By DrVino
Beginning January 1st, 2015 California gun sales require the Firearms Safety Certificate. Many people and dealers are still in the dark about the process. The DOJ has been caught with its pants down, unprepared for the rollout of this new process. The website dealers use to administer the test and issue the FSC crashes regularly, although current reports from select FFLs indicate the process is improving. It’s almost as if it was developed by CGI Federal. Here is what is known about the new process . . .
If you hold a valid Handgun Safety Certificate, you can use that to purchase handguns until it expires. Then you need an FSC.
If you have a valid Hunters Safety Certificate (or a valid/current hunting license), you can use that to purchase long guns until it expires. Then you need an FSC.
Whereas the previous HSC was a pre-printed card — about the size of a Social Security card — that the dealer filled in and signed, the new system requires dealers to either print the card, now twice the aforementioned size, on plain white paper or card stock.
Corporate offices of some chain stores are reportedly living minute-to-minute, getting info from the DOJ to their stores. Some seem unsure if they are in compliance or not. People are unable to buy because the system crashes and they can’t get through the process of testing and FSC issuance. The DOJ website used by FFLs to administer the process crashed briefly on January 2nd and again for a long period on Saturday, January 3rd. Crashes are occurring daily, according to some FFLs.
There are accounts of people wanting to purchase firearms and leaving the store because they are unable to initiate the testing process. The test is required for the FSC. The FSC is required to initiate a Dealer’s Record Of Sale (form 4773, registration and background check).
People are apparently unable to pick up guns put into purgatory prior to December 31st. Initially, everyone thought guns purchased and put through the background check and state-mandated 10-day waiting period before year-end would be exempted from the new FSC, even if the pick-up date was after January 1st. A week ago, according to one sporting goods store manager, word came down that those buyers in that situation would now need to have an FSC to pick up their guns, an additional $25 or $35 cost.
While he is able to describe the process in theory, this sporting goods store manager has not seen the process executed in its entirety and hasn’t been able to release or sell a gun this year so far.
What we have here is more than a technical violation of the spirit of the Second Amendment. If the system in place bars people from obtaining firearms (by design, bureaucratic bloat or simple incompetence), then the people’s rights have been infringed.
Furthermore, it appears that Kamala Harris, America’s Best Looking Attorney General, isn’t particularly interested in enforcing existing “gun safety” laws she seems to hold so dear. In fact, her department’s failure to prevent this debacle speaks directly to her true intentions: willful and deliberate infringement of Second Amendment rights of Californians.