sen. Pres. Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, bans detachable magazines in rifles.

SB 567 by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, redefines a shotguns to delete the requirement that it be fired from the shoulder.

SB 755 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, expands list of crimes resulting in ban from owning firearms.

AB 180 by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, allows the city of Oakland to pass gun control regulations.

AB 500 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, allows the Department of Justice additional time to run background checks on gun purchasers.

SB 299 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, requires gun owners to report all lost or stolen firearms.

SB 683 by Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, requires gun buyers to take a firearm safety class to earn a “safety certificate.”

SB 475 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, bans gun shows at the Cow Palace by requiring approval from San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

AB 169 by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, limits transfer of “unsafe” handguns — any pistol, revolver, or other firearm capable of being concealed, which has not been vetted by the California Department of Justice.

AB 711 by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, bans the use of lead ammunition.

AB 231 by Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, adds criminal liability for firearm storage that endangers a child.

Oppressive CA government

An oppressive government is what led to the Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights that rights are human rights endowed with by our Creator, and not rights granted by the government. The argument over the Second Amendment is not just about preserving the right to keep and bear arms; this fight is about making sure the government cannot take away citizens’ rights.

If the government can grant rights, it can also take them away. That’s what makes the liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights “unalienable.”

“All power is inherent in the people; . . . it is their right and duty to be at all times armed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, shortly before his death.

George Mason, a delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention, believed the relationship between arms and liberty was crucial, and said history had demonstrated that the most effective way to enslave a people is to disarm them.