Let me put it bluntly: it's not possible to do serious public records searches in California where the number of respondents is large. Too many agencies will tell you "so go sue us" knowing that it's impossible to do so with enough to make a difference.
That's because in California, there is no penalty for government agencies (local or state) to wrongfully withhold public records.
"Prop59" from a few years back hasn't made any difference.
In some states, cash penalties apply for wrongful failure to provide records. There was an effort last year to put in such a system, but the bill failed - barely - it set a cost of $100 a day for withholding records up to a maximum of $10,000. The newspaper lobbies (calaware.org and cfac.org) will try again next year.
IF that passes, it may be possible to reform CCW in California.
It's not possible until then. I think it will pass eventually. Prop59 a couple years ago was an attempt to reform public records access, pushed for hard by state political powerhouse John Burton in his last year as a state senator. The current public records situation is screwed up in every field, not just ours, and the situation is considered in some circles as a slur on Burton. That's why it was his protege Mark Leno who backed this year's reform effort.
Yeah, tell me all about the irony...our future in CCW depended on Mark Leno
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And will again next year.
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I would like to respond directly to jnojr:
For the moment, yes, I'm focused on election reform. I'm paid a small amount in the field. For right now I'm involved in a statewide project in Arizona documenting how county election processes work, and now documenting how the election was run in a few key counties and digging into what appears to be two fraud instances. I can't go into details there yet. I happen to think it's important.
But in the meantime, I still know a bit about knife law in California and when people ask me for informational help in that field I do so or pass them to people with more info. I received EMail on that subject from a public defender in Orange County not long ago, and we managed to get the guy off pre-trial after I described how linerlocks work to the attorney.
That's not "dabbling" in something, that's just helping out where I can and it's all I can do.
I've gotten involved in trying to block bad knife laws over the years, and during my tenure with CCRKBA asked their permission to do so. When a bill was being pushed to ban knives in the state capitol building, I learned that it was in part Sikh related and made a couple of phone calls to the local Sikh temple to learn what their situation was with issues like locker-at-the-door storage. Turns out they can't do that, the cutlery has to be under their control at all times so as to be certain it's "clean". The only time the knife (Kirpan) can be drawn is either to save a life (combat, cutting seat belt post-crash, whatever) or to do ritual food prep within the temple.
I was the only RKBA lobbyist to research it in that detail.
To say that I "dabble" in both knives and guns is to make two mistakes: not just calling me a "dabbler", which is your opinion I guess, but also calling that two issues at all. To me the RKBA includes knives, period, from both a historical and practical perspective.
Did I get involved in ferret legalization almost 20 years ago? Yeah. And yeah, I still keep up with that admittedly silly subject. They're cute, what can I say?
I won't apologize for my life. I haven't usually succeeded in fixing things, but...I've gotten my licks in too here and there
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At least I've tried.
