gun control – Page 6

Gavin Newsom Announces 2016 Gun Control Ballot Initiative

October 18, 2015 By James Poulos 19 Comments

Thrusting himself to the forefront of America’s campaign-season controversy around access to firearms, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom seized the opportunity to define the 2018 gubernatorial race early, proposing a ballot initiative that would usher in sweeping new gun laws.

Although Newsom’s liberal bona fides were not in question, analysts observed that his calculated risk to wade into the debate made sense in the context of California’s current political climate. “High-profile ballot measure campaigns can help bolster a candidate’s visibility,” as the Los Angeles Times noted. “And because of dismal voter turnout in the last California election, the threshold to qualify measures has been dropped to 365,000 petition signatures, much lower than the previous standard.”

Guns in the crosshairs

Newsom didn’t hesitate to cast himself as a champion of the anti-gun movement, capable of going head to head against the nation’s strongest firearms rights lobbies. “The NRA doesn’t own me, they haven’t bought me — and they never will. They’ve already come after us,” he said in remarks to Capital New York, a Politico publication, “and it’s going to intensify.”

Calling the National Rifle Association “extraordinarily effective at stifling the legislative process,” Newsom vowed “to fight a different fight — that is, direct democracy. We’re going directly to voters. Because the public is with us, including the NRA members themselves.”

Uncertain terrain

To an extent, Newsom has public opinion on his side in the Golden State. “A poll last month by the Public Policy Institute of California found that two-thirds of adults believe California’s gun control laws should be stricter than they are now,” USA Todayreported. “It found that 57 percent of adults said controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting the right of Americans to own guns, while 40 percent said protecting gun ownership is more important.”

But Newsom was cagey on the subject of Gov. Jerry Brown, who has torpedoed California gun legislation in the recent past. His proposed initiative, the Sacramento Bee noted, incorporates “provisions of bills that have stalled at the state Capitol or were vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years.” In addition to compelling sellers of bullets to be licensed in the same manner as sellers of guns, the Bee continued, Newsom’s initiative would “establish a process to seize guns from people prohibited from owning them because of their criminal records, mandate that lost or stolen guns be reported to law enforcement, and require the California Department of Justice to notify federal authorities when someone is added to the state database of prohibited firearms owners.”

Californians have already directly or indirectly established one of the strictest sets of firearms regulations in the country, with “a 10-day waiting period for all firearm purchases, an assault weapons ban, and a ban on making and selling magazines that hold more than 10 rounds,” as the San Jose Mercury News recalled. “The state enacted its assault weapons ban in 1989 and expanded it 10 years later,” the paper added, although “those who already owned the banned guns and magazines were allowed to register and keep them.”

Fueling fears

Of all the provisions proposed by Newsom, one stood out: the ban on so-called “large capacity” gun magazines. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told the Bee that the provision would “hit a lot of ordinary gun owners where it hurts,” potentially turning gun moderates against the initiative. “It plays into the hands of gun-rights proponents who are always warning that the government is going to come take your guns,” he suggested.

In a statement, NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter promptly advanced that standpoint. “His ballot initiative proposal does nothing but prohibit access to the most effective methods for self-defense, with no measurable positive effect on stopping crime or improving public safety,” she told Courthouse News. “They can’t repeal the Second Amendment, so they’re trying to chip away our rights until there is nothing left,” she said.

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Election 2016, Gavin Newsom, gun control, Jerry Brown, Second Amendment

Will New L.A. Ordinance Turn Gun Owners Into Outlaws?

August 12, 2015 By Susan Shelley 11 Comments

If you’re a gun owner in the city of Los Angeles, you may soon be a criminal.

The City Council has passed an ordinance that bans the possession of any firearms magazine with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. With the mayor’s signature Friday, owners of the prohibited magazines now will have 60 days to turn them over to police, destroy them personally or move them to a location outside the city limits. The ordinance says owners can sell them, but don’t try it — state law prohibits the sale of “large-capacity” magazines and has since Jan. 1, 2000.

Because that state law banned the sale but not the possession of large-capacity magazines, existing property was effectively “grandfathered.” The Los Angeles ordinance makes no such accommodation.

“With a stroke of a pen the Los Angeles City Council has not only turned hundreds of thousands of law-abiding L.A. residents into criminals, they have made property that was legally purchased under state and federal law illegal to possess overnight,” said Paul Nordberg, director of the Calguns Foundation and president of Calguns.net, a highly trafficked online forum for California gun owners. “To the best of my knowledge there is no method or funding for informing the public of their change in status from law-abiding citizen to criminal.”

Nordberg says the people who will be hardest hit are those who participate in the sport of competitive shooting, enthusiasts who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on fees and equipment. Magazines with a capacity of 15 rounds are standard in national competitions. “I refuse to call them ‘high capacity,’” he said, “Fifteen rounds is the standard, and words have meaning.”

People who don’t live in Los Angeles are unaffected by the ordinance, unless they drive through L.A. to get to a shooting range or competition in an area outside the city’s boundaries. Then, Nordberg says, they risk “arrest, confiscation of property and possible loss of civil rights for simply doing the same thing they did the day before and have done for years, simply going to the shooting range with the legal property they have owned for over a decade.”

The City Council is working on a second ordinance that would mandate the use of gun locks in the home. That ordinance is modeled on laws in San Francisco and Sunnyvale that have so far been upheld by the federal courts.

But that may not last. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was not happy with the lower courts’ decision to uphold the mandatory gun lock law. “Despite the clarity with which we described the Second Amendment’s core protection for the right of self-defense, lower courts, including the ones here, have failed to protect it,” he wrote.

Still, the Supreme Court decided not to hear a challenge to the mandatory gun lock law — yet. So Los Angeles jumped right in to pass a similar ordinance.

California is one of only six states that has no “right to keep and bear arms” in its state constitution. In Nevada, for example, the state constitution says, “Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.”

The Arizona constitution says, “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.” In Texas, “Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.”

But in California the state constitution is silent, so gun owners in the Golden State must depend on the federal courts’ interpretation of the Second Amendment to protect their rights from infringement. That means lawsuits will be filed to challenge the two city ordinances, and city taxpayers will incur the costs of defending the ordinances in federal court.

To better protect Second Amendment rights in California, an amendment to the state constitution is needed that secures for Californians the protections that gun owners have in 43 other states. Without that, we’re at the mercy of politicians who like to score political points by criminalizing the actions of people who didn’t do anything to anybody.

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Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly. Reach her at Susan@SusanShelley.com, or follow her on Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Clarence Thomas, gun control, Gun rights, guns, Los Angeles, Second Amendment

Prop. 47 Amendment — Common Sense Gun Policy

March 20, 2015 By Beth Baumann 1 Comment

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) recently introduced Assembly Bill 150, which would amend California’s Proposition 47. Before the passage of Prop. 47, the stealing of any firearm was considered felony grand theft. Now that Prop. 47 has been enacted, the charge has been reduced to a misdemeanor as long as the gun is valued under $950. AB150 would amend that provision in Prop. 47, which would reinstate the felony grand theft charge, regardless of the gun’s value.

If the bill passes both houses, it would be included on the 2016 ballot as a stand-alone provision that voters could either reaffirm or reject.

“Currently, the legislature is pushing for hasher gun control laws for law-abiding citizens and it doesn’t make sense that we would relax the penalty for gun-stealing criminals,” Melendez explains. “Criminals don’t steal guns to go duck hunting; they steal guns to commit crimes.”

The bill Melendez has proposed is a common sense bill that should pass our Legislature. No one wants guns in the hands of criminals. And we all know that any one who steals someone else’s gun is, more than likely, going to use that gun for a criminal act.

Because most handguns are under $950, very few criminals would see the felony grand theft charge.

I give Assemblywoman Melendez credit for this bill. To bring gun legislation to the California Assembly is a bold move, but it’s one that would protect responsible gun owners.

In the words of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Gun owners thank you, Assemblywoman Melendez. Now it’s up to us, the voters, to encourage our representatives to pass this legislation and get it on the 2016 ballot.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Beth Baumann, gun control, Gun policy, guns, Prop. 47

SF Gun Case May Be Heading For Supreme Court

January 29, 2015 By John Hrabe 1 Comment

More than a dozen Second Amendment groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a high-profile challenge to a San Francisco gun-control measure.

Led by the Firearms Policy Coalition, gun groups say the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred in its decision to uphold San Francisco’s safe-storage law.

Under the ordinance implemented in 2007, the city “requires all residents who keep handguns in their homes for self-defense to stow them away in a lock box or disable them with a trigger lock whenever they are not physically carrying them on their persons.”

The groups referenced the 2007 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, District of Columbia vs. Heller, which upheld an individual right to “keep and bear arms” in the Second Amendment.

“The court should grant certiorari to reaffirm key principles concerning the scope and substance of the Second Amendment,” the groups wrote in their amicus brief. “Many lower courts have taken great pains to avoid the consequences of these decisions — defying a fundamental constitutional limitation this court made explicit in Heller. … At the forefront of this resistance is the lower courts’ refusal to follow this court’s command, made in Heller and reiterated in McDonald, that Second Amendment claims are not to be judged by unrestrained judicial interest balancing.”

Gun groups point to Heller decision

Last March, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the local restrictions on gun ownership, finding that gun storage mandates save lives.

“The record contains ample evidence that storing handguns in a locked container reduces the risk of both accidental and intentional handgun-related deaths, including suicide,” Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote in the ruling for the panel. She added that gun safes “may be readily accessed in case of an emergency.”

Second Amendment groups have focused their arguments on the legal precedents, arguing that San Francisco’s regulations contradict the Heller decision, as well as McDonald vs. Chicago in 2009, which held the Second Amendment also applied to state laws.

“The Ninth Circuit’s lamentable decision in Jackson shows why it is the most overturned circuit court in the nation,” said Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs, one of the state’s leading gun rights activists. “The Supreme Court should take up this case not only to correct a clear wrong, but to stem the tide of judicial resistance in recognizing the right to keep and bear arms as fundamental Constitutional rights.”

He added, “The Second Amendment doesn’t protect second-class rights, and it’s time for courts to take the enumerated right to keep and bear arms at least as seriously as they do unenumerated rights like abortion.”

Other gun groups that have joined the Firearms Policy Coalition in filing the friend-of-the-court brief include the Second Amendment Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Foundation and California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.

San Francisco City Attorney has “faith in the judiciary”

Six San Francisco residents, with the help of the National Rifle Association and the San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Association, first challenged the safe storage law in 2009. The case underscores the lengthy process of seeing gun-control restrictions ultimately become established law. Long after the press conferences and publicity stunts, government attorneys struggle to defend the restrictions.

“I have complete faith in the judiciary to affirm our position that San Francisco’s gun safety laws protect the public in a manner that’s both reasonable and constitutional,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a 2013 press release on the case. “San Francisco has been a top target of the NRA for many years, and I’m proud of the efforts we’ve made to aggressively battle these legal challenges, and protect sensible gun laws that can save lives.”

As CalWatchdog.com has previously noted, the nation’s leading Second Amendment advocacy groups have begun to shift their efforts from the California Legislature to the courthouse. Since 2009, The Calguns Foundation has found great success in its legal challenges, which have targeted the implementation of concealed weapon permits and mandatory waiting periods.

A copy of the brief in the case of Espanola Jackson, et al. vs. City and County of San Francisco, et al., can be viewed at the Firearms Policy Coalition’s website.

Originally published at CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: 2nd Amendment, gun control, guns, san francisco, Second Amendment, Supreme Court

CA Gun Dealers Challenge Handgun Ad Ban

November 15, 2014 By John Hrabe 1 Comment

Second Amendment advocates say California is infringing on their First Amendment rights.

On Monday, four California gun dealers filed a federal lawsuit challenging a nearly century-old law that bans the display of handguns in store advertisements.

Under state law, it’s perfectly legal for a gun-control supporter to use images of handguns in a protest outside of a gun store. But if a gun store were to put the same sign in its store window, it would be a violation of state law.

States California Civil Code § 26820, which was first enacted in 1923:

“No handgun or imitation handgun, or placard advertising the sale or other transfer thereof, shall be displayed in any part of the premises where it can readily be seen from the outside.”

This isn’t a case of hypothetical free speech scenarios. Earlier this year, a Central Valley gun dealer was cited by the California Department of Justice for breaking the law by displaying a handgun in its window. Tracy Rifle and Pistol, the San Joaquin County firearm retailer that was cited by the Department of Justice in September, points out the obvious content-based speech restriction.

“I run one of the most heavily regulated and inspected businesses in existence, but it’s still illegal for me to show customers that I sell handguns until after they walk in the door,” said Michael Baryla, the owner of Tracy Rifle and Pistol. “That’s about as silly a law as you could imagine, even here in California.”

Gun stores speak out

One Fresno gun dealer and plaintiff in the case, PRK Arms, told KMPH Fox 26 News’ Erika Cervantes that the lack of proper signage can be confusing for customers.

“We actually get quite a few calls throughout the week from people asking if we sell handguns,” Elijah Smedley, the store’s general manager, told KMPH. “If you look around, there’s plenty of them here. The product itself is not illegal in any way, so why should advertising be illegal?”

Smedley pointed out the obvious double standard.

“You can advertise for just about anything else that you sell,” he said. “There’s grow shops, there’s dirty magazine stores, there’s all kinds of things out there that you can advertise for the exact item you’re selling. Yet, for some reason, handguns are taboo.”

First Amendment scholars join case

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who is considered one of the country’s foremost experts on the First Amendment, has joined the case on behalf of the plaintiffs.

“The government generally may not ban advertising of lawful products — indeed, of constitutionally protected products — on the grounds that such advertising is offensive, or stimulates consumer interest in such products,” Volokh explained on his legal blog at the Washington Post.

In addition to a double standard for gun owners and gun control advocates, there’s a double standard for weapons. In California, it’s legal for gun dealers to display images of shotguns and rifles on their premises, but illegal to display an image of a handgun. The multiple content-based restriction has helped the gun dealers enlist other constitutional experts in the case, including top-notch attorneys Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay.

“The First Amendment prevents the government from telling businesses it disfavors that they can’t engage in truthful advertising,” said Bradley Benbrook, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “This case follows a long line of Supreme Court cases protecting such disfavored businesses from that type of censorship.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Kamala Harris, the lead defendant in the case, declined to comment about it to CalWatchdog.com.

State’s clever gun rights advocates target vulnerable laws

The lawsuit is only the latest effort in a series of savvy moves by the state’s leading Second Amendment advocates. Unable to slow the endless series of new gun-control bills proposed each legislative session, the California Association of Federal Firearm Licensees, Calguns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation have turned to lawsuits and public-records request to overturn laws. And when the mainstream media ignore their achievements, CA-FFL shares its victories directly with its nearly 40,000 Facebook fans.

In August, a federal judge ruled that California’s 10-day waiting period on gun sales violated the Second Amendment rights of certain groups of gun owners. The plaintiffs in the case were represented by Calguns Foundation and Second Amendment Foundation.

The group has also exploited the state’s public records law to obtain information about the uneven administration of conceal-carry permits. In 2011, Calguns Foundation believed then-San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey was failing to comply with California’s conceal-carry laws. Under state law, all agencies that have the authority to issue firearm permits must create and publish a written policy on the process. Thanks to a public records request, the group proved that the sheriff had selectively enforced the law and awarded permits to politically-connected applicants.

San Francisco wasn’t an isolated case, but a part of Calguns’ program to enforce compliance with the law. A similar 2010 request filed by Calguns with the Ventura County sheriff’s office was denied. Calguns was forced to file a lawsuit, which it won.

Whenever it can, California’s gun-rights advocates are looking to form broad-based political coalitions.

“Since we started our Carry License Initiative, Calguns Foundation has had the great pleasure of supporting and, where possible, collaborating with fantastic open government groups like the First Amendment Coalition and CalAware on matters relating to public records and meetings,” said Brandon Combs, one of the masterminds behind the effective political strategy.

A copy of the complaint can be viewed here.

This article was originally published on CalWatchdog.com.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: CalWatchdog.com, gun control, Handgun, John Hrabe, Second Amendment

Nanny of the week: More gun control in Chicago?

October 20, 2014 By Eric Boehm 2 Comments

Chicago is home to some of the toughest gun control rules in the country.

It’s also home to some of the most frequent gun violence in the country.

But officials in the Windy City are not giving up hope just yet — surely, one more go at tougher gun laws is all the city needs to tip the scales in the other direction and turn Chicago into a modern day Miranda, free from any and all violent thoughts or actions.

That’s why there will be not one, but two gun control issues on voters’ ballots in Cook County on Nov. 4. The first would impose stricter background checks for legal gun purchases — “legal” being the key word there, as we’ll get to in a moment — and the second would ban assault weapons.

Gov. Pat Quinn, who is also facing re-election this November, is pushing for similar laws at the state level in Illinois, though he hasn’t had much success getting the Legislature to embrace those ideas.

Quinn has tried to turn gun control into a campaign issue against Republican opponent Bruce Rauner.

As the Chicago Sun-Times noted, “Recently, Quinn’s campaign released a new online video juxtaposing TV news reports on Chicago gun violence with footage of Rauner stating he believes gun owners should be free to use assault weapons for “target practice … on their property as they choose fit.”

That makes complete sense, because even though I’m no expert on gun violence in Chicago, I’m guessing legal gun owners practicing on their own property are probably responsible for a sizable portion — maybe 85 percent, I’m sure — of the 415 murders reported last year.

What? You disagree?

Politicians in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois and everywhere else can add as many layers of regulations for legal gun owners as they can dream up, but criminals who are going to use guns to commit crimes are probably not too concerned with staying inside the boundary of gun control laws.

But the nannies just keep on pushing. Democrats on the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to put the gun control measures on the ballot.

Luckily, this is one time where voters can have the final say over the nannies. Polls indicate the measures are headed for defeat in November, perhaps because voters have realized additional rules don’t make anyone safer from those who have no regard for the rules.

For their efforts, the Cook County Board of Commissioners is this week’s winner. The board members’ prize is a landslide defeat in November and a plaque with that famous quote from Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.”

This article was originally published on Watchdog.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Chicago, gun control, Nanny State