As Cam likes to say, "Everything is stupid and it's only getting stupider."
That's an unfortunate truth that we can't seem to escape. Even things that should be relatively non-controversial tends to see a large degree of stupidity. Take gun parts, for example. If you want to upgrade a part on your firearm, you just hop on the old interwebs, hit a few keys, and after you navigate all the BS that now litters everyone's Google searches, you find what you're looking for and buy it.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Yet we live in a world that also, unfortunately, includes California, and they think this process is just way too easy. They just have to muck it up for everyone unfortunate enough to live there.
A bill has been filed in California that would require background checks for gun barrels: https://t.co/CqSBjrU3en pic.twitter.com/962m14mF7P
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) March 27, 2025
Now, if you note the information required here, you'll see there's no serial number included.
That's probably for the best, because barrels aren't serialized. Yet that also means there's absolutely no way to discover where the barrel came from in the first place, should one be recovered by police.
This means there's almost no way to enforce this law at all.
That doesn't even get into the fact that someone could buy a barrel out of state without any background check at all--this isn't a gun, so the ATF rules regarding dealers following state laws on gun transfers wouldn't apply--or just buy one online and have it delivered to a PO Box in Nevada or wherever.
Hell, just some relative could buy the barrel, then mail it to the bad guy.
Honestly, there are so many ways around this bill that it's ridiculous and won't do anything.
So why have it?
My guess is that the measure seeks to do something about so-called ghost guns. Yet, privately made firearm kits are already restricted at the federal level thanks to measures that anti-gun Californians supported, and many celebrate are working.
Yet if those laws work, why do you need a background check for a barrel? If those laws work, a part like a barrel in and of itself won't do anything to bypass those rules.
Or could it be that the Biden-era rules aren't actually doing anything?
Meanwhile, this law makes it harder for law-abiding Californians to replace worn-out barrels or upgrade to newer ones. It will make them walk into a store, go through pretty much the whole process of buying a gun, but for a metal tube with some grooves inside, basically. It's idiotic, and this is what's on the table in California.
That doesn't mean it will pass, of course.
But this is also California. I have no doubt plenty of lawmakers will see this and jump at the opportunity to put their name on some gun control. Meanwhile, they do nothing about the illegal immigrants running roughshod over their state, committing a significant percentage of the actual crimes in the state, all while violating numerous state and federal gun laws, and their answer will always be to punish the law-abiding.
This is a state with every gun control law that anti-gunners pray for elsewhere already on the books, and it's not enough for them.
Honestly, this is all the evidence you need that when anti-gunners talk about some "commonsense gun reforms," they mean nothing of the sort. They want to be as restrictive as they can get away with and they resent the Second Amendment because it means they can't get away with everything.
Background checks for barrels.
After "ghost gun" regulations and background checks for ammo didn't do anything.
Why am I not surprised?
