SaxonPig... sounds like it was a good thing for all of us that you got out of here when you could.
The problem I have with CA isn't the number of laws. Frankly, there are many places with laws that would chafe me worse... DC, NY, MA, IL, just to name a few... it's the reason for the laws. The people and culture which caused the laws.
Gun ownership is not accepted in the mainstream culture in *Southern* CA. It isn't accepted because we (gun owners) are often too afraid to mention that we own guns. I've known people for years, thinking they were the "CA-normal" anti-gun types until one day I decided, "I'm going to mention going shooting..." and suddenly they are telling me how they were avid shooters who went hunting all the time and... neither of us knew that about the other because neither of us had the courage to tell someone about our interests. How can we be part of the community if we won't stand up as part of the community? Yet it's accepted that we must hide. I went to a CA hunter safety class a few months ago and a large part of the class time was spent explaining that you shouldn't advertise the fact that you are a hunter, you shouldn't leave your deer carcass uncovered in the back of your truck... they even had a guy yelling KIDS! YOU DON'T GO TO SCHOOL AND TELL OTHER KIDS ABOUT GOING HUNTING! YOU DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR GUN! YOU DON'T MENTION YOUR PARENT'S GUNS! YOU KEEP QUIET ABOUT THIS STUFF! so the 8-14yo crowd in the front would feel really warm and fuzzy about their new activity. No advice was given as to how we could break out of our underground status... just a lot of talk about how different it was from Alabama or South Dakota.
What's funny about all of that is that there are a lot of gun owners in Southern CA. I decided somewhere along the line that I wasn't going to hide the fact that I was a gun owner... instead, I was going to try to put a positive personal face on gun ownership.. and what I found was that there are more gun owners around than you'd think... and that the reaction isn't, in general, negative but curious. And when you explain the gun laws, even to non gun-owners, people tend to react with disbelief and even outrage. If more people talked about guns, and put a positive face to gun ownership, the legislature wouldn't have free reign to write so many anti-gun laws.
Northern and non-coastal CA (including the high desert where this poster is talking about going if I recall) is a totally different state. Far more gun friendly. And that's why CA has so many gun laws... we are the US in microcosm... most of the state is pro-gun, but a few cities contain most of the population and they are anti-gun. So we have complicated laws because we're trying to balance the two sides. Which in turn is why the laws, though long and complicated, aren't nearly as burdensome as the far more compact sets of laws in places like DC and MA.