Not yet...
All through this thread we've been talking in terms of "The PRK's dun gone an' banned da Fiddy!..."
Uh, nope. I beg to differ.
All the new law does is require that .50's be registered as Assault Weapons under provisions of the existing AW law.
That law DOES NOT BAN possesion of AW's.
It WILL NOT BE ILLEGAL TO OWN THEM.
It simply requires their registration. Granted, registration equates to confiscation, but nobody's tried to confiscate all the handguns yet, and they've had required registration for YEARS.
What the AW law does is make it illegal to transfer/buy AW's within the state. If you wanna sell one, it's gotta be outta state. You wanna buy one, yer SOL.
Got one ALREADY? Good on yer. You get to keep it, provided you register it.
What you're NOT allowed to own, what's ACTUALLY BANNED, is UN-registered AW's.
AW registration compliance in this state is DISMAL. DOJ estimates it at around 10% of existing guns. But UNLIKE pistols, they have no real idea of where they actually are. DROS (Departmental Registration Of Sale) fees applied to long guns record nothing, as the background check for a long gun with DOJ
has no gun-specific information, like caliber or serial number, sent in to DOJ with the background check request.
They don't know where they are. That makes it hard to bang on doors and round 'em up. All they can do is restrict further sales in hopes of diminishing the supply. It's going to take a LOOONG time for all of the current registered AW owners to die off. Until then, one could reasonably expect to see them turn up at ranges and such. Ranges, in my experience, DO NOT call the police when someone brings a gun of 'iffy' legality to shoot, they just boot the offender out. They don't WANT the role of enforcement, but they don't want to be 'friendly', per se.
I imagine it's going to take years and years until any enforcement agency would be justified in taking the time to validate the registration of every AW-style gun they might see, presuming they even see them at all. As stated, gun owners are a law-abiding lot, who rarely receive LE scrutiny. With a 90% non-compliance rate, I think there's going to be PLENTY of "Assault Weapons" in reserve to up-end a heavy-handed Gubmint
should said Gubmint decide to start ultimate tyranny by first coming to collect the guns they know about. And that doesn't include all the rest of the NON AW-type guns.
Militarily obsolete, as most bolt guns could be considered to be, is a far cry from 'ineffective'. Should Gubmint-sponsored JBT's of some sort start Feinsteining the registered gunlist, (Feinsteining="Round them up, Mr. and Mrs America, turn them all in".) that being about the only circumstance I can imagine that even BEGINS to merit the idea of armed resistance, there's going to be 'a rifle behind every blade of grass' potentially primed to 'vote from the rooftops', (Which targets POLICY MAKERS, not field enforcers, BTW.) should so drastic a response prove to be neccessary.
I don't think the legiscritters are arrogant/confident enough in their position to think they can get away with Feinsteining. Restricting sales is not banning possesion. They haven't even banned possesion of class III stuff, but you haven't been able to legally BUY any of it in this state for YEARS.
So once again, Korny Kaliforny displays it's arrogance before the rest of the nation by exporting perceived 'dangers' (They're dangerous, right? Capable of causing death and mayhem? Bad thing to have around loose where criminals can get to 'em? That's the rationale behind trying to reduce their numbers, isnt it?) to the REST of the nation that we couldn't give a rat's behind about because we're all Better Than You, Or At Least More Equal.
Nice attitude, eh? We think it's a problem, so you deal with it. We can't be bothered, but it's OK if YOU have to deal with the crime-'n-mayhem-machines we ship out because they frighten us. Kinda reminds me of when Kennedy opened Florida's ports to Cuba, whereupon Castro emptied his prisons onto our shores, touching off a rather brutal and virulent crime wave. I suppose having Korny Kaliforny play the role of Evil Commie Castro isn't too much of a stretch.
Doesn't speak to well of our opinion of the rest of the U.S. though, does it?
Naturally, you'd never get the Gubmint to admit the REAL reason they want to export these guns: They leave WAY TOO MUCH POWER in the hands of the Great Unwashed. That they KNOW they're skating on thin ice, and that the level of the undercurrent of dis-satisfaction is rising. Ruins all those delicately-crafted pretenses they've stacked up to stand on so they can look down on us and feel superior enough to make all our decisions for us, because they know better.
Pretenses are like snow: a good dose of sunlight would leave these arrogant legiscritters fumbling in a lot of mud.
That being said, I repeat: Revolution? Not yet...
Re: the initiative idea.
Good idea. Here's another one. Send up an initiative requiring a sunset clause in all legislation passed from here-on out. That'd keep the critters in the Capital sty busy defending and trying to renew existing laws they want to preserve, so they have a lot less time trying to establish that they're accomplishing something for their salaries by passing ever more laws. A Legislature with time on it's hands is the tyrant's workshop.
We need to ram this one through on a Federal level too, which is how I originally was informed of this idea either here or on TFL. I'd cite a credit to the source, but I can't remember who it was. I wish I could, as it's a FANTASTIC idea, and an obvious solution to the constant encroachment of laws on our freedoms and liberties.
"When motivated by the Media Microscope under the Public Eye, an Idle Legislature tries to justify it's paycheck by becoming the Tyrant's Workshop, passing ever more laws to the detriment of Civil Liberty."--H_R_G
How's THAT for a hot one!
