California Wants Background Checks For Ammunition Purchases As Pretext For Gun Confiscation

by JASmius



First thought: I'm stunned that this wasn't part of Governor Jerry Brown's to-sign stack from the California Democrat legislature.

Second thought: It's just more noodle-headed, futile, pointless, "feel-good" busybodying.

Third thought: It's a helluva lot more insidious than that:

Lieutenant-Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is preparing to run for California governor in 2018, is launching a campaign to toughen the State’s [already insanely restrictive] gun laws next year.

He will announce a proposed ballot initiative Thursday that would require background checks for ammunition purchases and ban possession of large-capacity magazines.

Sounds like the usual tiresome gun control boilerplate we hear all the time these days, with all the usual problems - in this case, ammo can still be purchased online from out of State sources, which means that unless California is going to secede and resume its previous status as an independent country and impose a gun and ammo-specific economic embargo against the United States, that angle isn't going to work.

But then you dig into the details, and suddenly the scope of Newsome's ballot initiative stops being so "usual":

California already has some of the toughest rules on firearms in the country. But even though buying, selling and manufacturing large-capacity magazines are illegal in the State, possession is not. Under the measure Newsom will propose, thousands of such magazines would need to be taken away.

Owners would be required to sell them to a licensed firearms dealer, take them out of State or turn them over to police.

Taylor Millard laughs out loud at what he considers to be the utter unenforcability of that stipulation:

This is completely, absolutely unenforceable. Unless police are going to go door-to-door to every California home (with [or without] a warrant) to confiscate all magazines which carry over ten rounds, all people have to do is just not turn in the magazines. Sure they might get extra charges if the cops find a high-capacity magazine, but there’s no way to enforce this unless you’re going to do confiscation. The fact Newsom or anyone else thinks this is a law which should be passed is just completely ludicrous.

Is it?  What makes you think, Mr. Millard, that "police going door-to-door to every California home" to confiscate not only "too-big" ammunition magazines but all private citizens' firearms while they're at it isn't precisely what filthbags like Gavin Newsom intend to do?  You may think it's "completely ludicrous," but what is there to suggest that they are not serious as a heart attack about it?  Or that this ballot initiative won't get the necessary 366,000 signatures and a majority of the California vote to enact it next year?  You know that old saying about, "You can have my guns only after you pry them from my cold, dead fingers"?  I think that's what Lieutenant-Governor Newsom has in mind.

Of course, this was a legislative bill in California a few years ago and it didn't pass, so maybe there is a glimmer of hope.

But I wouldn't count on it.


UPDATE: Just thought y'all would like to know: Chicago, one of the gun control capitals of the United States, has already had more gun-homocides year to date than in any full calendar year since 2002.