Let Me Show You How Stupid Kalifornia Is
By John Longenecker (08/27/06)
What a disgrace. Who puts the K in Kalifornia? It’s not the Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger because of his Austrian heritage, but the hostile tactics of the State Legislators who have been putting the K in Kalifornia years before anyone even heard of Governor Arnold’s running for Governor. Here is yet another example of those stupid, unAmerican tactics – Assembly Bill 352, the requirement for a semi-automatic handgun to stamp the serial number on the casing of the cartridge. If it doesn’t, the gun is deemed to be unsafe.
Uh-huh. Unsafe? Sind Sie dumm? Translation: Are you stupid?
AB 352 would "expand the definition of unsafe handgun to include semiautomatic pistols that are not designed and equipped with a microscopic array of characters, that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched into the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and which are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired."
It’s putting a K in Kalifornia by dint of the fact that it won’t work, it can be circumvented by criminals several different ways, it unduly penalizes innocent gun owners by forced compliance and penalty, and, of course, it exercises powers not granted. Let’s take a look.
It won’t work because the technology doesn’t exist at this time, and even without that technology – and a necessarily reliable one at that – the law still makes non-complying weapons illegal, deemed as (get this) unsafe. This kind of misnomer, or craftily using the inappropriate but emotional adjective for such a stated reason, betrays the legislature’s real intent; gun banning, a little at a time. Why?
The gun is not unsafe because supposedly in 2007-2008 it won’t further furnish its own indicting evidence (guns already furnish plenty of forensics) – any gun is unsafe in the hands of a criminal, and who says that before the fact a cartridge casing of a law-abiding owner is likely to be involved in a criminal act? This opens the door to falsified evidence, not to mention forced compliance of innocent citizens who vastly outnumber the criminals who would be stupid enough (?) to select semi-automatics from now on.
How it can be circumvented for furtherance/concealment of crime is simple enough even a legislator can see it. Which is why they wrote it against the legal gun owners. Gun laws don’t stop crime or criminals. (Idiots). If – and I’m saying if – such a mechanism can be developed to reliably imprint individual casings once they’re fired, why can’t the criminal shooter simply police their brass? This means to cover the area and take up every spent casing and dispose of it elsewhere, for good, perhaps in the Pacific Ocean. So much for the law.
Stupid legislators punish honest owners by writing a law which can be further circumvented by using a revolver instead of a semi-automatic.
At this point, I always like to point out how more than 22,000 don’t stop crime, but only frustrate the law-abiding. Is das jetz ein anderan ein? Ja, das ist einanderen ein. Is this yet another one? Yes, this is another one! *These idiots don’t understand plain English!
All of these laws, including this one, chase crime, and do not stop it, the real desire of most citizens. Dear Kalifornia legislature: name one gun law that stops crime. But on the issue of actually meeting crime - often actually stopping it for real - forty other states are more enlightened than Kalifornia is, they furnish an excellent model in that they just don’t seem to have the same crime problems Kalifornia and Washington D.C. have.
Hm. Stopping crime in progress. If it works in forty other states, why not try it here?
Furthermore, the stamping might identify the weapon but certainly not the shooter. Now, that’s three out of three that won’t work. It could never prove who did the shooting. This is as limiting as the state claiming you (or a legislator) ran over a neighbor just because someone traced the licence plate back to the vehicle: it doesn’t show who was driving, which is the critical data. I’m all for license plates, but they, too, have their evidentiary limitations: it may show who owns what, but it doesn’t show who did what, namely the criminal act. A legislator’s personal car could be used, then what? You’re going to have to locate a different type of evidence if you’re going to identify with moral certainty who shot whom, and moral certainty is technically a big deal throughout Law. And that would be the very good faith purpose of such a law, would it not?
Try again.
When this law fails - and it will - it’s will have been a terrible waste of time and professional reputation.
It would be so easy for someone to collect just one sample spent cartridge from elsewhere – perhaps months earlier and perhaps miles away – and allege it to have been found at the scene of a shooting. This could very, very easily happen for the weapon owned by a policeman or legitimate bodyguard, unless their weapons are exempt. Hm. That would not be cool. That casing could be from the shooting range, a hunting trip, a negligent discharge in the hands of a friend or even a laboratory, but the legislators don’t care who gets caught up in the nightmare – as long as a cartridge casing is produced so they can look smart, to Hell with Justice. And to exempt public servants from such allegedly valuable requirements would be very suspicious.
Of course there is the complete picture: how does the secured stamped casing match the bullet if a bullet is even recovered? [And if such a bullet isn’t recovered, how do we even know which gun then?] Supposedly recovered casings could easily be a casing just lying around and have no evidentiary significance in a shooting, except to idiots who don’t understand guns and who don’t understand Law. They just hate both.
Evidence of this is where the anti-liberty movement claims to target violence, but hits innocent bystanders. Yer a lousy shot.
President Johnson cared about the issue of rotten legislation. He cared enough to mention this (I don’t care who wrote it for him):
You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
Now the concept is recognized and preserved for all time. Good. And he was a Democrat, like Humphrey, Mondale and Kennedy who were pro-liberty, and they were pro-gun enough to back that liberty and spoke of it often. What the Hell happened to our Democrats? A lot of Democrats are remembered with respect, affection and solemnity. A lot of politicians are remembered so.
Not this crowd.
What does the Kalifornia legislature speak of today and how do they intend to get it? It forgets that citizen possession of weapons is a government hands-off way of life here under our system, because the armed citizen is the first and best line of defense. (Most police officers will acknowledge this, Sacramento, if you’re interested.) Changing that system is not permitted by law, and it’s not wise for any community, but it’s done anyway. The end result is that citizens are disarmed, little by little, as official dependency industries grows and a lot of people make a lot of money.
More genius, more elitism, since law enforcement draws from the pool of the average citizen for its officer candidates, and nearly all gun owners are just as innocent and law-abiding in their background checks and values systems as police candidates/graduates (or we wouldn’t have many officers!).
As for powers not granted, legislators ignore the Constitution, which technically makes the subject of citizen ownership of guns entirely verboten and closed to discussion. When this country was formed, the founding fathers had an exquisite idea of what they didn’t want any more of, and they had the very clear idea that protecting the sovereignty they declared required that citizens, as the ultimate authority of the nation, be forever armed. Forever. Ultimate authority. This over-reach exists in every era and it always will. This is why the subject is not even open to discussion.
Yet, officials pry it open with minute issues, anti-violence rhetoric, and ridiculous go-nowhere legislation. Assumption of powers not granted – for any so-called justification, anti-violence or otherwise – reflects a very poor understanding of the nature of the relationship between them and the people they work for. It means that such persons were unfit for the job since Day One. That explains a lot.
Nope, this law won’t stop a single crime, and probably won’t solve one, but it will vex citizens in that sick, unending endeavor of supervision and surveillance and of using force to back it up. (The German word for sick is krank.)
Iss das nicht ein schtupid move? Ja, das ist ein sehr schtupid move.
It keeps the K in Kalifornia. Stupid, unreasonable laws which assume powers not granted and which will not do as promised.
How does this affect non-gun owners?
Officials want to have all the force and to Hell with the People. That’s you, and it emboldens officials to test further over-reach and to take powers not granted for all other issues important to you and your household. There is a direct connection between gun control and a simultaneous official defiance of the law on all other issues.
Pro-liberty assembly persons: how about a moratorium on all anti-liberty, anti-violence, anti-gun bills, including AB352?
It’s not good for California. It’s not good for the country.
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