by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Sport hunters and gunowners fared well in key ballot measures in four states, shoring up public support for bear hunting in Alaska and Maine, retaining teeth in California’s “Three Strikes” law and opening up greater public access to records there, while keeping Colorado’s important Electoral College votes on a “winner takes all” basis.

Californians faced a tough one with Proposition 66, a measure to amend that state’s Three Strikes law, which was patterned after the original Washington state measure created by former Second Amendment Foundation staffer Dave LaCourse.

The revision would have prohibited imposition of the “three strikes” mandate for convictions on non-violent felonies. Several thousand inmates currently doing time on three strikes convictions could have gotten resentencing hearings. But Californians soundly rejected the measure, especially after popular Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his opposition.

On the downside, Golden State voters approved Proposition 69 by almost 62%. This measure expands the state’s ability to collect DNA samples from people charged, but not yet convicted, of certain felonies. Civil rights activists objected to the plan, contending that it treats innocent people like convicted criminals, and adds their DNA information to a databank for purposes not clearly defined.

A sleeper issue, and one very important to gunowners according to Jim March, with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) in Sacramento, was passage of Proposition 59. This measure will strengthen the state’s Public Records Act and Open Meetings law. This will help gun rights activists, especially those pressing for an investigation into how concealed pistol licenses are issued by county officials, March told Gun Week.

California is one of a handful of states that still retain the discretionary standard for issuing concealed pistol licenses. In many cases, March and CCRKBA have complained, this process is arbitrary and discriminatory.

“Local agencies and the California Department of Justice,” said March, “have been fighting tooth and nail to cover up the level of corruption, racism, gender bias and general cronyism in the current ‘discretionary’ issuance process.”

He said passage of this measure will help gun rights activists’ access to those records.

Bear hunters at both ends of the country won major victories against animal rights extremists, with the rejection of ballot measures that sought to ban baiting. The Alaska measure was opposed by The Anchorage Daily News, hunters and other outdoorsmen and women. It sought to ban baiting, feeding bears for viewing and photography, and the live trapping of problem bears for relocation by the Department of Fish and Game.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) called supporters of the initiative “extremists who seek to punish law-abiding Alaskans for protecting their children and pets from predatory bears.”

Mike Fleagle, chairman of the Alaska Board of Game, was quoted by the Anchorage paper as commenting, “Alaska is finally realizing we can’t bend over backwards to these animal welfare groups that are trying to force their way of thinking on us.”

At the other end of the country, sportsmen in Maine faced Question 2, a ballot measure that targeted hunting bears with hounds, hunting bears over bait, or trapping. It was rejected with by what The Portland Press Herald suggested was “a comfortable margin.”

Maine residents rejected the measure primarily because it put game management up to electoral whim rather than keeping it based on sound principles. This was a measure that brought a surprisingly public stand against animal rights extremism from Maine Gov. John Balducci and other state officials, including biologists with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Normally, politicians stay out of such emotional debates, and state employees shy away from commenting. But in Maine, they stood up for hunters and the bear hunting tradition.

In the Centennial State, there will be no splitting of the Electoral College vote, a move that would have had serious repercussions, not only in this year’s presidential election, but in future tight races as well. But Colorado voters rejected the measure by almost a 2-to-1 margin, leaving Katy Atkinson, director of the campaign against the proposition, to observe, “I think Coloradans have an infinite amount of common sense, and what we’ve seen in Amendment 36 is an offer to cure a disease the state doesn’t have.”