California Democrat proposes mandatory gun registration ...

April 7, 2010 12:01 AM

A California Democrat is proposing a new law requiring residents to register their shotguns and rifles or go to jail, CBSNews.com has learned.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer, whose district includes Beverly Hill and West Hollywood, this week introduced legislation ordering law enforcement to "permanently keep" records of anyone who buys a gun from a dealer or an individual. California already stores information about handgun purchases.

Feuer is no friend of firearms owners: his previous legislative effort, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law, required all new handguns to include "microstamping" technology that can imprint serial numbers on spent ammunition casings. As a Los Angeles city councilman, Feuer proposed limiting city residents to one gun a month.

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The proposal comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a landmark civil rights case, McDonald v. Chicago, which will decide whether Second Amendment rights in the federal constitution trump state anti-gun laws. But California is proposing mandatory registration -- and not a flat ban, as Washington, D.C. once tried and the justices rejected -- and even legal scholars specializing in this area disagree about whether registration is constitutional.

"Even though the constitutionality of such a measure is a close call, it is a horrible public policy choice," says Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGuns Foundation. "Just as Canada is about to do away with their long gun registry after squandering $1 billion, California wishes to attack law abiding gun owners for firearms not used in crime."

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At the moment, a minority of states including New York, Maryland, California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts require mandatory registration for handguns. Others, like Pennsylvania, require sales of handguns to go through a dealer, who keeps records of the transaction.

No federal firearm registry exists, though some anti-gun types have pushed for one in the past. An unsuccessful 1995 bill, H.R. 169, would have imposed California-style registration of handguns nationwide through a "federal handgun registration system." Violations would have been punished by up to 12 years in prison. The author of the bill, Rep. Cardiss Collins, D-Illinois, told her colleagues at the time that "I still believe the best way to control handguns is to ban them outright."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504383_162-20001885-504383.html

We have recently had occasion to hold in two cases that there are times and circumstances when States may not compel members of groups engaged in the dissemination of ideas to be publicly identified. Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516; N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462. The reason for those holdings was that identification and fear of reprisal might deter perfectly peaceful discussions of public matters of importance. This broad Los Angeles ordinance is subject to the same infirmity. We hold that it, like the Griffin, Georgia, ordinance, is void on its face.

It took $833.69, a total of 15 hours 50 minutes, four trips to the Metropolitan Police Department, two background checks, a set of fingerprints, a five-hour class and a 20-question multiple-choice exam.

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Reluctantly, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration set up a process through which about 550 residents -- now including yours truly -- have acquired a handgun. But as my four trips to the police department attest, D.C. officials haven't made it easy.

Which was exactly their intent. The day the Heller decision was announced, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) vowed that the city was still "going to have the strictest handgun laws the Constitution allows." Fenty decried the ruling, saying that "more handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/01/AR2009090103836_5.html?sid=ST2009090103944

Florida crime rates recede by 6.4 percent in 2009
The Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Despite a slumping economy and more than 1.1 million residents out of work, crime is decreasing in Florida.

Gov. Charlie Crist and state law enforcement authorities reported Wednesday that crime declined 6.4 percent in 2009 and that violent crime was down 10 percent compared to 2008.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/07/1568024/florida-crime-rates-recede-by.html#ixzz0kTYU75FT

Lots of law abiding citizens are in prison for murder and other fowl crimes.

The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so.

Few Takers for Assault Gun Grace Period
Firearms: With hundreds of thousands in defiance of state law, only 486 have responded to second chance to register the weapons.
February 17, 1992|CARL INGRAM, TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO — At the halfway point in an unprecedented effort to give thousands of owners of military-style assault guns a second chance to avoid criminal risk by registering their weapons with the state, fewer than 500 have complied.

The state Department of Justice reported that by the close of business Friday, 486 owners had registered 810 of the restricted firearms since Jan. 1, the start of the special 90-day amnesty from the state law that makes possession of unregistered semiautomatic assault weapons a crime.
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-17/news/mn-1716_1_grace-period

Few Takers for Assault Gun Grace Period
Firearms: With hundreds of thousands in defiance of state law, only 486 have responded to second chance to register the weapons.

February 17, 1992|CARL INGRAM, TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO — At the halfway point in an unprecedented effort to give thousands of owners of military-style assault guns a second chance to avoid criminal risk by registering their weapons with the state, fewer than 500 have complied.