If you have to ask, probably banned

Guns are once again being targeted by California lawmakers this year, though the pace of anti-weapons legislation, seemingly on automatic for decades, has ebbed.

In previous sessions, you could scan for bills and come up with at least 100 that mentioned the word “weapon.” A search today yields 33 such bills, though the number could grow by the end of session in the fall.

Last week, a measure advanced that would bar concealed weapon permit holders from bringing their firearms to school and college campuses without permission from the school. The bill moved through a bipartisan Senate committee and on to the state Assembly.

Current law allows properly licensed individuals to carry in those places.

Other bills regarding weapons include:

• State lawmakers have tried to make sure BB and pellet guns are colorful enough for cops to discern them from the real deal.
• Under another measure, criminals convicted of firearms-related misdemeanors would be unable to possess or purchase a gun within 10 years of their conviction.
• A registered gun owner’s home address would be protected from public disclosure under Assembly Bill 1154.
• Another bill would reduce the fee for weapons licensure for members of the Armed Forces from $40 to $25.

Meanwhile, the courts are sorting out lingering issues from earlier legislation.

Those include a challenge to a requirement that gun owners in San Francisco keep their firearms stowed in a lock box in their homes, or disable them with a trigger lock, unless they’re physically carrying them. The U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled last week to consider a review of a lower court ruling against the plaintiffs, who sought to repeal the policy.

And of course there’s the “smart gun” bill from 2013, which would require owner-specific, microstamping technology on guns so that only the owner of the weapon could fire it. The requirement is on hold pending the outcome of a federal lawsuit from a gun rights group. The state prevailed in the lower courts, and the case is now on appeal.

California has some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, requiring background checks on all gun sales and banning a growing list of assault weapons — an issue explored in detail recently by the pro-gun rights site guns.com.

In recent years, crime in the Golden State has fallen while gun sales have exploded.

Sales more than doubled between 2008 and 2014, from 425,244 in 2008 to 931,037 last year, according to data collected by the state. Handgun sales went from 208,312 in 2008 to 512,174 in 2014.

[Related: Banned guns not the ones used in crimes]

Regardless, some could say the state’s firearms policies are working.

A report by the state’s Department of Justice noted that from 2012 to 2013, “every violent and property offense category decreased in number and rate per 100,000 population.”

According to the report, the violent crime rate fell, and the homicide rate, after climbing 4.2 percent in 2012, dropped 8 percent in 2013 to 4.6 murders per 100,000 people.

The crime rate has dropped before, as in 2010 when the statistics were trotted out and Gov. Brown said that “crime remains a serious problem in California, and law enforcement officials at every level must redouble their efforts to ensure public safety.” Even back in 2006, the state had relatively low levels of crime, ranking 14th in the U.S. for violent crimes.

Some have pointed to the firearm prohibition laws as the reason for the drop.

“At a domestic level, California is a prime example of legal reform curbing gun violence,” wrote Isaac Saidel-Goley in a report in February at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy’s Harvard chapter. “Over the past 20 years, California – along with a few other states, including Massachusetts and New York – has pioneered the domestic implementation of gun control by passing laws enacting widespread firearm regulation, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, prohibiting individuals from openly carrying firearms in public, prohibiting domestic violence abusers from acquiring firearms, and establishing numerous firearm safety standards.

“These gun control laws have achieved remarkable success in preventing gun violence.”

Gun advocates, however, credit the increase in weapons purchased, a theory advanced in the 1998 book by academic John Lott, More Guns, Less Crime.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

By Katy Grimes

Touting “community values” and the need to reduce crime, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, wants the Crossroads of the West gun show tossed out of the Cow Palace in South San Francisco.

But a closer look at the issues suggests that Leno’s “values” might not reflect the larger community and shows little substance to the claim that crime is linked to the gun show. Instead, the real goal appears to be to give Leno and other San Francisco Democrats a chance to demonstrate their hatred for gun rights by running one of the last remaining legal gun venues out of town.

Leno’s SB 475 would ban the gun show. If the measure passed and Gov. Jerry Brown were willing to sign it, the Legislature would be able to intervene because the Cow Palace is owned by the state and managed by the Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Fairs and Expositions.

Such a ban would be against the state’s financial interests. According to the Department of Finance, the Crossroads of the West gun show brings in $150,000 to $180,000 in rent every year for the Cow Palace, in addition to the state and local tax revenue the event generates.

Leno’s claims undercut — and mocked — in testimony

On Wednesday, SB 475 was heard by the Assembly Appropriations Committee in an often-testy hearing. Leno once again declared that the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want the gun shows. Here is the succinct version of his argument from his website:

“For years, residents, community organizations and elected leaders from the neighborhoods surrounding Cow Palace have asked to have a voice in the decision to hold gun shows in their backyards, but they have been ignored. Meanwhile, firearms related crimes persist in these communities, tearing apart the lives of innocent families who reside in the surrounding area. We must give local communities a say in determining whether they want gun shows in their neighborhoods, especially when they live in daily fear of gun violence.”

The Cow Palace is located in Bayview-Hunters Point, which has been overrun with gangs and drugs since the 1970s, and has a high rate of murder, violent crime and poverty. Though it has only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population, the area has 40 percent of San Francisco’s homicides, according to Leno.

Yet as testimony showed, the high murder rate has never been tied to gun sales at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show. In fact, there have been no reported incidents involving gun violence at the gun show.

And the idea that the Cow Palace’s booking decisions should reflect “community values” triggered joking and barbs at the hearing, given that Leno is mum about the annual Erotic Exotic Ball and the Cannabis Festival, also held annually at the venue.

Ban would create huge headaches for gun owners

John Lovell, representing the California Police Chiefs Association, said banning the Crossroads of the West gun show from the Cow Palace would send anyone wanting to buy or sell a gun to “Nevada,” since there’s nowhere else in San Francisco left to make a gun transfer.

Lovell said California has the strictest and safest gun-show laws in the country. “The Cow Palace gun show has as much to do with gun violence as the Exotic Erotic Ball has to do with marriage infidelity,” Lovell said.

“You want to limit choices to consumers,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, to Leno. Donnelly pointed out people pay to get into the gun show at the Cow Palace and wait in line for two hours.

“Obviously there is a demand for this,” Donnelly said. “No one is holding a gun to their heads to go to the gun show.”

“You want it in your front yard? I’ll support that,” Leno retorted. “The community doesn’t want it. I represent the values of the neighborhood.”

“How do you know the community doesn’t want it, with a two-hour line?” Donnelly asked.

Leno said the parents of a nearby middle school signed a petition.

“The police chiefs pointed out the Erotic Exotic Ball,” Donnelly said, noting the irony of Leno worrying about the interests of a nearby school only when guns were involved.

“Neighbors care so much about this,” Leno added. “They just don’t want it in their front yard.”

But Leno never made a connection between the gun show and violent crime in the area.

An ongoing crusade by anti-gun San Francisco pols

Leno’s crusade is nothing new. For a decade, Leno has wanted to boot the gun show out of the Cow Palace, including twice before offering bills to that end that failed to win passage. The measures were identical to legislation by former state Sen. Jackie Speier, a Democratic lawmaker from Hillsborough. Speier’s bill was introduced in 2004 but failed to get through the Assembly.

Speier, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-District Attorney Kamala Harris were all supportive of banning the gun show from the Cow Palace. “Gun shows at the Cow Palace threaten our most vulnerable residents,” Newsom said in 2007, Inside Bay Area reported.

If that were the case, then there would have been crime victims coming forward to back Leno’s legislation and testifying at the hearing. There were not.

Leno’s anti-gun show rhetoric may be in keeping with his anti-gun ideology, but it isn’t backed up by reality.

By Katy Grimes

What do leisure suits and gun shows have in common? More than you might think. It turns out that some members of the California Senate don’t particularly like either. But I’ll bet in this Legislature, gun shows are despised more.

But this is about constitutional rights, and not the right to wear ugly, pastel, stinky polyester clothing with the knees permanently stretched out.

At issue is whether the California Legislature can dictate who rents the Cow Palace. After taking a vote Thursday on SB 475 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, the majority of senators think they should be able to decide.

Leno said the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want gun shows at the entertainment and exposition center. According to Leno, local residents have taken the issue up with San Mateo and San Francisco counties. But the Cow Palace is owned by the State of California, leaving the counties without final jurisdiction over the facility.

“This is about community values,” Leno said.

Senators have once again trampled on the Constitution.

There was one exception to the Democratic majority in support of Leno’s bill. “I hope we don’t begin to say ‘what I do and don’t like’ simply because we don’t like someone’s activity,” said Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood. “I don’t like guys who wear leisure suits, so they should be banned from renting the Cow Palace?”

“There is no evidence that people who left the gun show shot up San Francisco or committed crimes,” Wright added.

But Leno said with a middle school nearby, the Cow Palace gun show is causing the neighborhood undo trauma. “Many of the students at the middle school are dealing with post traumatic stress disorder,” Leno said. “That’s how violent the neighborhood is.”

What Leno did not say is the area surrounding the Cow Palace has a history of year round violence, which has nothing to do with the four gun shows a year.

“Their condition is exacerbated because of the gun shows,” Leno added. “It’s about community values.”

Community values probably have very little to do with Leno’s bill, and more to do with gun control activists inappropriately and cruelly using a violent neighborhood as a convenient prop. And Leno did not tell his Senate colleagues that  the Cow Palace is the same facility that hosts an annual marijuana users 420 Celebration,  and the Erotic Exotic Ball, dubbed “the wildest party on earth.”

Crossroads of the West Gun Shows take place four times a year inside the Cow Palace. Sen Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, said there are no records or reports of guns sold at the show ever used in a crime.

This isn’t about community values, it’s about activist hysteria and hype.

A recent story in the San Jose Mercury News explained more. “But critics say it is offensive to hold the Bay Area’s most prominent gun show in the vicinity of poor and working-class neighborhoods, including Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco, that are plagued by gun violence. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said Friday there have been 75 gun-related crimes in the past six months within 2 miles of the Cow Palace.”

The rest of the story

Since the 1970’s Bayview-Hunters Point, also the location of a decommissioned naval shipyard, has been overrun with gangs, drugs, high murder rate, violent crime, discrimination, police harassment, and poverty. The area has one of the highest crime rates in all of San Francisco, despite having only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population. Some reports have found nearly 30 percent of San Francisco’s homicides occur in this area.

Is this because of the Crossroads of the West gun show, held at the Cow Palace four times each year?

Instead of blaming a constitutionally protected right with which they don’t agree, Leno, along with the area’s other state and U.S. elected representatives, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, also Democrats, may want to ask why these residents have been forced to live under such violent, abysmal conditions for so many years.

TIP to Leno: It’s not about the Cow Palace gun show, or the people who frequent it.

SB 475 was passed almost entirely along party lines, 25-13. Sen. Wright was the only Democrat to vote against it.

By Katy Grimes

The Senate and Assembly held a joint Public Safety committee hearing on Tuesday about guns, but the hearing room was not even two-thirds full. Several Capitol staffers told me that the hearing had not been noticed to the public properly, deliberately, in order to keep gun proponents away.

The hearing was clearly stacked with anti-gun activists and proponents, and most of the testimony provided was skewed, biased, and some of the “facts” presented were incorrect.

Claiming that perspective and state history was needed, the Committee trotted out two of California’s former Democratic Senators, both advocates of gun control and gun bans.

David Roberti, former President pro tem of the California State Senate, and Don Perata, also former President pro tem of the Senate, talked on and on about their legislative involvement in the state’s gun laws. This continued for more than one hour, of the three hour hearing.

Roberti ironically survived a recall effort by the National Rifle Association in 1994.  Roberti was behind Roberti-Roos property tax as well as the passage of the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989.

Roberti gave more actual history of his gun control act.

Don Perata – at least he’s entertaining

In true Perata form, former Sen. Don Perata accused the NRA of allowing its crazy fringe to do what they do in order to crush gun legislation around the country. “The NRA has a fringe element that they don’t control… I am convinced to get legislation passed,” Perata said. “They are a powerful gun lobby with a religious fervor.”

Yet Perata admitted that he became proficient with a handgun after receiving threats. He then warned the legislators on the committee that as they pursue gun bans, they too will be threatened, and to be prepared for this.

Perata was elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in the mid-1980’s, and worked to shut down crime-laden liquor stores, ban cigarette advertising, and lobbied the legislature for an assault weapons ban.

At the Tuesday hearing, Perata said that guns should be licensed and regulated the same way as cars are. “Register it, take a course to show you’re proficient, require at least $1 million insurance, and a registration fee,” Perata said.

“There are a lot of similarities between guns and autos,” Perata said. “A car sitting in a parking lot rarely takes a human life.”

“There must be something in the Commandments that permits you to have a gun. God wanted it that way,” Perata said. “Don’t worry about legalities — it’s why God gave us courts.”

“It’s pandemic and no longer just in East Oakland. It’s clearly the most vexing problem in the country, ” Perata said. “Violence is as American as apple pie.”

By Katy Grimes

The mainstream news reports about the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting on Thursday night is the worst reporting and irresponsible commentary I’ve ever seen. And once again, guns are the bad guy.

As American liberals have stepped up preaching that everyone deserves high self-esteem, personal responsibility has taken a back seat, and inanimate objects are to blame for bad behavior.

“Death by Xbox.”

“Drugs kill mother of three.”

“Speeding SUV kills five!” the headlines read. “An SUV ran through a restaurant window, killing seven…” a reporter announced. “SUV kills kindergartner waiting for bus,” another headline read.

“Assault rifle opened fire, leaves seven dead, 15 wounded,” a headline stated.

There is stupid, and there is really stupid reporting.

There are people behind the wheel of the SUV’s, and holding the guns. And somewhere, there are parents of a dead kid, who allowed him to play Xbox games.

Along with the cries for gun bans, why not ban the deadly SUV’s, or dangerous Xbox games?

Why Liberals don’t like guns

Guns and people have lived together for centuries. It is liberals who don’t like guns, or gun owners. And when liberals don’t like something, they want it banned.

But pinning down anti-gun people is challenging. They never specify what it is about guns they don’t like. Because guns don’t kill people any more than SUV’s run people down, or golf balls break windows on their own.

The objection anti-gun liberals must have is that it’s the people who own guns that offend.

Media stories kill

The morning after the theater shooting, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross reported that James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado shooter could be a Tea Party member.

“There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year,” Ross said on “Good Morning America.” “Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.”

Ross isn’t just some pretty talking head on a local news channel — he is billed as the ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent. But his reporting lacked any real investigating.

It took Breitbart.com to debunk ABC’s outrageous accusation:

“On Good Morning America, ABC News’ Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulos suggested that the Tea Party might be connected to the mass shootings early this morning in an Aurora, CO theater during a screening of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. The mainstream media attempted to blame the Tea Party for the Tuscon shootings in January 2011, shortly after Republicans swept the midterm elections. Now, in the critical 2012 elections, the mainstream media seems poised to do the same–and ABC News has led the way.”

This is the exchange between Brian Ross and George Stephanolpoulos:

Stephanolpoulos: I’m going to go to Brian Ross. You’ve been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

Stephanolpoulos: Okay, we’ll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.

The result of ABC’s irresponsible journalism made older Jim Holmes’ life a media circus.

The suspect, now in custody, is a 24-year-old man with the same name.

“What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?” Holmes told The Daily Caller. “Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?”

In a joint statement, Colorado Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Patriots denounced the report as “shameless and reprehensible.” It was not just irresponsible and shameless to report this, it was a lie that ABC was willing to extend.

Ross and Stephanolpoulos should be fired.

Gun owners and the law

The law is on the side of gun owners. In fact, gun owners have adjusted well to all of the roadblocks imposed on gun ownership, including waiting periods to take possession of a gun after purchase, some ammunition bans, and bans on certain types of guns. Gun owners follow the law.

In 2007, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment, stating that it very clearly protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. Heller vs. DC deemed that a gun ban deprived legal citizens the right to keep and bear arms, which prevented them from defending hearth and home against armed criminals. And the decision stated that a gun ban went against thousands of years of the right of self defense, as well as the defense of others.

Oyez, the Supreme Court news reported, “For the first time in seventy years, the Court heard a case regarding the central meaning of the Second Amendment and its relation to gun control laws. After the District of Columbia passed legislation barring the registration of handguns, requiring licenses for all pistols, and mandating that all legal firearms must be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger locked, a group of private gun-owners brought suit claiming the laws violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”

“In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self- defense within the home. The Court based its holding on the text of the Second Amendment, as well as applicable language in state constitutions adopted soon after the Second Amendment.”

Guns bans don’t work

In 2003, the Washington Times reported, “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study last week that states there is no evidence to prove gun-control laws are effective in preventing violence. No kidding. There always has been substance to the cliche that guns don’t kill people, people do. Correlative to that rule is that the criminals who use guns to kill usually possess their weapons illegally. These serial lawbreakers are not deterred by statutes prohibiting or regulating gun ownership. They will continue to use guns to commit violent crimes even if the rest of the population of sitting ducks are disarmed.”

The task force also concluded that “firearms-related injuries in the United States have declined since 1993” despite the fact that “approximately 4.5 million new firearms are sold each year.”

Expensive government studies to convince us that gun-control laws don’t make communities safer are a waste of taxpayer money. Taking away law-abiding citizens’ rights to defend themselves results only in making criminals more safe.

However, thugs will think twice before victimizing someone who might be packing heat.

If the Colorado movie theater had been filled with citizens who may have been carrying, chances are that the gunman would have been cut down after his first shot, if he even got that far.

Liberal Democrats Hate Gun Owners

Liberals don’t hate guns, they hate gun owners.

Gun owners tend to be more conservative, believe in personal responsibility, and are more likely to vote conservatively.

Gun owners support the military, and join the military.

Gun owners supported the cold war and America’s efforts to fight Communism. Gun owners voluntarily enlisted during the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars and the Iraq War.

However, these traits are what liberals despise. They hate people who refuse to rely on the government for protection.

Gun Control for Political Power

People unfamiliar with guns have an understandable aversion to them, but many ignorantly support strict gun control regulations. Liberals use this issue and people who fear guns to win elections.

But Gun control is just another control issue. The best example of this is the irrational ban on assault weapons, solely based on how the guns look. Gun owners familiar with assault weapons say that bayonet lugs and flash suppressors do not make semi-automatic guns more deadly or more suitable for criminal use. However, the assault weapon ban is the ideal wedge to use in a heated political debate.

Liberals despise the Constitution

The Constitution protects the rights of individuals, and it protects individuals from the government.  Because liberals believe they know what’s best for the rest of us, they despise the Constitution.

John R. Lott published research demonstrating that an increase in gun ownership results in a reduction in crime, because guns save more lives through deterrence and self-defense than they kill. His 1999 book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” became the authority on gun issues.

“Criminals are deterred by higher penalties,” Lott said in an interview. “Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.”

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.”

Lott also observed how large newspapers and major media outlets consistently underreported the defensive use of guns to save lives. He found that factual accounts of the defensive use of guns would be reported in small rural newspapers but omitted from stories in larger papers, and stories that appeared days or weeks later.

Lott also debunked the oft repeated liberal notion that most murders are done by someone the victim knows.  According to Lott, the “acquaintance murder” number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. “Acquaintance” inaccurately covers a wide range of relationships according to Lott. But the vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Is mainstream news media the enemy?

The news media has gotten really sloppy over the years; poor grammar, unprofessional attire, stumbling over proper names, incorrect pronunciations of the names of cities, slanted reporting, and ridiculously stupid commentary on serious news stories.

But the manipulation of real news, as is the case with gun crime reporting, is just a lie. When the mainstream media lies, has it become the enemy? It certainly is no longer a mainstream media.

Facts are stubborn things.