guns – Page 4

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 Bans Wildlife Hunting Contests

December 12, 2014 By James Poulos 6 Comments

Wile E. Coyote is smirking.

Despite a robust and thriving population, coyotes have just received an unprecedented degree of legal protection from the Golden State. Bringing a longstanding rural tradition to an end, the California Fish and Game Commission cracked down on competitive hunting events, including those used to cull the animals.

Perhaps ironically, coyotes — and other “nongame species and fur-bearing animals” like bobcats and and beavers covered by the prize hunting ban — had a single, lone wolf to thank.

Animal conservation activists became aware that a particular wolf, known by the designation OR7 and nicknamed “Journey,” could have placed itself on a migratory collision course with a so-called “Coyote Drive.” The event, stretching across three days in California’s remote northeast county of Modoc, had already attracted the attention of protestors, as the San Francisco Chronicle observed.

Last year’s seventh annual drive drew fire from a score of conservation groups. In the contest, pairs of hunters aimed to win by killing the most coyotes; ties went to whichever team bagged the most coyotes in the least time.

While event organizers presented the drive as a means of population control, Project Coyote and other organizations succeeded in pushing the federal Bureau of Land Management to prohibit the drive on terrain it controls.

That effective mobilizing effort prepared the way for a second round of activism targeting California law. Claiming the Coyote Drive was simply one aspect of a larger problem, Project Coyote once again teamed with environmentalists and wildlife activists, pressing state regulators to wipe out prize hunting at a single stroke.

Again, they succeeded. By a 4-1 vote, the state Fish and Game Commission outlawed hunting competitions of any kind. In a statement, commission head Michael Sutton proclaimed the hunts “an anachronism” with “no place in modern wildlife management.” (Conservationists had argued that the Coyote Drive actually increased the animals’ breeding, as a result of the effectively random way it reduced their numbers.)

Persistent incentives

Although cash prizes in the Coyote Drive ran as high as $500, ranchers and rural Californians said plenty of incentives remained for them to kill coyotes that threaten their livelihood. The Fish and Game Commission did not ban one-off killings, and big money of a different kind awaits those willing to train a gun on the often marauding animals.

As Fox News noted, the latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed cattle ranchers in-state “lost more than $4 million in 2010 to predators, and coyotes accounted for the largest number of attacks.”

Buck Parks, president of a Modoc County fishing and hunting club, told Fox News ranchers would “encourage folks to get out and help manage these predators by hunting them,” even if no prize events could be held.

Tolerant

Until further notice, California will remain as tolerant toward informal coyote kills as other states, most of which have not imposed bag limits on individual hunters. Outlawing or reducing that activity would pose a much greater challenge to activists, for whom the case for a ban would hinge more on animal-rights claims than on conservation.

Nevertheless, the defeat of the Coyote Drive has shifted policy in California far away from what state regulations permit around the country. “Frenchville, Pennsylvania, saw 4,000 hunters sign up for its 22nd annual coyote hunt earlier this year,” reported National Public Radio’s Nathan Rott. “Florida has its Python Challenge, and Texas, its Big Nasty Hog Contest.”

But Camilla Fox, one of Project Coyote’s founders, told Rott she and her fellow activists saw California’s prize hunt ban as a model with nationwide applicability. Hinting at a broader approach to come, she conjectured that “just as we have, as a nation, banned cockfighting and dog fighting, I do think that we will see an end to wildlife-killing contests.”

This article was originally published at CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: 2nd Amendment, guns, Hunting, Modoc County, regulation

Prop. 47 Amendment — Common Sense Gun Policy