Ammo Registration Passes on to Governor! ....

Posted on 09-08-2009

Update 9/14/2009

The Assembly passed out the infamous "ammo registration" bill on Friday, Sept. 11. It now goes to the Governor's desk where he has the options of signing, veto, or letting it just become law without paying attention to it. This bill joins Senate Bill 585 which bans gun shows at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and SB 41, which creats more paperwork for retailers. All three bills are extremely anti-gun owner and deserve your committed time and effort to see to it that the Governor VETOS all of them. Please contact Gov. Schwarzenegger at 916-445-2841, fax at 916-558-3160 or e-mail at Governor Contact Info and urge him to veto AB 962, SB 41 and SB 585.

The right side of our homepage contains the link to the Governors offices throughout the state. Please call, fax and write so that he knows the will of the majority of the people in this state. GOC has been working with the Governors office in seeking a veto on all of these measures.

9/11/2009 - AB 962 passed the Senate. Due to amendments placed in the Senate, the bill goes back to the Assembly for what is called "concurence." That is to match up both sides so both houses say the same thing on the bill. Keep the calls of opposition coming. Should the bill pass concurence, the Governors office is next to be called. Links to Governor on homepage under Important Links on right side of the homepage.

September 8, 2009

Contact: Sam Paredes 916 967-4970

Members of the California State Senate

State Capitol

Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: Opposition to AB 962: Ammunition.

Dear Senators:

Recent amendments submitted just before the Friday, September 4th, deadline only serve to intensify our opposition to AB 962. The irony is that the amendments, which do nothing more than remove any costs directly incurred by the Department of Justice to administer the program, changes the bill to almost completely reflect the Federal ammunition registration program established in the 1968 Gun Control Act that was discarded by Congress in 1986 when the U.S. Treasury Department testified that the program was of no use in crime fighting.

In the 18 years that the nationwide mandate (no state was exempt from the program) was in place, not a single crime was solved due to the registration program. Not a single crime solved even though there were literally 10’s of millions of recorded transactions. If the program had even a shred of merit, one would think that even a few crimes would have been solved. The fact is there were none. In order to get this bill through the CA legislature, Assemblyman Kevin DeLeon has now amended this bill to be a virtual duplicate of the program which was eliminated by Congress.

Ammunition or ammunition purchaser registration, in any form, serves only to infringe upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. It has proven to do nothing towards preventing criminals from violating federal or state laws. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Haynes has held that criminals cannot be compelled to obey these registration laws because doing so would violate their right against self-incrimination. They can be prosecuted for breaking the law but they cannot be compelled to obey the law. Therefore there is no crime prevention aspect to AB 962.

AB 962 will do nothing to prevent criminals from acquiring ammunition and will do nothing to assist law enforcement in catching criminals. Although this bill was amended to remove costs incurred by the CA DOJ, it will still cost California millions of dollars annually in lost sales tax revenue as law-abiding ammunition purchasers, who will not submit to registration and thumb-printing will simply drive to Arizona, Nevada or Oregon to make their purchases. California’s small business and the State General Fund will be the big losers.

For these reasons, Gun Owners of California strongly opposes AB 962.

Sincerely,

Samuel A. Paredes

Executive Director

Cc: Members of the State Senate