ammo registry Archives -

Punching Back Twice As Hard

Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA) hopes to ride his Orwellian-named “Safety for All” initiative to the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento. In addition to banning standard capacity magazines, it would mandate background checks akin to a NICS check just to buy ammunition. Moreover, it would ban the private sale or transfer of ammunition. The LA Times reports that much of the initiative wording came from the Legal Center to Prevent Gun Violence (sic).

It appears that Newsom’s professional signature gatherers have accumulated enough names to get it on the ballot in November. Once certified, the battle begins in earnest.

The Coalition for Civil Liberties is made up of a number of diverse groups with one objective in mind – defeat Newsom’s initiative. You have the NRA-affiliated California Rifle & Pistol Association on one end and the Gun Owners of California on the other with the Pink Pistols in the middle. You can’t get more diverse than that!

Women and the LGBTQ communities are traditional Democratic constituencies in California. The Coalition is taking aim directly at those groups to drive a wedge between them and the ammo prohibitionists. They gained a lot of attention with a web ad featuring Nicki Stallard, a trans-gendered woman, and a gun rights activist. (As an aside, I’ve met Nicki at more than one Gun Rights Policy Conference)

Now they are taking it to TV with a very powerful black and white ad featuring a woman being attacked in a parking garage. HotAir reports that Republican strategist Richard Grennell is behind the ad.

Frankly, I don’t care who is behind the ad. I’m just happy that it is so powerful.

City of San Francisco Must Have a Big Legal Budget

From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

SAN FRANCISCO EYES AMMUNITION
REGISTRY – CCRKBA VOWS LAWSUIT

BELLEVUE, WA – Today’s revelation that the City of San Francisco might consider an ammunition registry scheme brought a promise from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms that a lawsuit would quickly follow.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said in a report in the San Francisco Examiner that Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is working with the City Attorney’s Office to “craft legislation” regarding an ammunition registry shows the city has learned nothing from its defeat in court over a 2005 gun ban proposition. CCRKBA joined the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit that nullified the ban because it violates state statute. Now that the Second Amendment has been incorporated to the states by the U.S. Supreme Court, proposals like this one are even more dubious, he observed.

“It appears that Alioto-Pier is trying to be too clever by half,” Gottlieb said. “It’s a de facto registration scheme hiding behind a make-believe effort to crack down on violent crime, and she knows it. We will fight it.”

He noted that it is ironic for the city to be considering such an idea on the eve of the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 24-26 at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency hotel. Gun rights activists and experts from across the nation will gather at the hotel to discuss recent court cases, current legal actions and anti-gun proposals like the one now reportedly being formulated by Alioto-Pier.

“It would seem to me that with the state’s economy in tatters, cutbacks in public safety budgets and federal courts mandating that more criminals must be released from prisons that the city would not make it harder for citizens to defend themselves,” Gottlieb stated. “But in San Francisco, it is politically fashionable to penalize honest people for the misbehavior of the criminal element. It makes you wonder whose side the government is on.

“You can bet we’ll be discussing this at our conference in September,” he concluded. “Ms. Alioto-Pier has an open invitation to attend and explain her scheme to a room full of experts.”