Thread: California’s Gun Confiscation Program Hits Firearm Owners Hard

California’s Gun Confiscation Program Hits Firearm Owners Hard

Published on Monday, February 10, 2014
Tags:App's|Brandon Combs|CalGuns Foundation|California|Gun Confiscation

Efforts by the California Department of Justice to disarm gun owners have led to apparent civil rights violations, gun group says.

California’s Gun Confiscation Program Hits Firearm Owners Hard

CalGuns Foundation

ROSEVILLE, CA --(Ammoland.com)- Following numerous reports of improper arrests and firearm seizures throughout California, Roseville-based gun rights group The Calguns Foundation has issued a new warning to gun owners in the Golden State.

“Gun confiscation efforts pushed by Attorney General Kamala Harris have apparently led to unconstitutional arrests of regular, non-prohibited gun owners as well as the seizure of their firearms and ammunition,” said Brandon Combs, the group’s executive director and creator of the Foundation’s DOJ Watch project.

California’s Armed Prohibited Persons System, or ‘APPS’, firearms confiscation program was funded in 2013 through Senate Bill 140, authored by state legislators including San Diego-based senator Joel Anderson (R-Alpine). SB 140 re-appropriated money paid by gun buyers for background checks to APPS law enforcement actions, including the one which took firearms from Bakersfield, California resident Michael Merritt.

“These frightening raids, often carried out by heavily armed DOJ agents and local law enforcement agencies, aren’t just hitting violent criminals,” noted Combs. “What a sad day it is when even elderly law-abiding people need to be on the lookout for Ms. Harris’ gun-grabbing goons.”

Should you be contacted by law enforcement, be polite but prepared to exercise your rights. For instance, should a warrant be served upon you, do not physically resist the officers but do remain silent and contact your attorney as soon as possible. Do not consent to any search and remember that you are not required to volunteer information or open locked containers.
As part of its ongoing efforts to defend gun owners from malicious and improper prosecutions, The Calguns Foundation operates a Help Hotline for firearms related legal issues. Should you be the target of the DOJ’s APPS gun confiscation efforts or any other firearms-related law enforcement encounter, detainment, or arrest while in California, the Foundation suggests the following:
● Never consent to a search
● Exercise your right to remain silent
● Contact CGF’s Help Hotline through the online form at www.calgunsfoundation.org/hotline or call (800) 556-2109, open 24/7/365
● If you need immediate legal assistance, please contact an attorney (some firearms attorneys are listed on the CGF Help Hotline web page)
Visit www.calgunsfoundation.org/hotline for more information about The Calguns Foundation’s Help Hotline and to submit requests for assistance on urgent firearms-related legal matters.
The Calguns Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves its members, supporters, and the public through educational, cultural, and judicial efforts to defend and advance Second Amendment and related civil rights. Supporters may visitwww.calgunsfoundation.org/donate to join or donate to CGF.

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Front Sight Blog: Federal Court Strikes Major Blow Against Gun Grabbers

February 15th, 2014

In a move that gives hope that our Courts are not fully infiltrated with judges who can’t seem to understand what “Shall NOT Be Infringed” means, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California has rejected a law in San Diego County that requires applicants for concealed-carry permits to demonstrate “good cause” as to why they need a gun for personal safety.
This is GREAT news for California gun owners that will pave the way for Shall Issue Concealed Carry throughout the state!

Here is the article…
Federal court deals gun-grabbers a blow in San Diego concealed carry ruling

By David Sherfinski – The Washington Times

In a major victory for gun rights activists, a federal appeals panel in California has rejected a law in San Diego County that requires applicants for concealed-carry permits to demonstrate “good cause” as to why they need a gun for personal safety.
A three-judge panel on Thursday rejected a district court’s ruling in favor of the county after plaintiffs appealed. The plaintiffs argued that “by defining ‘good cause’ in San Diego County’s permitting scheme to exclude a general desire to carry for self-defense, the county impermissibly burdens their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
The district court erred “because San Diego County’s ‘good cause’ permitting requirement impermissibly infringes on the Second Amendment right to bear arms in lawful self-defense,” wrote Circuit Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The lawsuit was filed by plaintiffs who were denied concealed-carry licenses because they could not establish “good cause,” as well as plaintiffs who anticipated they would be denied. The California Rifle and Pistol Association was an additional plaintiff in the case, and no plaintiff is otherwise banned from possessing a gun.
The case was appealed from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
Other circuit courts of appeals have been divided on the issue of carrying a handgun outside the home. The 7th Circuit ruled against a concealed-carry law passed in Illinois, while the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th circuit courts upheld regulations approved in the states of New York, New Jersey and Maryland, respectively.
The 77-page majority opinion drew upon rulings on handgun bans in the District of Columbia and the city of Chicago, particularly the landmark 2008 District v. Heller ruling that struck down D.C.’s longtime ban on handguns.
Judge O’Scannlain wrote that neither case speaks “explicitly or precisely” to the scope of the Second Amendment right outside the home or what it takes to “infringe” it.
“Speakers of the English language will all agree: ‘Bearing a weapon inside the home’ does not exhaust this definition of ‘carry,’” he wrote. “For one thing, the very risk occasioning such carriage, ‘confrontation,’ is ‘not limited to the home.’”
Judge O’Scannlain then provided some homey images to explain his point that the right of self-defense is more likely to be useful in public settings than private ones.
“One needn’t point to statistics to recognize that the prospect of conflict — at least, the sort of conflict for which one would wish to be ‘armed and ready’ — is just as menacing (and likely more so) beyond the front porch as it is in the living room,’” he continued. “The idea of carrying a gun ‘in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose … of being armed and ready,’ does not exactly conjure up images of father stuffing a six-shooter in his pajama pocket before heading downstairs to start the morning’s coffee, or mother concealing a handgun in her coat before stepping outside to retrieve the mail. Instead, it brings to mind scenes such as a woman toting a small handgun in her purse as she walks through a dangerous neighborhood, or a night-shift worker carrying a handgun in his coat as he travels to and from his job site.”
In a 48-page dissenting opinion, Judge Sidney R. Thomas wrote that in addition to striking down San Diego County’s concealed-carry policy, the majority ruling “upends the entire California firearm regulatory scheme.”
“In dealing a needless, sweeping judicial blow to the public-safety discretion invested in local law enforcement officers and to California’s carefully constructed firearm regulatory scheme, the majority opinion conflicts with Supreme Court authority, the decisions of our sister circuits, and our own circuit precedent,” he wrote.
Judge Thomas also wrote that most other circuit courts to weigh the issue parted from the conclusions in the majority opinion, citing the 3rd Circuit decision on New Jersey’s law, a 10th Circuit ruling on a Colorado law, and the 2nd Circuit’s conclusion that “state regulation of the use of firearms in public was ‘enshrined with[in] the scope’ of the Second Amendment when it was adopted” and that “extensive state regulation of handguns has never been considered incompatible with the Second Amendment.”
The state of California generally prohibits the open or concealed carry of a handgun in public, but delegates authority to localities to craft their own policies for obtaining concealed-carry licenses.

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Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
7975 Cameron Drive, #900
Windsor, CA 95492
http://www.frontsight.com
info@frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719
Entry Filed under: Dr. Ignatius Piazza,Front Sight,Gun Training,Monday Blog Posts,Newsletter,second amendment.

Politics
Ninth Circuit Court blows a hole in gun control

By: John Hayward
2/14/2014 09:28 AM



The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, aka the “Ninth Circus,” is hardly a bastion of judicial conservatism. That makes its decision striking down California gun-control laws all the more earthshaking. As is often the case with landmark court rulings, the story is far from over – there is some more wrangling to be done in the Ninth Circuit before the scene shifts to the Supreme Court, which is likely to intervene due to conflicts with other circuit court rulings. The next step will probably be a full court review of the 2-1 ruling from this three-judge panel.
Perhaps we will come to view Thursday’s ruling as the beginning of the end of the gun-control movement as we have known it in the United States. If this decision holds all the way through the Supreme Court, some core tenets of that movement will soundly defeated for a very long time to come. For the moment, as SFGate reports, we have a challenge to a county ordinance that’s already blossomed into the evisceration of California’s permit system:

California must allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms in public, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, striking down the core of the state’s permit system for handguns.
In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said San Diego County violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment by requiring residents to show “good cause” – and not merely the desire to protect themselves – to obtain a concealed-weapons permit.
State law requires applicants to demonstrate good cause, as well as good moral character, to carry concealed handguns, while leaving the permit process up to each city and county. The ruling, if it stands, would require local governments to issue permits to anyone of good moral character who wants to carry a concealed gun for self-protection.
“The right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable firearm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain said in the majority opinion.

As SFGate notes, this ruling disagrees with opinions from courts in New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, but agrees with one from Illinois, so it seems highly likely that the Supreme Court will step in. After decades of agonizing debate, the political class may finally be forced to acknowledge that the Second Amendment says what it says. What if this is the beginning of a legal avalanche that obliges politicians to admit the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights exist, too? What a strange new world we might end up living in.
The Ninth Circuit decision is positively brimming with common sense:

California has long had some of the nation’s strongest restrictions on gun ownership, and, according to the court, is one of only eight states that allow local governments to deny concealed-weapons permits. The state formerly allowed residents to carry unloaded firearms in public, with ammunition in a separate container, but repealed that law at the start of 2013.
The ban on openly carrying guns made it impossible for most law-abiding citizens in counties like San Diego to “bear arms” for self-defense, O’Scannlain said in Thursday’s ruling. He said the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to “bear arms” must include the right to carry weapons outside the home.
The risk of armed confrontation “is not limited to the home,” O’Scannlain said. He invoked the situations of “a woman toting a small handgun in her purse as she walks through a dangerous neighborhood, or a night-shift worker carrying a handgun in his coat as he travels to and from his job site.”
C.D. Michel, lawyer for the National Rifle and Pistol Foundation and individuals who challenged the San Diego County system, said sheriffs in many rural California counties already comply with the court’s standard by issuing gun permits to anyone who wants one for self-defense. But urban counties require evidence of a special need for a weapon, the requirement that the court invalidated, he said.
“The right to self-defense doesn’t end at your threshold,” Michel said. He said the ruling is “probably the biggest Second Amendment win” since the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling and a follow-up decision in 2010.

Oh my Gawd, he’s right, people do get attacked outside their homes! It seems so obvious now. The truth of the right to keep and bear arms was staring us in the face the whole time! There is even a passage in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that points out “the right to keep and bear arms” directly endorses carrying loaded and ready firearms around, because that is that is the meaning of the verb “bear.” That must be why the Second Amendment doesn’t protect “the right to store guns in your closet!”
Another major issue in this ruling was whether citizens could be forced to jump through hoops and prove they had a compelling need to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The citizen was expected to demonstrate a “unique risk of harm” – for example, serious physical menace from a stalker – in order to secure a concealed-carry permit. The primary plaintiffs in the case were people whose applications for concealed-carry licenses were denied because they couldn’t give the authorities a good enough reason for wanting one. (People usually get weeks of advance notice before they’re attacked by criminals, right?)
The court correctly sees this as an unreasonable infringement upon the right to keep and bear arms. I would submit such requirements are the antithesis of an inalienable right. It’s not “inalienable” if you have to beg the government to let you exercise it; the citizen is placed on defense in a power relationship where the State was meant to be submissive. Once we accept that core rights are negotiable, the negotiations don’t end until the right in question has shriveled away to nothing.
Restricting the access of known criminals to guns is one thing, but the California laws went too far towards treating every citizen as a criminal unless he could conjure a compelling and immediate reason to be treated better by the authorities. Overweening state and federal bureaucracies hold that “everyone is a criminal until proven otherwise” mindset far too often. It’s a natural consequence of the growth of government power.
Another tactic of left-wing jurisdictions that came in for a beating in the California decision was the tendency to set hurdles so high that exercise of a constitutional right became largely theoretical. In this case, the court said it was impermissible to ban both concealed and open carry. Economist John Lott, a prominent critic of gun control measures, notes that the hurdles in California are so high that only political cronyism is likely to secure a concealed-carry permit:

Ironically, California may have opened the door to make it much easier for people to get concealed handgun permits by recently banning people from openly carrying guns. The court wrote that while it might indeed be constitutional for a state to ban concealed handguns or to ban people openly carrying handguns, it simply can’t ban both options.
Counties such as Los Angeles have only let a few hundred people get concealed handgun permits out of 7.5 million adults. In San Diego, only about 700 out of 2.4 million can carry. And in San Francisco, no one is granted a permit to carry a gun.
In Los Angeles and Orange Counties, the few lucky people getting permits are big donors to a sheriff’s re-election campaign or a sheriff’s personal friend. In other counties, such as Stanislaus County in northern California, the key to getting a permit seems to be eitheran influential politician or a prominent businessman.
There are over 11 million concealed handgun permits nationally.Yet, the right to defend oneself in California has largely been limited to the very well-to-do and to the politically powerful.

Behold the liberal utopia: only the Ruling Class is legally allowed to carry guns, leaving everyone else at the mercy of well-armed criminals as the streets run red with blood.
As Lott notes, even if the Ninth Circuit ruling stands and causes a nationwide Second Amendment earthquake when it hits the Supreme Court, gun-control zealots will continue attacking the right to keep and bear arms by imposing ostensibly less onerous requirements that have the practical effect of making guns nearly impossible for law-abiding citizens to obtain, or make firearms incredibly expensive, so that only the Ruling Class can legally afford them.
But the core principles of the gun-control movement are being destroyed, hard on the heels of a disastrous political year for them, in which they failed to rally significant public support behind their cause despite media-fueled exploitation of horrible crimes. When you take away the gun-control planks broken by these recent court rulings, what’s left except a relatively minor debate over the precise details of licensing? Who is a louder and more persistent voice for reasonable gun safety than the NRA? ”Shall-issue” carry laws enjoy overwhelming support from police officers (Lott pegs it at 91 percent currently.) Those who actually know something about the realities of self-defense are lined up against the gun control movement, which stands revealed as the most dangerous incarnation of “gesture liberalism,” the tendency to support laws and programs that express ideological preferences and “good intentions” at the expense of individual rights and common sense.

video at link below

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/02/1...n-gun-control/



I am Sparta!!!!!!

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