FPC has issues with California's current anti-gun efforts

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

There’s never a doubt that California is going to try and pass gun control. It’s about like the sun rising in the east. It’s not a question of whether it will happen and it’s not even a matter of faith. It’s an immutable law of the universe.

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So, they’re trying to push a slew of new gun control laws into being.

And the good folks at Firearms Policy Coalition have a problem with that.

Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) released a statement on the California Legislature’s gun control agenda following the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees’ suspense hearings held last week.

One of the anti-rights measures that survived the California State Senate and State Assembly’s notoriously opaque appropriations hearings include Senate Bill (SB) 2, which attempts to make bearing arms lawfully de facto impossible. SB 2 would invite immediate litigation as it nakedly attempts to defy the natural, fundamental and enumerated rights of the People, and more specifically the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen. FPC has recently successfully litigated similar onerous legislation in New Jersey.

Some of the other measures in California’s contemptuous anti-rights legislature include:

  • SB 368 – Grants California Department of Justice (CADOJ) extraordinary powers to administratively extend firearms prohibitions indefinitely
  • SB 452 – Microstamping requirement expansion despite recent court action on this topic by FPC
  • AB 28 – Taxing a right: Excise taxes on firearms and ammunition
  • AB 92 – Defensive body armor prohibitions on prohibited people
  • AB 725 – Victimizes the victims of certain lost and stolen potential firearm parts
  • AB 1089 – Expansion of prohibitions and liability on the free and peaceable use of CNC and 3D printing of protected arms. FPC has initiated recent litigation in multiple jurisdictions on these kinds of infringements.
  • AB 1406 – A right delayed is a right denied- authorize (CA DOJ) delay of the delivery of a firearm under certain circumstances, also a topic subject to recent litigation
  • AB 1483 – Expands gun purchase rationing, another topic the FPC is currently litigating 
  • AB 301- Defensive body armor purchase as a red flag data point for secret firearms prohibition hearings.

Richard Thomson, FPC’s Vice President of Programs commented: “This anti-rights package shows the legislature’s naked contempt for peaceable People, and their willingness to use state violence and send armed agents of the state to take people’s property and liberty and throw them in government cages merely for the free exercise of a fundamental right.

The Legislature is out of its lane– it is not within its purview to abrogate the fundamental rights of the very people that delegate limited, enumerated powers– to think so is arrogant, dangerous, and they will lose.”

Without reservation, FPC will seek out every available tool to redress this legislative overreach.

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They actually posted this yesterday and, frankly, there’s nothing in here that should be the least big disagreeable.

However, there are a few points that really stick out to me where I’m especially supportive of FPC’s efforts. In particular, this assault on body armor.

Yes, I know some bad people get armor and it makes them harder to take down.

I also know there are a thousand more people who buy it for personal security. They wear armor under their clothing when they have to go to bad parts of town or when they’re dealing with someone who actually wants to hurt them.

Some have it in the event of a repeat of the civil unrest we saw in 2020.

Either way, body armor is defensive in nature and, as such, shouldn’t be treated like it’s a sign someone is unwell. It also shouldn’t be kept from prohibited persons, either. If the gun control laws California loves so much work, then there’s no harm in them having body armor, after all.

If the laws don’t work, armor isn’t the issue.

Of course, that’s just one aspect of all that California is trying to do this year. Things like gun rationing and excise taxes on guns are just ways to discourage gun ownership. Microstamping is just the state trying to dictate technology that does not work and likely never will.

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They deserve to be taken to task on this one and I’m glad FPC is more than willing to step up and do it.

Not that I expect lawmakers there to listen. They won’t. They’ll likely pass all of this, then get taken to court where most, if not all of this will be thrown out.

As all of it should be.

What California won’t do, though, is try to actually solve the issue of violent crime in the first place. Funny, that.

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