California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pile of new gun bills into law recently. We’ve talked about some of them, including the idiotic training mandate that applies to people moving into the state from elsewhere — as if anyone moves to California voluntarily, anyway.
But I’m clearly not the only one miffed by what’s happening in the so-called Golden State.
Larry Keane of the NSSF isn’t amused, either.
California already requires universal background checks, generally imposes a mandatory 10-day waiting period on firearm purchases and maintains extensive restrictions on prohibited possessors. It’s not that California doesn’t have layers of redundant gun control laws that don’t actually address criminals but trample on Second Amendment rights. California is where gun control continues to generate constitutional litigation. The moves are less surprising, though, given Gov. Newsom’s 2028 presidential ambitions.
Another Requirement for Lawful Purchasers
Senate Bill 948 adds a new training requirement to California’s existing firearm ownership training certificate process. Beginning Jan. 1, 2029, affected applicants must complete at least four hours of qualifying instruction within the preceding year, including live-fire exercises at a shooting range. Some exemptions are in place.
California already requires most prospective purchasers to obtain a “firearm safety certificate,” pass a written examination and demonstrate safe firearm handling. Background checks and a waiting period impose further requirements before a lawful transfer can occur.
SB 948 introduces even more layers and Second Amendment roadblocks involving course availability, higher instructional costs, transportation considerations and access to shooting facilities. For prospective purchasers, those costs come even before taking home a lawfully purchased firearm. For instructors and ranges, the requirement creates additional demand for qualifying training.
Whether these new mandates will provide any measurable benefits beyond the existing certification system remains to be seen. There is a distinction between increasing restrictions and requirements for lawful firearm purchasers and addressing how criminals acquire firearms, almost always illegally.
I’m pretty sure that the current certification system hasn’t yielded any benefits, as it is, and there’s zero chance this new scheme will do anything, either. As Keane notes, the bad guys almost always get guns illegally.
Keane has thoughts on a lot of the other bills, too, and you should go read them. This is the one that gets me, though, because it’s not like they’d tolerate this kind of thing with the right to vote. Hell, they don’t even want to require IDs to vote, but they want training classes for guns, which is something I’ll be talking more about this weekend.
Regardless, California has made it clear that the Second Amendment doesn’t matter to them nearly as much as benefiting illegal aliens, pretending neighborhoods in Los Angeles burning were the result of literally anything but their own incompetence, and kowtowing to socialists in every avenue they can find.
There’s a lot to hate in this slew of gun bills, and I don’t think we’re capable of hating them enough. If we tried, we’d likely prove that spontaneous human combustion is real, and I’d rather not become ash until I’m already dead and gone, and even then I’d rather not.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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