Category: Politics

California moved swiftly to limit concealed weapons after Supreme Court ruling. That plan backfired

When the U.S. Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to concealed-carry gun laws that limit firearms in public places, California officials vowed to swiftly respond and enact new restrictions.

But a measure to tighten the state’s rules for concealed weapons failed in the state Capitol early Thursday morning, a shocking outcome for a plan championed by Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

SB918 by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), would have added a slew of new regulations and background check requirements for gun owners to obtain permits. It also sought to greatly expand the list of public places where guns cannot be carried, including bars, parks, casinos, sports arenas, libraries, churches and gyms.

Ironically, part of what spelled defeat for the measure was the rush by legislators to enact it quickly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June.

Because Portantino added an emergency clause to the bill — so it would take effect immediately upon Newsom’s signature — it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. The measure fell just two votes short on the last night of legislators’ session, on a 52-23 vote in the state Assembly.

Portantino and Democratic leaders, including state Attorney General Rob Bonta, worked feverishly throughout the night to try to whip the necessary votes. The bill faltered just after midnight.

The Supreme Court struck down a New York law requiring gun owners to show they have “proper cause” to get a permit to carry a handgun outside of their home. In other words, the state could not require applicants to demonstrate that they need a gun for self-defense.

The decision in the landmark case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, was widely interpreted as striking down similarly restrictive laws in California and a half-dozen other states.

The court’s conservative majority held, in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that states can require handgun owners to get a permit to carry in public as long as they use objective requirements to decide whether to issue a permit. Thomas also suggested that the government can still prohibit guns in “sensitive places” like schools and government buildings.

SB918 attempted to take those two openings and adapt California’s law to be as restrictive as possible while complying with the letter of the ruling. Portantino said the state needed to act, in the wake of recent mass shootings across the country, to prevent more violence.

“We need fewer guns on our streets, not more,” he said in a statement earlier this summer. “California will not wait to see the consequences of these trends and will act now to protect the public.”

In California, concealed-weapon licenses are generally available in the state’s most rural counties, those with a population of fewer than 200,000 people. But such licenses have historically been difficult to obtain in metropolitan areas, and cities and counties can create their own restrictions and set fee amounts.

Portantino’s bill was opposed by gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of California, which said the bill would create onerous hurdles for permit applicants and defines “sensitive places” so broadly that it would contradict the court’s narrow intent.

“It is very apparent that this bill is an attempt to pre-empt the expected ruling from the United States Supreme Court,” Gun Owners of California said in a statement. “By your definition the legislature can designate any public place as sensitive.”

5 Things You Might Not Know About the Bill to Ban “Assault Weapons”

The arguably unconstitutional ban on so-called “assault weapons” recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is a lot worse than most people are aware. That’s because the measure is nearly 14,000 words long, and most of it is based on sheer ignorance, so digging through the entire document to see what is hidden inside is actually disheartening.

Here’s a brief look at five things in H.R. 1808 that you might not have been aware were included in the legislation.

The criteria used for banning rifles are ignorant and nonsensical. The measure purports to ban “military-style” weapons, although all of the guns banned by the bill fire only one round with a single pull of the trigger like all semi-automatics. Our military, as well as most militaries of the rest of the world, equip their soldiers with rifles capable of fully-automatic fire. And the alleged “military” features that can cause your gun to be banned include the capacity to accept a detachable magazine, along with one of the following: a pistol grip (certainly not uniquely military), a forward grip (doesn’t make it any more “deadly”), an adjustable stock (why is it bad to be able to make your gun fit you correctly?), a grenade launcher (which is actually an NFA item, subject to strict controls, as are any explosive grenades one may want to use with the launcher), a barrel shroud or a threaded barrel (so much for hearing protection).

The measure also bans many firearms by name, not just criteria. It bans all AK-type rifles and lists 28 specific models by name. It also covers “AR types,” and went on to list dozens of different rifles by name or manufacturer that would be banned. When you consider several entries that include all of a company’s semi-automatic rifles, like “Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Rifles” and “Stag Arms AR Rifles,” the list grows to literally hundreds. Also banned by the measure are a long list of semi-automatic rifles that are not ARs, including the Beretta CX4 Storm, Ruger Mini-14 and more than 60 other models. Lastly, it bans all AK and AR pistols.

The legislation bans many pistols and shotguns, too. It bans “any semiautomatic pistol that has an ammunition feeding device that is not a fixed ammunition feeding device” and has one of the following: A threaded barrel, a second pistol grip, a barrel shroud, the capacity to accept a detachable ammunition feeding device at some location outside of the pistol grip, a semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm, a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when unloaded, or a buffer tube, stabilizing brace or similar component that protrudes horizontally behind the pistol grip, and is designed or redesigned to allow or facilitate a firearm to be fired from the shoulder. It also bans any semi-automatic shotgun that “has the capacity to accept a detachable ammunition feeding device or a fixed ammunition feeding device that has the capacity to accept more than 5 rounds,” along with any one of the following: a folding, telescoping or detachable stock, a pistol grip or bird’s head grip, a forward grip or a grenade launcher. It even bans any shotgun with a revolving cylinder; a type of shotgun that is fairly rare, and even more rarely, if ever, used to commit violent crime.

The legislation also bans common, standard-capacity magazines. It specifically bans what it calls “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” and defines the term as “a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device, including any such device joined or coupled with another in any manner, that has an overall capacity of, or that can be readily restored, changed, or converted to accept, more than 15 rounds of ammunition.” This important portion of the measure has been largely unreported by those in the so-called “mainstream” media.

The authors of the bill knew that much of it is unconstitutional—especially since more than 24 million AR-15-type rifles are owned by American citizens—but pushed the measure through anyway. Proof of that prior knowledge can be found in one section toward the end of the bill that features this clumsy disclaimer: “If any provision of this Act, an amendment made by this Act, or the application of such provision or amendment to any person or circumstance is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the Act, the amendments made by this Act, and the application of such provision or amendment to any person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.”

Of course, the measure also contains a lot of other egregious provisions that would likely shock most law-abiding gun owners. You can read it for yourself here.