22 replies to this topic

[Arise]

I'm telling you, they have us surrounded and they are coming in from all sides.

California Assembly to Consider SevereRestrictions on Ammunition Sales!Stand Up and Make Your Voice Heard Today!Next Wednesday, March 25, the Assembly Public Safety Committee will consider legislation that would require gun owners to obtain a “permit-to-purchase” before buying handgun ammunition.Introduced by State Assembly Member Kevin De Leon (D-45), Assembly Bill 2062 puts ammunition sales in the crosshairs. AB2062 would require that law-abiding gun owners obtain a permit to buy handgun ammunition and would impose severe restrictions on the private transfers of handgun ammunition. Applicants for a “permit-to-purchase” would be required to submit to a background check, pay a $35 fee, and wait as long as 30 days to receive the permit.Under AB2062, it would be unlawful to privately transfer more than 50 rounds of ammunition per month, even between family and friends, unless you are registered as a “handgun ammunition vendor” in the Department of Justice’s database. Ammunition retailers would have to be licensed and store ammunition in such a manner that it would be inaccessible to purchasers. The bill would also require vendors to keep a record of the transaction including the ammunition buyer’s name, driver’s license, the quantity, caliber and type of ammunition purchased, and right thumbprint, which would be submitted to the Department of Justice or the number of his handgun ammunition purchase permit. Vendors would be required to contact the purchase permit database, to verify the validity of a permit before completing a sale. All ammunition sales in the State of California would be subject to a $3 per transaction tax. Lastly, mail order ammunition sales would be prohibited. Any violator of AB2062 would be subject to civil fines.Please contact the members of the Assembly Public Safety Committee and your State Assembly Member TODAY and respectfully urge them to oppose this onerous attack on our Second Amendment freedoms. Contact information for the committee members can be found below. Please click here to find your State Assembly Member.State Assembly Member Jose Solorio (D-69), Chair(916) 319-2069 Assemblymember.solorio@assembly.ca.gov State Assembly Member Greg Aghazarian, (R-26), Vice Chair(916) 319-2026 Assemblymember.aghazarian@assembly.ca.gov State Assembly Member Joel Anderson (R-77)(916) 319-2077 Assemblymember.Anderson@assembly.ca.gov State Assembly Member Hector De La Torre (D-50)(916) 319-2050 Assemblymember.DeLaTorre@assembly.ca.gov State Assembly Member Fiona Ma (D-12)(916) 319-2012 Assemblymember.Ma@assembly.ca.gov State Assembly Member Anthony J. Portantino (D-44)(916) 319-2044 Assemblymember.Portantino@assembly.ca.gov

[rr762mmfmj]

Well, one thing we have going for us in our favor, is that the Governor would never sign such a foolish bill into law.......

[moontiger]

rr762 you really think so....... I have seen his record and his public applogy for the use of guns in his movies

[Braz]

I wouldn't trust Arnold not to sign. He sign the 50 cal bill, he signed the lead ammo ban, he signed the microstamping bill, and those are just a few that come of the top of my head that aren't anymore rational than this one. Send your letters in. I did.

[rr762mmfmj]

rr762 you really think so....... I have seen his record and his public applogy for the use of guns in his movies

I was being facetious.

[bumper]

Oh boy, I can see it now . . . a thriving business in "cross the border" ammo smuggling from Nevada. bumper "bullet runner"

[Arise]

I wouldn't trust Arnold not to sign. He sign the 50 cal bill, he signed the lead ammo ban, he signed the microstamping bill, and those are just a few that come of the top of my head that aren't anymore rational than this one. Send your letters in. I did.

That's a big double ditto Braz & Kudos to you! Please give this some thought everyone. I would not put anything past our Governor at this point of his tenure. Voters really did not have that many choices to choose from when he ran, if you think about it. It sure does sound like the current presidential campaign of today. If you are up on current events & have children that go to public school, then you know where I’m coming from. Our hunting rights in CA are dim and it sucks to think where we will be in another 10 years. Look at the bigger picture, and look at our country right now, (housing market, the dollar, price per barrel of oil, The Unemployment rate is shooting up like a , rock ship), it's all bleak. I think it's going to be much worse in 18-24 months personally. Our country is in big trouble but our state is in quick sand right here, right now. My point is this... Do you think that hunting is a priority to our California’s government in this darkest hour? I hate to sound doom and gloom, but it is!The way things are progressing, hunting in California is a dying fraternity & we all need to get involved to change this, even if it’s just making a phone call or shooting out a fax. Don't count on other people to do it. Get involved.

[Cranky Farmer]

How stupid, insane and typical for CA is THIS?

[moontiger]

I was being facetious.

Sorry I was so POed I didn't catch it

[rude robert]

ill call to late to snd a letter. but do u think they really care??they want our rights taken period. not just our gun rights but once that goes so will everything else. People dont think it will happen, but the ball is already rolling.

[rude robert]

okay, they are not taking calls i knew that but they say the msg box is full. well maybe. i have family members from mexico but do u see how many mexican name there are on this list try calling the first number most xx are also mexican names. that being said, i work in the trucking business and we have a lot of mexicans who have come to this country and that is ok. but what some have told me andt this is no kidding, they come here and the ones that buy guns legally do so because they know what its like to live without them. i have told some that will listen and they cant believe what is going on here in the us. they didnt know. they said if we let our rights go we are stupid but this one guy says that he isnt giving up his. now the point im getting to is this, dont these mexican polticians know what the lack of gun owner ship does to the citizens???? they need to wake up, of couse they wont u know that and so do i. so, what r we going to do??? they will not listen to us know matter what, because they say we dont know what we want. well i do know what i want. i want the right to protect my family and me and to hunt without these stupid tax and laws that only make the legal citizens into criminals thats all it does. it makes the rich only able to own guns period

[rude robert]

this ammo thing is getting me depressed lol. when u call the police it takes them for ever to show up and if they show up its too late. how are we going to protect our families??? once they start taxing they will not stop. we should treat our politicaians like the french do to lawyers. maybe they would start respecting the U.S. and the citizens of this communist country. oh i meant to say free country

[rude robert]

well, i called them all. the first name on the list says it doesnt come up to vote until next month??? well, i voiced my opinion anyways lol.

[wannakillacoyote]

I think this comes up for vote today. Anyone know the actual website .gov to see what the votes are?EDIT: This is the best I could find, you can search AB2062 to see status.Ca.gov

[homemade]

So for those of us who roll your own do we have to be licensed as ammo manufactures now?

[Cranky Farmer]

So for those of us who roll your own do we have to be licensed as ammo manufactures now?

So far we're safe.

[D-Man]

Thought I would post this from gunlaws.com. This guy was the one that did the Supreme Court case write-up. This is something that he did spoke on recently:DarrenThe National Symposium on Handgun Violence was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, on April 9, 2008. Ten of the leading gun-control advocates in the nation were scheduled for a coordinated review of “reasonable” limits on the right to keep and bear arms, led by Jim Brady himself, along with David Hemenway of Harvard and a host of others. News of the event and its surprise ending (covered at the end of this report) has not made national headlines.A courageous decision was made to provide “balance,” which meant the organizers eventually found me (thanks to a referral from Alan Gura, Dick Heller’s attorney in the D.C. gun-ban case). They got me last-minute non-stop tickets from Phoenix, a room (a very nice room I might add), and 15 minutes at the podium. Ten against one. Hah. I had them outnumbered.I’ve been studying persuasion skills for a long while now, and here was an acid test. Was it possible to address an audience like this and not get booed off stage? Could I manage civil discourse with the participants at the luncheon beforehand, maintain composure through the staging, and end up sociable at the afterglow dinner at a fine restaurant?It’s my belief that the words exist in the universe to convince anyone of anything true, regardless of their predispositions. The trick is in finding those words, in the moment, and delivering them in a way that works, with the proper aplomb. You may not always find the words, but the words are always there. Think of it this way. What would Jesus say. The words are there. Could I find enough of them?They scheduled me near the end, which was a good thing. I got to hear the keepers of the faith, the bearers of the sacred messages, tell 700 people and a gaggle of camera crews and reporters that -- guns are bad; crime is caused by guns; every gun-control scheme you’ve ever heard of is good; gun confiscations will solve the crime problem; we the people are too dangerous, irrational, unpredictable and incompetent to be allowed to bear arms; and that people on government payrolls (they didn’t frame it that way but it’s what they were saying) should have all these deadly dangerous malevolent guns. I’m putting this all more bluntly than they did, or than I ever would when wearing my hat of tasteful persuasive moderation.We were briefed at lunch beforehand on how to handle hecklers, if any. Everyone took turns genuflecting in the direction of civility, and calm affirmation of a desire to tactfully handle any outburst in the unlikely event we faced any. The antis might attract some guff, but it was pretty obvious, though unspoken, that it was me, in my nice navy blazer and sharp red tie, who might face some opprobrium. I disarmed their fears by saying I didn’t want to hear anyone cry out, “Don’t taze me bro,” and we all had a good laugh. When one of the black women asked why I love guns, I looked at her and asked sheepishly, “Are you stereotyping me dear?” We laughed some more.Metal detectors were installed at the entrance, a precaution we were told, because five athletes were shot on campus several years ago (none fatal thank God), which was a motivator for the conference in the first place. I’ve seen this before -- pro-rights gun conferences, walk right in. Anti-rights conferences, bristling with armed security and pat downs. What’s wrong with that picture?I counted at least 14 crisply uniformed campus police, bearing 9 millimeter semis with a pair of double-stack extra mags on their duty belts. We had some great conversations, though the other speakers seemed to avoid these people. I had them laughing about all the guns in this anti-gun conference. As more showed up I kept telling them that now I REALLY felt safe. We swapped gun talk, war stories, a few thanked me for being there. I knew I had at least a few people on my side -- the ones with the guns.When my turn came, I was pretty choked up. Tom Mauser, who came before me, had lost his 15-year-old son at Columbine. No matter where you stand on the RKBA issue, that is just hard to endure. I have a daughter in school. I worry for her every day. No amount of even fascist controls can stop a psycho bent on destruction.He had put on his son’s shoes for his speech, and took them off to show the crowd. He was walking in his murdered son’s shoes. I’m getting choked up just writing this. It was awful, compelling, deeply moving. The photographers crowded in to get that shot, and it’s the image that ran in all the papers the next day. He had used his dead son’s shoes effectively.I walked the steps to the lectern and thanked the university for being courageous and including me. It was gutsy of them to have a speaker on the other side of the fence at a symposium like this. And I told them it was really hard for me to do, in the face of the tragedy and mind-numbing statistics we had been hearing. It was the right place for me to start, the right words to use, all deeply heartfelt. The audience quietly absorbed my opening remarks.The university asked me here, I told them, so you could have some measure of balance, so you could see that this conference is only half the equation. I’m here, and I held up the sign I had used at the Supreme Court case a few weeks ago, to make sure you keep in mind that Guns Save Lives too. Guns Stop Crime (and another matching sign). Guns Protect You. Look how many guns there are in this room. You know why they’re there -- because guns have a purpose, a social utility that’s important and should not be overlooked.Their emotions had been played upon all afternoon, so I continued the trend. I told of a woman awakened to find a knife-wielding, ski-masked intruder in her home, and how she had to shoot him while crouched behind her bed, after having called 911. She had to keep firing until the big guy finally collapsed. The police arrived only nine minutes later. You could hear a pin drop.Would you deny this woman her right to live, by taking her gun away? Isn’t the message, “If it saves one life...”? Do you have the moral authority, or a sense of self righteousness that says she must die because you think guns are bad? I pressed on.Mary Ann Watkins got an award here in Arizona at our tenth anniversary CCW banquet. We passed our discreet-carry law against a backdrop of hysterical clamor about blood in the streets, shootouts at traffic lights, and dead bad waiters. Ten years had proven that was nonsense, a concoction of irrationally scared uneducated minds and a compliant media. None of it happened (and no news corrections were printed).Mary Ann had stopped at a lonely desert rest stop on the way to Phoenix from Yuma. A burly trucker followed her into the ladies’ room. Maybe he just wanted to borrow her lipstick? (It didn’t get the laugh I thought it would). When she pointed her sidearm at him he left, muttering, “Bitches with guns, bitches with guns.” Did she save her life, or prevent a rape? We don’t know, we can never know. But that’s how most of these encounters take place, the gun isn’t even fired. Would you condemn this slight-of-build history teacher to death because you have no stomach for the other side of the equation?The audience was mine. I had achieved my primary goal. Show a roomful of fearful anti-rights activists that guns are good sometimes, and not get yelled at for it. Bring reason and insight to a crowd, steeped in ignorance and fear, that sorely needed it. I had found the words, and the demeanor, and made the most of it. The university had done good finding me.While I was on a roll, I mentioned something about me that’s true, that most people don’t realize. I’m actually a utopian pacifist. I look forward to and hope for a world with no weapons of any kind, in an era of enduring peace, prosperity, abundance and harmony. You should too, it would be a good thing. Until then I say disarm everyone -- bad guys first. And I held out my Disarm Criminals First sign.We can’t get to that world because of what I call the Four Horseman of Human Havoc -- Angry, Hungry, Stupid and Wicked. Oh, we might be able to solve Hungry someday, but the other three? And that’s the rub. Until there is a fundamental change in human nature, the good guys need the guns to protect themselves from the bad guys. That’s why you have all those armed people in the room, right? No one disagreed. If guns suddenly disappeared, the good guys would have to invent them all over again. That’s because Guns Protect You.It’s easy, I told them, to imagine a gun-free world. It’s very easy. Guns are a relatively new invention -- just go back in time a little ways. What do you get? Genghis Kahn, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, and my favorite, Xena the Warrior Princess (again, no laughs). They wiped out entire towns, raped plundered and pillaged, all without guns. When they came to town, that’s when you really needed a gun -- and not just a six shooter.Which leads to a counterintuitive truth. We’re safer now than we were then when there were no guns. The ability to effectively project force keeps us safer. You couldn’t ride the highways back then, now you can. For all the crime you hear about, things aren’t all that bad.Those of you who just want guns to go away, you don’t want to take guns away from the police do you? Heads shake no. Of course you want the police armed... and that’s a very pro gun position. You instinctively understand the value of guns. You just want someone else to hold it for you. But Jeff Snyder, in his landmark book Nation of Cowards, suggests it is unethical, immoral and politically corrupt to entrust your right to and precious gift of life to someone else.And this brings us to one of the really ugly truths about the “gun problem” that no one wants to look at. If you really want to cut down on the crime and “gun deaths” as they like to call it, you’ve got to start recognizing that there is a demographic component to this problem.There are social, economic and geographic aspects to the issue. But no one wants to confront that. Well if you keep sweeping it under the rug, you can kiss your chances of really making headway goodbye. And as you encroach on the human rights of innocent people instead of the root problems, you can expect fierce resistance to your plans, and that resistance is justified.Also, if you want to cut the “gun deaths” in half, recognize that many if not most are actually “war deaths,” killings in the war on some drugs. The government wages this war, encouraging armed camps, and they shoot at each other and themselves. Declare an armistice and stop the killing. You’ll reach your goal faster than fighting the civil rights lobby that protects the Second Amendment.Ask a politician when we can declare victory and stop, or just declare defeat and stop, and you’ll learn it’s a perpetual war, like Orwell warned us about. The analogy to alcohol prohibition couldn’t be clearer. While the ban is on, the killings continue. Stop the war, the killings go away, even though all the problems caused by the vegetable products continue.The speakers railed about the availability of guns. But guns are less available now than they used to be. Before 1968, anyone could buy guns through the mail. There were no national age limits, waits, papers, no controls of any kind on guns in the Sears Roebuck catalog (12 pages worth), the hardware store, or even in comic books I used to read. Some of the malevolence we see, that all of us in that room want to see end are not about the guns, they’re about the social factors we would rather ignore.When I asked the hotel front desk, the doorman, and the cops I saw if it was safe to take a walk while I was in downtown, they all said sure, but don’t go in THIS direction, or walk in THAT part of town. Nebraska and Montana have tons of guns, but not the problems downtown Pittsburgh is wrestling with. You all better start looking at that part of this. People were listening.It was getting near time to close. I asked for show of hands: “How many of you really really hate guns?” At last, some audience heckle energy, and a few shouts with a lot of raised hands. One guy stood up to spew how much he hates guns. I luckily found the words again, and told him I’ll stay afterwards and we can talk as long as you like (he didn’t stay, but I would have enjoyed testing my mettle against a died-in-the-wool gun bigot like that).I waited till they settled back down. Softly, slowly, I breathed into the microphone, “It’s not good to hate.”Some nervous squirming and some snickers from those who suspected I had prepared that remark in advance. Hey, I prepared all my remarks, it took me days. I used this as a lead-in for my message about hoplophobia, the morbid fear of guns.There’s a lot of hate and anger in the anti-rights movement (I mostly avoided saying anti-gun anything, it was all about anti rights and pro rights). A lot of the anti-rights debate is actually a medical issue, not a policy debate. I tried to get everyone in touch with the hatred in their hearts, the hoplophobic undercurrents. People who suffer from this pernicious phobia are deserving of sympathy, and in need of treatment. I don’t think they liked that. But they heard it. Now they can just wander around in denial (a symptom of the condition by the way).I summarized my main points and, since Duquesne is a Catholic school, I closed with “God bless and keep America, the ten Commandments and the Ten Amendments. Thank you.” The applause was as good as any other, except for Tom who, choking back tears, got an ovation.Oh yes, the surprise ending. James Brady didn’t appear, because his wife Sarah fell critically ill and was hospitalized. News of the medical emergency was first announced publicly at the end of the symposium, but has not traveled far. There has been no word on her condition, said to involve pneumonia. -------- I learned some things, not the least of which was how to handle such an event. Getting into shouting matches is easy. Getting your point across is easy too, but the tactics are totally different, rather alien, and quite satisfying. There’s a lot of sit quiet and listen, hold your disagreement to yourself, bite your tongue, gain trust, and choose your moment for low hanging fruit -- the basket will fill in due course.It also became apparent from conversation that Mr. Hemenway hates the NRA, for he sees them as intractable and unyielding on any common-sense (to him) gun proposals. He couldn’t hear, or perhaps I couldn’t find the words to let him know, that they want crime to go down as much as anyone, it serves their purposes perfectly, makes their battle to preserve rights so much easier.He outright rejected the idea that if a rule would disarm criminals without adversely affecting we the people, they would be there as quickly as I would. Of course his proposals, which seem reasonable to him, would place draconian repressions on your freedom, but he doesn’t see it that way. He counts numbers of dead, draws conclusions from his stats, and to paraphrase Will Smith in I Robot, may be the dumbest smart person around. Highly intelligent with a tremendous command of statistics, he seems to clutch at ignorance of underlying causes, where solutions lie.Pittsburgh collected 990 crime-associated guns last year. Of these 70 were possessed by their owners, and 80 had been reported stolen. nearly 70% though had been bought by straw purchasers and here’s the chilling part. The buyers were the drug-addicted girl friends of the men who wanted the guns, the women’s drug suppliers. Do you see? Arresting the women does little, they’re victims, not habitual gun runners, and unlikely to make another buy except for another boyfriend (and jail space is too valuable to waste on them). The bad guys are rarely caught with the guns, so prosecuting them is virtually impossible. I have no idea how to stop that, without banning gun sales altogether and putting 700,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun users a year at unacceptable risk.C-SPAN recorded the whole thing, along with several local stations. As soon as any of you hear when the broadcasts are scheduled, you’ve got to let me know, and I’ll spread the word. My arms are tired and my nose is sore (a line from my tune Miguel Row Your Coke Ashore), time to stop.I took some cool pictures, will post them here in a few days:http://www.gunlaws.com/newstuff.htm Alan. Alan KorwinBloomfield Press"We publish the gun laws."4848 E. Cactus, #505-440Scottsdale, AZ 85254602-996-4020 Phone602-494-0679 Fax1-800-707-4020 Ordershttp://www.gunlaws.comalan@gunlaws.comCall, write, fax or click for free full-color catalog(This is our address and info as of Jan. 1, 2007) If you can read this, thank a teacher.If you're reading this in English, thank a veteran. "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothingbecause he could do only a little."--Edmund Burke

[Jason]

That was awsome! Thanks for sharing!

[Braz]

Have to agree. It sounds like a great speech. Let us know when it is on C-Span. I would love to watch the speech. Thanks for the post.

[moontiger]

Thanks for that ,I enjoy his writting and it really give great advice for handling the Anti-Rights folks.

[Cranky Farmer]

Great read!

[D-Man]

I subscribe to his updates, and always enjoy reading them. Glad you guys enjoyed it. Will continue to post them as appropriate.Darren

[Cranky Farmer]

I ordered one of his books today.