An Opportunity for Mr. Schwarzenegger

[chieftain]

Here they come.


Fred

The New York Times, Editorial:

September 24, 2007
Editorial
An Opportunity for Mr. Schwarzenegger
California’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has a laudable record of splitting with his party’s orthodoxy to support pathbreaking state initiatives on global warming and stem cell research. Now Mr. Schwarzenegger has a chance to make Californians safer, and set a new national standard, by signing into law the Crime Gun Identification Act of 2007.

The measure would make California the first state to require that all new semiautomatic weapons be equipped with technology known as microstamping, which imprints microscopic markings as a gun fires. That would allow police to quickly match bullet casings found at a crime scene to the weapon that shot them, a valuable new tool for solving gun crimes and for deterring gun traffickers who supply violent criminals.

The technology is relatively inexpensive. And the new law gives manufacturers until 2010 to retool. Mike Feuer, the Democratic Assemblyman who is the author of the bill, notes that more than 40 percent of homicides in California go unsolved yearly for lack of evidence. The national record is not much better, explaining the bill’s broad support from law enforcement. There is no real explanation, save the fierce opposition of the gun lobby, for why no Republican voted for the bill.

California’s embrace of the innovative crime-fighting tool over reflexive gun lobby opposition would set an example for other states, and also for Congress, which certainly needs more than a push. Nearly six months after the massacre at Virginia Tech, a bill to tighten the system for preventing people with serious mental problems from purchasing guns still languishes.

For California, the new law offers a real chance to save lives and bring more perpetrators of violent crime to justice. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s choice should be easy.

 

[Bazooka Joe71]

Man, you PRK'rs just keep getting luckier and luckier!!!



LOL, I'm sorry I just can't help from laughing.



I mean puking.

 

[David S]

wow..... the slant in that article is really nausiating...

"The technology is relatively inexpensive"

COMPARED TO WHAT?!?!?!!?!?!?

 

[Deer Hunter]

David,

Well, they arn't made out of Gold....

 

[HammerBite]

For this scheme to work the marks imprinted by each gun would have to be registered in a database somewhere, and each gun and its owner would have to be registered. Did I mention gun registration?

Fortunately, all the Bad Guys are very good about registering their guns and the system will work well.

Did I mention that California is the land of fairy-tales?

 

[Junkyard Dog]

Has anyone in the PRK heard anything through the grapevine about how
Arnie is leaning on this one?

 

[FieroCDSP]

You have to expect a bold-faced lie in the press regarding microstamping, but until you see the distorted facts in print, it doesn't hit home. Inexpensive? Not in the test-bed cities. Allows fast matching of cases to guns? Not in the test cities. How many times does this issue need to fail before people stop wasting money on it?!!!?!!?!:banghead:

 

[Gustav]

Good old Kalifornistan land where mostly the liberals rule and chaos reigns nothing from there surprises me any more.
Sadly what happens there often spills over into other cities and states.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Mike Feuer, the Democratic Assemblyman who is the author of the bill, notes that more than 40 percent of homicides in California go unsolved yearly for lack of evidence.

Easier to prevent murderers by keeping them locked up than solve them, unless, of of course, the object of the ploy is simply to make firearms more expensive and difficult for commoners to buy.

 

[Gunnerpalace]

For a reason why this is a stupid idea watch "Judge Dredd".

 

[bulgron]

People inside of CA have been calling and writing about this for months now. No one seems to know what Arnold might do about it, but we're hopeful that he'll veto it.

If this does get passed into law, a bunch of us are hoping that that means gun manufacturers will refuse to sell guns inside of CA -- even to LEO. Make everyone feel the pain equally.

Personally, I intend to spend a lot of time, or at least money, in the next election season trying to get the assembly members unseated that sponsored this bill.

If this passes, I'm going to buy all the semi-autos of my dreams next year and then refuse to buy another one again until microstamping either is rescinded or I escape this B.S. state.

Also, if this thing is passed into law, don't be surprised if microstamping comes to a handgun near you. The reason why is that gun manufacturers are going to have to retool to support this bill. So either they're going to abandon the CA market completely, or they're going to implement microstamping for all the products that they sell nationwide. Which means that microstamping will be coming to your state. And then a law requiring it is only a skip and a jump away.

Laugh away, boys. But CA is the laboratory that the gun grabbers use to try and figure out how to jam up the entire nation.

 

[Juna]

Wow, we should all contact our Senators & Reps now to combat the spread of this insane method of eradicating legal gun ownership by running gun makers into the ground financially. Crazy laws start in CA or NY, but that doesn't mean they won't try to spread them into our states.

 

[MICHAEL T]

Is their any why the rest of America can vote Ca. IL, NJ , NYC, Mass out of America. we would be a lot better off If they belonged to Canada or else left own their own.

 

[Junkyard Dog]

When is the deadline for Govenator to sign or veto?

 

[bulgron]

I believe the bill just hit his desk today. He has 30 days to veto. If he does nothing, then the bill automatically passes into law.

Note that Arnold has been out of the state recently, so there's something of a backlog of bills for him to sign, veto or ignore. So if he does nothing about this bill in the next couple of days, I still won't panic.

Arnold is such a maverick, who knows what he'll do? I'm not sure Arnold even knows....

 

[Robert Hairless]

Doesn't it give you a good feeling to know that when they talk about the "gun lobby" they mean you if you're a member of the NRA?

I belong to several other special interest organizations but none of them are considered a "lobby" by the media, only the National Rifle Association. The AAA isn't considered part of the "automobile lobby," Consumers Union isn't part of the "consumers lobby," and not even the Veterans of Foreign Wars is part of the "war lobby." Members of the Democratic Party or Republic Party aren't part of the "politics lobby," people who get special cards at groceries aren't in the "food lobby," members of Sam's Club aren't identified as the "shopping lobby," my telephone number doesn't make me part of the "communications lobby," the Fruit of the Month Club doesn't make my friends part of the "fruit lobby," and newspaper, magazine, and cable TV subscriptions don't win anyone a place in the "press lobby" or the "media lobby." But join the NRA and you become part of the "gun lobby"!

That's yet another reason for joining the NRA, by the way. Your membership automatically makes you part of the gun lobby at no additional cost!

 

[20nickels]

FEAR;
"Nearly six months after the massacre at Virginia Tech, a bill to tighten the system for preventing people with serious mental problems from purchasing guns still languishes"
I fail to see how microstamping would have prevented this tradgedy.

 

[Davo]

Mike Feuer, the Democratic Assemblyman who is the author of the bill, notes that more than 40 percent of homicides in California go unsolved yearly for lack of evidence.

So this is going to solve those crimes eh?
The thing that really gets me is that 10 years from now when there is no reduction in crime via this bill, it will still be law and they will be looking at what else to fix. The culture of poverty and the underclass we are importing daily will surley not be to blame.

 

[bulgron]

What's really funny is the guy who invented this technology even said that it won't catch the people who actually shoot other people. He admits that those people steal their guns or get them from some other dodgy source.

No, microstamping is so we can catch the many, many strawpurchasers who are just FLOODING our streets with guns. Yep, I saw a tape of a presentation that this guy gave where he said that very thing.

Oh, the many many reasons why microstamping will do no actual good, except to make it look like politicians are being tough on those evil, old death machines called handguns.

At the end of the day, all microstamping is, is a giant money give-away to the guys who own this technology. Uh, that and also a back-door handgun ban.

If I was a firearm manufacturer, I would flat-out refuse to do business with anyone in CA (including LEO organizations) if this bill passes.

Hopefully Arnold will veto this thing. But then we'll just have to fight the same battle next year.