“Citing the failure of the state Legislature to act, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he has collected 600,000 signatures of California voters, more than enough to qualify a gun control initiative for the November ballot,” latimes.com reports, without mentioning the fact that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg paid for agitators to collect those ballots. “Over 600,000 registered voters want to take some bold action on gun safety,” Newsome trumpeted. If approved, the “Safety for All” initiative (full text below) would . . .
. . . require background checks for purchasers of ammunition, ban possession of ammunition magazine clips holding more than 10 rounds [ED: described in the initiative as “military style assault weapon magazines”], provide a process for felons and other disqualified persons to relinquish firearms and require owners to report when their guns are lost or stolen.
The initiative would also address an issue caused by the previous adoption of Proposition 47, which made thefts of guns worth under $1,000 a misdemeanor. The ballot measure would make all gun thefts a felony.
Problem? Who’s going to comply with a mandate to sell or surrender “high capacity” ammunition magazines (not clips) to the state government? Statistically speaking, no one. Unless there’s a major law enforcement initiative. Which would be inadvisable on a whole lot of levels. Here’s the penalty for importing, owning or coddling a “military style magazine”:
(c) Except as provided in Article 2 (commencing with Section 32400) of this chapter and in Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 17700) of Division 2 of Title 2, commencing July 1, 2017, any person in this state who possesses any largecapacity magazine, regardless of the date the magazine was acquired, is guilty of an infraction punishable by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars ($100) per large capacity magazine, or is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars ($100) per large capacity magazine, by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
California. What you gonna do?