Ah, California. The land of beautiful mountains, amazing desserts, awesome surfing, the Motion Picture Industry, fake boobs and the first ever gun law that allows courts to seize your weapons if a close relative thinks you’re cracked.
Yep, as of last Tuesday, your moody, manic, anti-Second Amendment, Castro-loving, eco-terrorist, tree-humping, Prius-driving twisted sister can call you “crazy”, report you to the cops and boom … Deputy Wedge Figgus can confiscate your Remington 870 ‘til a court decides you’re not demented.
Check it out …
First law of its kind in the U.S.
California residents can now petition a judge to temporarily remove a close relative’s firearms if they fear their family member will commit gun violence, thanks to a new safety measure signed into law Tuesday (9/30/14) by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Under the “Gun Violence Restraining Order” law, a successful petition would allow a judge to remove the close relative’s guns for at least 21 days, with the option to extend that period to a year, pending an additional hearing, according to Reuters.. The law is the first of its kind in the U.S., and will be an extension of existing legislation that temporarily prohibits people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms.”
California, like Obama, has a one-size-fits-all answer for all conundrums and it is this: Mo’ Gubbermint!
As soon as Governor Moon Beam signed this highly subjective, guilty-before-innocent, Second-Amendment infringing piece of … uh … legislation into law, I shot my gun and liberty loving, NYT best-selling author friend Frank Miniter an email asking him his thoughts. Herewith are Miniter’s musings …
Should my crazy aunt be able to take my Second Amendment rights away? She hates guns and thinks people who own them are nuts. Toss that to an anti-gun activist judge and they’re guilty ‘til proven innocent. I thought it was the other way around?
That’s the first thought I had when California’s Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that allows a person’s relatives to petition a judge to take away their guns.
Now, if a parent or anyone else knows someone who is clearly becoming a threat to themselves or to society they have a duty to intervene and, if necessary, to seek help. That is already how American society works. But to argue that my crazy aunt—a person who once told me she would vote for Hugo Chavez if she could … a person who has told me the police should go door to door to seize everyone’s guns—has some special right to decide I don’t deserve the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights then I say that’s not just unconstitutional but also just plain nuts.
I realize a judge has to side with my aunt, but I’ve done enough reporting to know that too many judges are willing to use their personal politics to make decisions. Also, a judge wouldn’t want to be accountable for not disarming someone who is really a danger to others. All that means that people would have to prove they are innocent before a judge after their right to bear arms had been infringed. They’d be assumed guilty of an intention to harm others. American freedom rests upon the belief that a person must be considered innocent until found guilty by a court of law.
Despite this Gov. Brown empowered an anti-gun relative to meddle with the rights of a woman in their family who bought a gun after an ex-boyfriend began stalking her. They’d allow my aunt to smugly toy with my constitutional rights.
Relatives should speak out, but they shouldn’t be able to press their views on others. I don’t see how this makes California safer. Instead of empowering bad behavior why don’t we work with parents and others to diagnose those who clearly need help and then to find real ways to help these troubled individuals?
(Get Frank Miniter’s latest book, The Future of the Gun.)
Aside from Frank’s frank take, here’s some of my thoughts on what could curb violence without infringing on our Second Amendment rights.
If the anti-gun goobers truly wish to curb murder, then they should get busy banning fire, fists and feet because according to the FBI’s latest report the aforementioned fell way more folks than firearms.
Also, do we really need more laws? Why can’t the family just take care of their own business like we did in Texas back in the day. If we had a family member that was acting stupid threatening to kill someone, we either slapped some sense into them, or bent their gun barrels, or Baker Acted them or all the above until they dialed the heck down. Problem solved. No need for the Second Amendment to be violated.
And lastly, if these Liberals really, truly, want to see murder rates drop in their state, then instead of creating new, unconstitutional laws, why not instead enforce immigration laws, because illegal aliens murder a whole lot of folks. Especially in Los Angeles.