More and More Gun Laws: Ethnic Cleansing California Style
June 20, 2006

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

In the Apr. 10 issue of Gun Week, we published an article by Dave Workman entitled “San Fran Gun Ban Last Straw for Gunowners Now NH Bound.”

That article included interviews with several California residents for whom the passage of Proposition H prohibiting residents of San Francisco city and county from possessing handguns for self-defense or any other legal purpose was the last straw. Proposition H also prohibits the sale of rifles and ammunition within the city and county. A lawsuit challenging the ban was filed by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), the National Rifle Association (NRA), and several state organizations. The judge has heard arguments from both sides and a decision in that challenge could be issued at any time.

Married or single, the people mentioned in Workman’s article were planning a move to New Hampshire, where many libertarians have been promoting relocation as part of the Free State Project. New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die.”

The gun ban referendum—following all kinds of state legislative infringements on the Second Amendment had convinced some gunowners that they are not wanted by what many perceive as a society dominated by social bigots.

Gunnies Unwelcome
Christie Cole and her husband were among those interviewed by Workman, who paraphrased one of her comments as follows:

“The gun ban vote was ‘the last straw in a long string of things’ that has forced the Coles to the realization that, in a city that prides itself on diversity, ‘their kind’ just isn’t welcome.”

“Their kind,” of course, meant gunowners.

As proof that more stories are somehow connected than we often realize, in the June 10 issue of Gun Week, my Hindsight column dealt with the xenophobia and intolerance of people who are different because of cultural, racial, religious or other differences that seems to underlie genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The United Nations (UN) doesn’t seem to be able to deal in any effective way with the mass murder of whole nations, tribes or segments of a population, yet seems determined to solve the problem by imposing its global gun control treaty. This is the same UN that wanted to control the Internet, that has fostered corruption of the Iraq oil-for-food plan and now wants to impose taxes on the world so its ineffective bureaucracies can grow even more bloated. (The next UN meeting on gun control is scheduled to begin later this month and run into early July.)

The pro-gun-ban element at the UN, including governments and non-government organizations, is demonstrating the same kind of xenophobia and intolerance that afflicts the anti-gunners in the California legislature and the voters of San Francisco. The difference is that the lawmakers in the Golden State have figured a much milder form of ethnic cleansing. Instead of sending in government goons, armed with guns or machetes as in Rwanda, these people use legislation to drive away the undesirables to be cleansed from utopian society.

More Movers Found
While tending the Gun Week/Second Amendment Foundation booth at the recent NRA’s 135th annual meetings and exhibits in Milwaukee, I was struck by the number of people, including subscribers, who were moving out of California. Most of them were moving for the same reasons as the people in Workman’s Apr. 10 report. However, they were changing addresses in California, not just for New Hampshire, but for many other states. I recall people mentioning Idaho, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. And while some have not escaped from California yet, others already provided address change information for their Gun Week and Women & Guns subscriptions or memberships in the Second Amendment Foundation and/or Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

I didn’t have an opportunity to compare notes with the NRA secretary’s office, but I’m willing to bet they also dealt with a lot of folks escaping from San Francisco or some other California address.

Not everyone can afford to make such a move, either because of employment, business, schooling or family ties. But apparently many have decided that instead of surrendering their guns or moving them out of state, it is easier to move the whole family out.

The people who make the laws in California are probably quite pleased with their success in this regard. They are successfully conducting an ethnic cleansing operation without physical violence. And there are always plenty of other people and companies ready to move into the asylum and take up the vacancies.

California’s ethnic cleansing of gunowners has been going on for years. It involves a partnership between the legislators and the state’s attorney general’s office staff. The process has been incremental and is still ongoing. It has been highlighted by the 1989 Roberti-Ross “Assault Weapons” ban and the more recent ban on .50-caliber firearms, including single-shot rifles.

Still More Laws
A current example is an ammunition sales regulation measure sponsored by state Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-20th Dist.). Simply put, his AB-2714 would codify into California law a ban on the sale of ammunition through the mail or via the Internet, by restricting the over-the-counter retail sale of ammo.
The measure, introduced in February, adds new provisions to existing laws regulating the sale of ammunition. This bill would provide that no ammunition or reloaded ammunition may be delivered pursuant to a retail transaction unless the purchaser personally presents bona fide evidence of his or her identity and age, as specified, to the seller of the ammunition. Violation of these provisions would be an offense punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for a term not to exceed six months, or by a fine not to exceed $1,000, or by both, for a first offense, with increased imprisonment and fine penalties for second or subsequent violations.

If that were not enough, another bill in the state assembly, AB-2728, introduced by Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-18th Dist.) would permit state or local agencies responsible for inspections of firearms dealers to perform inspections before a dealer first opens for business. This means that the state would conduct a completely separate investigation of an applicant for a new firearms dealer’s license, adding more red tape and bureaucracy to a process which is already slow, and could presumably find any number reasons why such a business license should not be granted, regardless of how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules on the application.

Slice by slice, the California legislature has been cutting away the firearms civil rights of its law-abiding citizens without interfering with the crime rate. Instead of cleansing the state of criminals, it has been cleansing it of law-abiding citizens.

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