Dear Editor,
Governor Davis signed SB 23 and AB 202 supporting these
ineffective and unconstitutional laws with fraud and
deception.
These laws can do little to reduce violent crime. 98% of
more than 16,000 chief law enforcement officers surveyed
this year by the National Association of Chiefs of Police [1]
agreed criminals can get whatever guns they want.
The only proven effective way to reduce violent crime is
to keep violent criminals behind bars. Even in
prison, criminals can get guns; is there any doubt they can get
them outside? The U.S. Justice Department found 93+% of felons
got their guns illegally [2], so further restricting gun stores
won't work either.
The arms affected are specifically protected by the Second
Amendment. In Federalist Papers No. 29 and 46 [3], Hamilton
and Madison clearly expect members of the unorganized militia
to personally own modern military arms. Current Federal law
10USC311 defines the militia as all adult males not in the
military. [4]
Those who call an armed populace undesirable or unnecessary
should recall that the largest recorded examples of genocide
were performed this century by governments.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot had to first register
then confiscate privately owned arms to do this. The war in
the Balkans similarly shows what can happen when a government
has a monopoly on force and the people are disarmed.
SB 23 specifically exempts retired police officers. If,
as the Governor suggests, these are weapons of war, what
reason would former police officers have for them? Are
ex-police a special class of citizen having Constitutional
rights denied to others?
AB 202 which limits handgun purchases to one a month sounds
reasonable on the surface, but how will the government
know that one gun was purchased?
The only plausible answer is to register every handgun
sale and every handgun purchaser.
Jeff Chan
(address)
Mountain View, CA
(phone)
webmaster@rkba.org
Jeff Chan is a Silicon Valley engineer and Webmaster of a
large Second Amendment website: http://rkba.org/
1. http://www.aphf.org/aphf.nsf/htmlmedia/annual_national_police_survey.html
2. http://rkba.org/research/wright/armed-criminal.summary.html
3. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_29.html
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_46.html
4. http://www.access.gpo.gov/