I did a little digging into GOC's voting record tallies for Rod Wright, trying to understand why the "percentage" was so low.
In the legislative year that started in '99 and ended in Y2k, Wright voted "yes" on the following bills in
bold, which can be looked up at:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html - set the "year" to 1999/2000. I'd give you a link to each bill's records, but it's a CGI database (sigh).
AB106 - Passed: "must sell trigger lock with gun". Wright voted "for it" both at Assembly Safety and the assembly floor. One complex bit: the bill was subject to a ton of various amendments where it varied from "minor annoyance" to "really seriously painful". The version that finally passed was basically an annoyance; it seems likely Wright helped steer it in that direction.
AB106c Committee vote for above. See comments there.
AB200 - Failed. But it is NOT a gun bill. In it's original form, the title is "An act to amend Section 1359 of the Health and Safety Code, and to add Sections 1622.1, 1626.1, 1631.1, and 1749.03 to the Insurance Code, relating to life agents." Wright wrote it. Then it later got gutted and turned into something about school budget reform - again, not a damned thing gun related? How in hell did THIS get counted as a "gun rights strike against Wright"!?
AB491/491c - Passed. This was Jack Scott's attempt to declare all concealed carry by non-permitholders felons. It got jacked around at various committees, and at one point in committee Wright voted for it - but that was when an amendment was added seriously limiting it's scope. (In final form, it only applies if you're packing a gun not registered to you - not good, but at least you CAN avoid a felony rap if you're packing.) Wright did NOT vote for it on the first floor vote, only voting "yes" after it had been further gutted in senate committees.
Let me comment on what seems to have happened here: Wright has been critical to NRA defensive efforts because he had Gray Davis' ear as he was one of the first legicritters to back Davis. (That may sound bad, but Davis is NOT actually ideologically anti-gun, he's just a pure political animal...GOPer Dan Lungren was far worse than Davis!) Essentially, when the NRA needed to pass a message to Davis, it went through Wright. So once this bill was sufficiently "gelded", it was tossed to the grabbers as a bone and to keep his credibility among Dems, yes, Wright voted for this silly turd - AFTER it was mostly neutered.
AB988 - Originally an attempted ban on home FFLs but failed and was gutted - got turned into something about beach maintenance for the city of Malibu! Apparantly, Wright DID vote for it while it was a "gun bill", but God only knows what role he had in killing it as a gun thing. It's impossible to judge him on this one.
AB1142/1142c - Well this is interesting - got vetoed! It started as a bill to set a criminal penalty for a parent whose kid takes the pet family gun to school. Sigh. Got hacked around six ways from Sunday, and then Davis killed it. And yes, Wright voted for it at times. But remember what I said about gunnies having a channel to Davis? Yup. Odds are good that you can thank Wright for the veto! Wright voted for it at one committee, but voted against the final form.
SB29 - some crapola regarding gun sales paperwork, more or less the same story as AB1142 above - vetoed after getting kicked all over the capitol building like a hackie sack. Again: a veto probably had a LOT to do with Wright.
SB130 - Passed - it's another "must sell trigger lock with gun" bill. It was passed after getting limited from it's initial slightly nastier state. Looks to me like another case of "it was gonna pass anyways, might as well let Rod cache some Demo points".
The bills Wright voted AGAINST were the worst of the worst:
SB15 and
SB23 were the "junk gun" and "assault weapons" bills.
AB202 was the one gun a month thing
Upshot:
This is one case where you can't judge the guy purely by his voting record. With the two vetos, we can see weird sneaky behind-the-scenes stuff going on that Wright almost certainly had a hand in completely separate from his paper voting record. In other cases, the "fix was in" and the bills were going to pass regardless.
In other words, this is what a desperate last-ditch defensive stand looks like. Criticizing this is about like court-marshalling a rifle platoon for giving way under fire against a whole tank division.
What's not reflected:
I've personally seen Wright fight like a demon on crack for our rights.