Because California’s gunpocalypse hasn’t been fun enough, Governor Moonbeam piled on a little more yesterday. As the Sacramento Bee details,
Weeks after splitting the difference on a sweeping package of new gun regulations, Gov. Jerry Brown has added one more bill to the pass column.
Brown on Friday announced that he had signed without comment Assembly Bill 857, requiring anyone who manufactures or assembles a homemade firearm to first apply for a unique serial number or other marking from the state Department of Justice, which must then be affixed to the weapon.
The question you’re probably asking yourself: how will they know? If someone builds a gun at home and doesn’t choose to comply with the law…where’s the trip wire? And what’s to prevent an individual caught with an un-serialized homemade gun from claiming he built it before the new law went into effect?
Actually they thought of that. AB 857 require retroactive serialization of all unserialized firearms in the state.
Wait, didn’t Brown veto a similar bill a couple of years ago claiming that it wouldn’t do anything to “advance public safety”? Why yes, yes he did. But this is a new day and there’s a new virulent anti-gun reality in play in the Golden State.
AB 857, supported by gun control and law enforcement groups, is aimed at preventing people who are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms in California from simply making their own at home instead. Rapid advances in three-dimensional printing technology have made it substantially easier to manufacture crude guns out of plastic or metal.
Finally, someone’s done something about a scourge that’s been bedeviling the left coast for decades. Sleep soundly, Californians, in the knowledge that your betters are looking out for you.