Good Opinion Piece From the Sacramento Bee

[Subdeacon Joe]

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/01/5698182/dan-walters-gun-bills-a-blind.html

 

Dan Walters: Gun bills a blind spot in California Legislature's crusade for rights

dwalters@sacbee.com Published Sunday, Sep. 01, 2013

Both houses of the state Legislature spent several hours Monday
working on pending bills, and a strong subcurrent was the protection and
enhancement of personal and civil rights.

The beneficiaries of
Monday's bills included, in no particular order, immigrants, prison
inmates, women, abortion clinics, gays and lesbians, beer drinkers,
bicyclists, Internet users, pregnant women, drug transporters, public
school students, the mentally ill and, interestingly enough, mountain
lions.

One lengthy Assembly discourse marked the 50th anniversary
of the march on Washington to demand an end to racial segregation and
the denial of voting rights to African Americans.

 

Were one to look at the broader array of legislation, the list would
be even longer. One recently enacted bill, for instance, creates the
legal right of transgender public school students to be treated
according to their self-designated status, regardless of their
biological genders.

So far, so good. In America, a basic
governmental duty is to protect constituents' civil and human rights,
and while we may debate the specifics, the bedrock mission remains
vital.

However, there is a significant exception to the
Legislature's zealous protection of rights, one group of law-abiding
Californians whose rights are being assaulted, even though they are
specifically mentioned in the nation's Constitution – the millions of
Californians who own and use firearms for hunting and target-shooting.

The
same Democratic legislators who passionately argue for the protection
of other rights, including those of felons, are pushing at least two
dozen bills that would harass law-abiding gun owners.

They argue
that imposing more restrictions on guns, gun owners and ammunition would
somehow improve public safety, but offer no empirical evidence to back
that contention. One wonders whether the Democrats who carry anti-gun
bills really believe they'll have some beneficial effect on society, or
are just following what has become the knee-jerk party line.

Whatever
their motives, the Democrats seem to believe that gun owners can be
political targets because they tend to live in suburban and rural areas
that don't support their party, and that they can make legal gun
ownership so expensive and full of petty hassles that shooters will just
give up on their hobbies.

If anything, the opposite will occur.
California's already heavy-handed gun regulations, until recently the
tightest in the nation, have had the effect of persuading shooters and
hunters to buy even more guns and ammo before they become even more
expensive and less available. That would be the likely result should a
new batch of rules be enacted.

It's all quite nonsensical – and undercuts the reverence for human and civil rights that the Legislature professes to hold.

Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters . Follow him on Twitter @WaltersBee.

 

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