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/