California governor Jerry Brown signs law funding seizure of legally purchased guns

[Fire Walk With Me]

Fawkes Mulder Fawkes Mulder ‏@Star_Fawkes

California governor Jerry Brown signs law funding seizure of legally purchased guns
http://rt.com/usa/california-gun-control-law-729/ …

California Gov. Jerry Brown has approved legislation that will allocate $24 million to hire special agents that will track down and seize guns from 20,000 Californians who have been disqualified from owning them.

Thousands of Californians have made legal purchases of handguns or assault rifles, but have since become ineligible from owning them due to mental illness or a criminal conviction. The measure, SB 140, will provide the funds for agents to find these individuals and confiscate their weapons.

Mark Len (D-San Francisco), author of the new legislation, said California has a system that tracks cases in which gun owners became disqualified from keeping their weapons, but has always lacked the funds to go after them.

“We are fortunate in California to have the first and only system in the nation that tracks and identifies individuals who at one time made legal purchases of firearms but are now barred from possessing them,” he said in a statement. “However, due to a lack of resources, only a few of these illegally possessed weapons have been confiscated, and the mountain of firearms continues to grow each day.”

(More at the link.)

[mwrguy]

1. Good

Take 'em all, Jerry.

[NBachers]

2. That's Mark Leno

[Live and Learn]

3. As I stated in another thread on this...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2791360

I am interested in knowing how they are going to go about this?

How are they going to determine who still owns a gun? Are they planning to raid homes to see if a gun is in the home? Do they make everyone aware of the fact that they can no longer own a gun and give them a chance to turn in any guns first?

Does anybody know the details?

[Demeter]

4. I suppose a State Police representative goes to the individual

to verify his status as to (in)eligibility to own a gun, demands the guns or information as to where they went, if the disqualified person is no longer in possession. And then, the State updates the files accordingly. If one is no longer licensed or legal to own guns, the State could demand their surrender without any legal wrangling. Raids wouldn't be required unless there was non-compliance, and in that case, as it is a felony for the disqualified individual to own, there's no legal issues as to the propriety of a raid.



I'm assuming that one doesn't renew the gun license every year (no personal experience), as one does with cars. The only reason they demand yearly renewals of car license plates is for taxation...I don't even know if the State correlates car ownership with driving license validity...Maybe gun ownership should be taxed. It's a means of constantly updating the database, and brings in revenue, too.

[NYC_SKP]

5. There is no annual registration of guns in the state.

Felons and parolees might have to register, however, or should.

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. I don't like guns, I especially dislike the thousands of needless gun-related deaths and injuries

and I definitely want to live in a society where we all grin and genuinely agree to put away violence for good, but with the extremely obviously encroaching surveillance state in effect, I worry deeply that this is a warning sign of far worse to come. Again, I don't like guns, and I know that SWAT teams, drones, and etc. etc. etc. trump what the majority of people have at their disposal, but this makes me very, very nervous. If it's not a Trend, maybe it's okay. If it's a Trend, then all 11 signs of Fascism will have come true and we're fucked.

Again, I don't like guns and don't own any, and I dislike gun violence and our gun culture very much, but I dislike the encroaching surveillance state far, far more deeply. Let this measure not become a Trend.

[Knightraven]

7. With the people with a criminal conviction, it is easy to do this, however...

does this make anyone with a mental illness unable to have a weapon? Does people that is classed as having a psychological problem, but not one that makes them dangerous, lose theirs or is their a degree or classification they go by?

I ask this because it terrifies me about putting people in one lump and treating them in a way that they don't deserve. Where would they stop at "Lumping" people? How far could they go with this "Lumping"?