It’s a day that ends in “y,” so you know what that means. It’s time for another example of how the state of California guns. In today’s episode, the state considers a bill that will basically drive the vast majority of gun stores out of business simply by making it almost impossible for the law to be complied with by small businesses–you know, the kind of operations the vast majority of gun stores in this country are?

Further, some of the required features aren’t permitted in many communities due to local laws.

SB 464 by Sen. Jerry Hill (D – San Mateo) mandates that Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL) add expensive new security measures to protect their inventory, including, in some cases, the installation of concrete or hardened steel pillars for stopping a vehicle.

“SB 464 ignores the plethora of security regulations with which FFLs are already required to comply with at the federal, state and local levels,” said Craig DeLuz, Spokesman for the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). “Even worse, it overlooks the fact that many local municipalities and commercial property owners often do not allow such property modifications.”

For example, the City of Rocklin recently forced a firearms retailer, Sacramento Black Rifle, to relocate to another city when the business attempted to voluntarily add steel bollards to the front of the store. This type of modification violated city policy and was not permitted by the property owner. SB 464 provides no pre-emption to address local ordinances or property owner objections.

While a number of gun stores have been burglarized in California recently, it appears that less than one percent of the guns stolen in the state have been taken from gun stores. The vast majority were stolen from private residences.

The new regulations, should the bill pass, will simply create yet another expense for small businesses in the state.

Many may look at this and think, “So what? These barriers sound like a good idea to me.” The problem is that this isn’t where things stop. It’s not just requiring barriers–something that could be argued to be beneficial to numerous other businesses–but that there are additional security measures required by the law, on top of federal regulations, on top of pre-existing state regulation.

This is the epitome of “death by a thousand cuts.”

And I can’t help but believe that’s the point. California hates guns. If a proposal were made to repeal the Second Amendment, we all know where California would stand on the issue. They don’t want private citizens owning guns.

Unfortunately, the court has made it clear they can’t outright ban guns. If you were a lawmaker and knew this, but still wanted to essentially eliminate firearms in the state, what would do you?

Well, you’d require guns to have idiotic things that not only don’t exist but can’t exist like dual placement microstamps. You’d make it difficult to buy ammunition at all. You’d keep doing these little things that make it so onerous to sell guns that only the biggest stores will bother, thus driving the small businesses out and making it impossible for new ones to rise up. After all, private citizens can’t buy guns if there’s no one selling them, right?

Meanwhile, the criminals will keep getting guns, thus accomplishing nothing except playing to your base.

Political theater, but like all political theater, there are real life impacts of their stupidity.