“This is Berkeley, so there’s a good portion of people who think ‘Why don’t we just make all the guns go away?’” – Attorney Richard Ruggieri in One of the few attorneys to force a gun maker out of business reflects on his case and the American firearms culture [via latimes.com]
“California dreamin'”
What is it to confuse fantasy and reality?
I think that dream is a acid induced nightmare.
If they want a gun free nation, move to Mexico.
Henry Bowman for the win.
Mexico is EXACTLY what happens when the populace does not have firearms. As I mentioned in my comment below, those California Dreamers somehow failed to imagine that outcome.
Its hard to think for those without a brain..
Smaller scale, but Jamaica is a pretty good example too. Different circumstance, different results, but neither example is good for the ordinary folks.
The radicals and hippies in California have been dreamin’ of becoming the State of Utopia for the last 50 years. You know, that Woodstock-like Coke commercial world of “perfect harmony” where there peace and love crowd out every other human emotion.You and I know that this dream flies in the face of human nature, history and common sense. But since these items have also been banned in California, the dreamers dream on as their state descends into hell…taking with them millions of good people who love individual liberty and freedom. What a nightmare…and it’s creeping eastward as we write.
Why is it they and they alone never suffer the hells they create?
CA will be cleansed by a quake or by National Guardsmen giving Helicopter rides to the leftist scums which ruined that state and the nation as a whole…
I some ways, California is like most states. Rural areas well armed and peaceful, urban areas disarmed and violent.
Meanwhile, progressive financial mismanagement has led California’s state government into a borrowing spiral similar to Illinois. That $h!t will hit the fan in time.
When they dream of what their future holds, they should look at Detroit. That is their future.
Well, about 5 million people did leave California in the last decade. Only about 3.9 million people moved to California from other states. Their meager population growth is coming from illegal aliens.
Many of the people leaving are wealthy, or at least upper middle class with relocatable businesses or skill sets. That undermines further the economy and siphons off tax revenue necessary to support illegals/welfare cases, buy union votes, and palliate the welfare state.
Their future is like Detroit and Puerto Rico, but unlike those failed entities, California is too big to fail. So the federal government will bail them out when the time comes. In that case, California’s future is your future and it will resemble Greece and Cypress.
In 2013, Cypress levied an across the board sudden savings account tax ranging from 6.75. to 9.95%. Literally it was a surprise and immediate snatching of cash from the people’s accounts. Other governments (Poland, Bolivia, France, Ireland, Hungary) have done the same with private retirement accounts. Think fit can’t happen here?
Our government is already eyeing your 401K and IRA, with proposals out there to tax them now or eliminate tax deferral entirely, among others.
I am assuming you meant “Cyprus.” Cypress is a city in Orange County, CA.
What Jonathan said…there are trillions in retirement accounts that I’m sure the Feds view as “their money”.
Now you’re dreaming. They will run away from the mess they have created, trying their best to infect the rest of us…
You’re right, “Cyprus”, not “Cypress”, but I’m not really familiar with Orange County.
Cypress is actually the name of the unincorporated part of Harris County, TX (just outside of Houston) where I live. I type “Cypress” so often and have so many Contacts entries for it that my phone’s autocorrect assumed that’s what I meant.
My mistake for not noticing or proofreading.
I like to point out to the kinder, gentler left-leaning anti-gun types that we have billions of people on the planet who aren’t eating each other in the streets on a daily basis. So, we kinda do already live in that utopia, except for a few a-holes who don’t wish to play along. Furthermore, if we agree that we’re participating in that utopia (for our own parts), then what’s the problem with guns? I own mine, in all honesty, because they’re fun to shoot. And, as it happens, I gain a valuable life skill in case our utopia dissolves or I have a run-in with one of those a-holes.
Kinda throws ’em for a loop when you tell them they need to stop being so negative.
They read 1984 and actually liked it. They want to make that world reality.
“Silicon Valley, exactly why it will be like 1984, except much, much worse. Orwell was just a bit off on the date.”
:channels Apple SuperBowl ad:
And what an ad it was at the time…
Very few people today read anything, and even fewer would understand the meaning behind 1984 and Brave New World.
or Animal Farm. or Atlas Shrugged. Brains too atrophied to perform a thought. Not even a little one…
Add also the Fountain Head to that reading list.
Just read For the New Intellectual, much more to the point and less painful than actually reading one of the novels
Why not start with cancer.
And hippies.
Hippies are cancer.
I made a comment about dirty hippies and my 8 year old asked “What’s a dirty hippy?”
Where to begin, where to begin?
Ah, the innocence of a child.
Physically strong bad people agree with him.
They apparently never read “The Lord of the Flies”.
This guy is an ass. That said Jennings could have been driven out of business today with the plcaa in place because he sold a product that had massive design and build issues.
Then again the crux of it being on not being able to unload a gun with out the safety on is moronic too considering many guns have no safety.
I was under the impression that the safety being turned off fired the gun though.
That kid would have never been shot if the baby sitter had followed at least 3 of the 4 safety rules.
That was something I sorely neglected in retrospect, I surrender the point to you sir. Even if the Jennings was a heap he should have at worse ended up with say a bullet hole in his floor or ceiling.
I believe they call those ‘Glock holes’.
For those of you wondering: the now defunct gun company this tool drove under was Bryco Arms. If that sounds familiar to some of you, you may recall the loss to the gun community at large was pretty small; their products weren’t exactly coveted collectables. A quick Google search says the parts and machinery were bought up by Jimenez Arms, that should tell you something.
Still: it’s kinda annoying that any gun maker, however lousy they were, could be put under by a vulture like him…
Born and raised in CA. Great weather, but I cannot believe what the corrupt leaders have done to it. Hope with the elections for POTUS in November things change. Definitely looking to retire in another state or country like many others folks that are current residents…
Moved to Ca in 1978 after my military service to go to school on the GI Bill. The huge changes I’ve seen since make me very sad. Leaving on retirement for a better state. They’ll ban most firearms within 10 years or less and any you can have will cost a lot of money to buy ammo for and own.
Here’s a fun thought expiriment we will all hate.
This is the attorney that put Jennings out of business;
“This is a low-cost, low-quality firearm,” Ruggieri told the jury. “Sold primarily in pawnshops to people who have little or no experience or training. This gun defines its own market, because people with experience or training don’t buy guns like this.”
This actually echoes the sentiments of many if not most of the commenters here.
Here’s the question; would CA still have it’s MSRs and standard capacity magazines if some sort of training and licensing compromise had been reached?
Said training would cost in excess of five grand and six months by this point.
How’s this for a question: Would California’s gun laws be where they are today if Ronald Reagan hadn’t signed the law to ban open carry of loaded fire arms just to stop minorities from exercising their rights?
Damn…
Or if he did not give the Leftists how many millions of new welfare voters?
Moron trusted the left too much and we all suffered for it. You can not fair or honest with the fair and dishonest..
Answer: almost certainly no.
We can’t know for certain, but to be allowed to purchase a handgun in California you’ve had to taken a class and passed an exam to get your Handgun Safety Certificate since 1994.
That was almost a decade before Jennings was shut down, so the person who shot the kid either had to have taken the class (he wouldn’t have been old enough to buy a gun before then) or gotten his gun illegally.
I’m in no way surprised that a California jury didn’t hold the guy to be responsible for his own stupidity. Personal responsibility and accountability isn’t really a thing in the Golden State.
You never had to take a class to take or pass the test for the HSC; all you had to do was read the pamphlet provided by the DOJ. 20 questions, multiple choice, even an idiot could pass. Now it is the Firearms safety certificate, which covers long arms as well as handguns, the test is 30 questions, again multiple choice. And still an idiot without a high school education can pass it. (I just got a FSC, required to purchase a rifle, and had no problem scoring 30 of 30.) Technically, the law also requires the buyer to perform a safe handling demonstration, but from my experience, people who are clueless about safely loading and unloading a firearm can pass that too. Unlike other states, taking the NRA beginner’s safe handling class or similar s not required.
So instead of requiring a basic firearms class, California went the way of forcing manufacturers to build handguns that are meant to protect ourselves from our own stupidity. At first, it was a requirement that a handgun pass reliability and drop safety testing, which was and is rigorous. This effectively eliminated the sales of any new “Saturday Nite Specials” like the Jennings.But that wasn’t enough, at least for semiauto pistols. Then there had to be a loaded chamber indicator (LCI) to tell people that the gun was loaded. Not satisfied, the state required a manual safety. Then it was a magazine disconnect, because there are people out there who think that if they pull the mag out, the gun is unloaded. So instead of a simple class to teach the four rules and safe gun handling practices, the State has placed the burden of the stupidity of the common man on the =manufacturers to protect us from ourselves.
“would CA still have it’s MSRs and standard capacity magazines if some sort of training and licensing compromise had been reached?”
Well, if the Australian, Canadian or British experience is anything to go by, no. It’d just be another hoop to jump through, and then they’d push for more restrictions. There is NOTHING that will be good enough for antigunners, and no compromise position you can take that will stop the process.
Wait, you think you can compromise with the California gun control lobby?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA-<cough><choke>…HAHAHAHAHA!
I guess those people in Berkley aren’t really thinking then… Because guns will never go away. Not ever.
I recall a documentary about a black market 1911 forged in a shithole hut in Asia (cannot remeber which country exactly), which traveled all over, and was completely untraceable.
As many have said before, the genie is out of the bottle.
I think that particular documentary was about a 1911 made in the Philippines.
Regardless, there are nice YouTube videos showing skilled craftsman making similar firearms in what are basically mud huts in Pakistan or a neighboring country … using nothing much more than human powered tools. (I seem to recall seeing a large stone flywheel turning a spindle for a drill press or lathe or something and want to say the operator was using his foot to keep the flywheel spinning.)
Here is a link to one such video:
Not possible. That’s super illegal.
Heck there was a guerilla movement on an island in the South Pacific with an arms embargo in place that was building M16’s out of their huts!!
If you can’t even stop people on a resource scarce Fourth World island with an arms embargo building a high-tech rifle design literally from scratch then you won’t be getting rid of guns any time soon.
Every gun in the US prior to GCA 1968 is pretty effectively untraceable. I always have wondered why the pearl-clutchers get so exited about being able to trace a gun, like it’s going to prevent crime or something.
A grinder and a few mins will make even “modern” guns untraceable.
If the serial is somewhere not structurally critical, sure, you can grind deep enough to make it disappear.
But you gotta grind deep. Just filing/grinding it smooth leaves a few ways to raise that stamped number. Classic is acid, the newish technique of electron backscatter diffraction requires essentially removing the stamped number panel completely, or they will recover the numbers.
I’ve seen this argument before, but I’ve never seen a reason to care whether a gun is untraceable or not. If the authorities end up with the gun, I assume they will be responsible for tracing it in order to return it to the original owner, but I doubt they will actually expend the effort to do so. If it was used in a crime and left behind, that would obviously indicate that the person who it was traced back to is the one person on the planet you can be sure did NOT commit the crime, or he would have taken it with him! So, WTF difference does it make whether a gun is traceable or not? If you leave it to me to guess, I’d say it is a fine wild goose chase for the antis to run around yelling about, if they think it will make some kind of difference.
All of mine are traceable, and they shoot just fine.
16V,
I’ve seen those techniques used on stamped serial numbers, and it’s pretty impressive how what looks like smooth, homogeneous metal can hold hidden information that can be extracted. Do you know if such techniques can be used to recover laser engraving that’s been ground off? I assume it works by revealing hidden stresses and changes to the metal’s grain structure caused by the stamping, which would seem like might not be present with laser engraving.
Stinkeye, I think you have a decent understanding – there are differences in the grain structure with stamping. Laser engraving is a bit different, the residual stresses left in the metal are from the heat, and the grain hasn’t change quite as much as stamping. But there are still ways…
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, this will get you started.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18662602
Thanks!
The only way to completely destroy a stamped marking is to drill it out all the way through ’till you can see daylight.
If it is a structure part, a talented welder can fill the hole…
We’ve found Matthew McConaughey’s next movie, Well, Alright……let’s get those naughty guns.
Mine are very naughty.
They always leave the toilet seat up, at least, that’s what I tell my wife.
“This is Berkeley, so there’s a good portion of people who think ‘Why don’t we just make all the guns go away?’” – Attorney Richard Ruggieri
If firearms go away, the youngest, fittest human predators will quite literally rape and pillage with impunity and reduce our existence to the most Hellish, nightmarish situation imaginable.
And therein lies the incredible irony. Those California Dreamers who have enough imagination to consider the upside of life without firearms failed to imagine the downside to life without firearms.
Blinded by their goodness, that all people think like them. It’s the bright shinning lie they tell themselves repeatedly.
Meanwhile, they project their instability and immaturity on everyone else.
They are the same ones saying we should not own guns because we are no different than the criminals…we’ll shoot someone we disagree with in line at the coffee shop, for example.
No; I don’t think they believe everyone is good at all. I think just the opposite is true. They think everyone is bad and MUST be controlled…controlled by the benevolent State.
That’s the direction their starry eyed worship goes…the State, and more to the point, Marxist Authoritarian State.
As but one example, consider the image of a bunch of Progressive reporters in rapt idolization of HRC:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CruOelAUIAEbl5_.jpg
Check out the facial expressions and body language…they LOVE her Totalitarian/Authoritarian leanings.
The rest of us? The Proles? The non-ruling class? We are the ‘evil’ ones in their minds, which is indeed odd since that is just projection of their own selves.
As has been said…Progressivism is a mental illness.
Unintended consequences. The bane of all Marxists.
Fifteen bucks, a stop at the hardware store and I have a gun….period. No serial number, no training, no form to fill out, no safety, no magazine, no limit on number of shots it can fire, NO amount of legislation changes this fact.
And yet California infringement continues.
mk10108,
Oh, come on … no way! We all know that the cost of steel has gone up and those components at the hardware store will cost at least $20 these days.
Perhaps more, if you include California sales tax.
You mean the California sales tax collected at the barrel of a gun that funds a lot of those California Dreamer fantasies?
“This is Berkeley, so there’s a good portion of people who think ‘Why don’t we just make all the guns go away?’”
Yes! Yes! And then we’ll close our eyes and wish and wish and wish, and everyone will all get along, and we will have ponies and ice cream!
OK granola boy, I’ll bite…
So ALL of the guns then right?
ALL of the bad guy’s guns, ALL of the Police and Government’s guns, ALL of the guns that could be potentially smuggled into our country…
….Or are you really just talking about all of the guns legally owned by Law-abiding American Citizens to protect themselves from all of those other guns (and bats and knives, etc) – and the potential tyranny that an all powerful police-state government would then have over it’s disarmed subjects …uh hem, ‘citizens’ ????
For fancying yourself as a ‘Berkeley intellectual’, you sure exhibit little in the way of actual intellect and grasp of reality or understanding of history. My guess is that you don’t even realize that you live in a cocooned echo chamber of liberal fantasy. Besides the fact that your postulation is impossible to achieve, even if it were somehow realized, it would not lead to a better, safer, freer world – but only to a dystopian, plutocratic Police-State.
So my suggestion would be to get back on your unicorn and ride the F away. Leave the real world to the adults.
Yep, just like 2a. ALL or NONE.
“My guess is that you [California Dreamer living in Berkeley] don’t even realize that you live in a cocooned echo chamber of liberal fantasy.”
Oh, the irony again. Firearms created and maintain that safe liberal cocoon! Without firearms, there will be no cocoon.
And you’ll be so busy running and hiding that you won’t have time for any dreaming.
What about the other links in the chain? Who was foolish enough to buy and keep that gun and what was the penalty for the babysitter that pointed it at their 7 year old charge while they manipulated the the gun?
Without guns, you couldn’t defend yourself against people like Thong Vang, catch and release California illegal alien who had originally raped three girls 12-14. He did some time and was then released back into the US and went on to shoot two corrections officers.
Good job, California! Your policies have made gun ownership all but mandatory regardless of what you laws say!
“Here’s the question; would CA still have it’s MSRs and standard capacity magazines if some sort of training and licensing compromise had been reached?”
No. the Democrat leaders of the state have always wanted all guns banned from day 1. They are just proceeding slowly.
People can dream anything, that’s why it’s called dreaming. Some people, probably most, prefer the hypnotic dream state over reality.
Anyone who thinks making guns go away will solve any problem hasn’t actually thought through that problem or it’s causes. Returning to an age where cadres of strong men (like .gov thugs or gangs) ruled over everyone else is a terrible idea. And you should feel bad.
Word you’re looking for is “tribes”. My tribe raids your tribe, kills or enslaves the men and boys, passes around the women and girls for sport, keeps the food and equipment for themselves. For millions of years. Firearms in the hands of *defenders* changed all that. Where defenders have no firearms, it is still the same today.
For those of you who are obviously in denial, they are winning!!! Stand up or be wiped out, the choice is yours.
Well, that’s Berzerkely for you. Out here in the real world a lot of people think ‘Why don’t we just make all the lawyers go away?’
Start with nukes first or we’re not taking you seriously. BTW, ever been to the communist bookstore, Revolution Books, in Berkeley?
A “Gun-Free World” would be a special kind of hell. If someone waves their magic wand and ‘disappears’ all guns, they will have given a huge gift to the biggest, strongest, meanest, most well organized criminals and tyrants.
Fine. Lets run a little experiment. Remove all the guns from Kalifornia, including the ones in government hands. Let it run for a while, see what happens.
Why not do something challenging. Stop wishing guns away. Get rid of VIOLENCE!!! If you do that, guns are no longer a problem. See how easy that was? Silly Californians…
Keep dreaming. That’s all it will ever be. Let us know if you decide to rejoin reality.
Wow, like, a gun-free world. Like in the Middle Ages, when strong, young men with swords and other edged weapons ruled everyone, and serfs and women wre chattels who lived at the whim of the strong young men. Or like Japan in the 1600s after they banned all guns, and the samurai had the right to kill any peasant or underling who offended them. How wonderful would that be? Let’s try that in the Bay Area of the PRCa, and see how long it takes for the young males to enforce their rule of terror.
No guns and unlimited free acid. He left out the unlimited free acid part.
I would have already taken care of the abolishing of all firearms, but I seem to have misplaced my magic wand, and I can’t for the life of me figure any other way to accomplish that goal! Maybe this Berkely genius could enlighten me!
Ok, Poof. All guns in the world are gone.
When do we start working on knives/swords, bats/clubs, blowdarts, slingshots, bows/arrows, IEDs, bricks/stones, and ultimately fists and feet?
I see that many here have not read the source article. I recommend, even urge, that you do not do so as it is some of the most idioti8c tripe by a “journo” who has no clue what she is talking about. But it is after all the LA TImes, that has never seen a gun law it didn’t like. She seems to think that subjecting manufacturers to strict products liability, as this lawyer did, somehow is responsible for all of the strict gun control laws in the state that make us all safer. And that gun manufacturers were NOT subject to strict liability before. Pure idiocy.
I dream of a world where all women are in good shape and walk around naked. And they are always asking me to satisfy them.
Are these Californians and I dreaming too big?
There are two different types behind this anti gun movement. The types who use unintelligent people for personal gain at the expense of the constitution. Then there are the types being used who are not very intelligent and make emotional decisions.
10.0 earthquake meets the hippies. Utopia ensues.
Interesting, because I can visualize a world without California
Why can’t we just make poverty go away?
Why can’t be just make out-of-shape people go away?
Why can’t we just make smog go away?
Why can’t we just make aggression go away?
Why can’t we just make rush hour traffic go away?