Oh, but relax, California gun owners, you're safe as long as a State judge doesn't consider you "violent". Of course, most judges in that State consider anybody who owns a gun to be violent by definition, so y'all had better get your cold, dead fingers ready:
The law was prompted by a 2014 mass shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara, in which officers beforehand visited shooter Elliot Rodger's home after his parents raised alarms about his mental health — yet concluded he wasn't a risk and didn't search the apartment where he'd stashed guns, ammo and knives.
So because Santa Barbara fuzz were negligent in the performance of their duties, lawful gun owners are at even greater risk of having their weapons seized by government authorities. Nice.
Under the new legislation, families can obtain a "gun violence restraining order," the Washington Times reports.
"The law gives us a vehicle to cause the person to surrender their weapons, to have a time out, if you will," Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Michael Moore tells public radio affiliate SCPR.
"It's a short duration and it allows for due process. It's an opportunity for mental health professionals to provide an analysis of a person's mental state."
Why does the term "mental health" in this story remind me of the "mental health" facilities in the old Soviet Union where dissidents were sent when they refused to accept "socialist reality"? And where is the provision for the return of their firearms if it turns out that the "mental health" dodge is trumped up and bogus? That's the concern of pro-gun advocates:
"We don't need another law to solve this problem," Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, tells The Associated Press. "We think this just misses the mark and may create a situation where law-abiding gun owners are put in jeopardy."
Particularly given that no prior notice or warning is required under this law. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to foresee the "gun violence" scenarios that will ensue when SWAT teams show up, impromptu, at the home of a "suspect," whether or not s/he is "mentally irregular". Or take the situation of a gun-owner who is politically active in his community and becomes a target of local governing authorities. How difficult would it be for the latter to find an ideologically sympathetic judge to issue the necessary court order for the cops to show up at the gun-owner's house, perhaps in the middle of the night, to terrorize him/her and his/her family? After all, there is precedent for this kind of thing.
This isn't a Second Amendment matter, since it isn't the feds who are imposing gun confiscation, and States have original authority to do more or less anything they want within the bounds of their own constitutions and laws. But it looks, sounds, and smells like California gun-grabbers are trying to force "gun violence" into a self-fulfilling prophecy to tighten the noose even more suffocatingly.
And succeeding.
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