California Just Got Even Tougher On Guns the huffingtonpost.com headline proclaims. “The state has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Voters just said they’re not enough,” the strap-line ads, helpfully. Copy that. No wait. Don’t copy that. Highlight and delete Proposition 63 ASAP. Which could actually happen, should a case challenging its provision or provisions reach the Supreme Court — now that the Trump administration will elevate a strict Constitutionalist to the Supremes. Meanwhile, HuffPo wonders where the NRA was in all this:
However, the nation’s most prominent gun lobby ― the National Rifle Association ― largely stayed out of the fray, spending just $95,000 to try to defeat the measure. (In contrast, the NRA has put up almost $4 million to fight a background check measure in Nevada.) That disparity could be credited to California’s demographics ― the state is largely Democratic, and polls indicated the measure was likely to pass. The laws signed by Brown earlier this year also may have discouraged the NRA from spending much on the campaign, as some of the components most objectionable to gun rights activists were already set to go into effect.
As the former roasted chicken magnate Kenny Rogers sang, you got to know when to hold ’em. The NRA had to deploy its limited resources where they could do most good. Despite the Golden State’s goose-stepping march towards civilian disarmament, I reckon the NRA did an excellent job defending gun rights in this election cycle.
Anyway, again, gun rights advocates now have a plan B. It will take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement and there’s no guarantee the Courts will strike down these unconstitutional regulations, but some hope is better than none.