You know, we have a hard time mustering up sympathy for Californians, anymore. They vote for the hard left, then suffer living in a police state with no liberties!
Case in point: California’s law requiring background checks on ammunition purchases. Passed in 2016 but not implemented until 2019, the law passed by vote of the people. In fact, 63% of the voters! So the next time you feel sorry for a Californian, remember that the majority of them voted for this nonsense.
But what has the bill accomplished since it was implemented? In the months between July of 2019 and January of 2020, the new law stopped 101,047 Californians from purchasing ammunition. But in that same period, the system only identified188 prohibited people who were trying to legally purchase ammo.
A Failure Rate So High It Should Be Criminal!
What does that mean?
It means that the system doesn’t work. It’s churning out false positives at a rate that just boggles the mind! For every single ‘bad guy’ trying to buy ammo who shouldn’t be, the system has falsely denied 537 perfectly law-abiding gun owners the right to buy ammo.
Why? Well, shockingly, criminals don’t utilize legal avenues to buy ammo! Who would have thought?! And that’s the point U.S. District Judge Benitez made in his recent preliminary injunction against the ‘ammo background check’ law. In his injunction, Benitez said, “Criminals, tyrants, and terrorists don’t do background checks.”
No, this law hasn’t stopped criminals. They’ll continue getting their ammo through other means, be it patsies, drug dealers, or wherever they have always gotten it before.
So criminals continue to not use legal means to get ammunition for their already-illegal guns, but law abiding citizens are stopped at a 531:1 ratio.
What causes these false positives? Oh, if you’ve moved and your address hasn’t been updated in the FBI’s database. Or if your middle initial was on the original form and isn’t on this one. Or vice versa. Maybe some sloppy data-entry person put in the gun owner’s date of birth wrong and now they don’t match.
But Think Of All The Bad Guys This Law Got Off The Streets!
California’s ridiculous law provides no recourse and no proof that the 188 who were ‘properly’ denied were ever tried or convicted for the crime of trying to buy ammo they weren’t allowed to by law. That is to say: the law designed to stop criminals from purchasing ammo hasn’t necessarily jailed even a single one so much as flagged their application.
Have California’s cops gone out and arrested those 188, tried and prosecuted them? Who knows? How is this law actually supposed to stop and catch criminals if there’s no proof of action taken?
Judge Benitez is a lone voice of sanity in California. He’s the judge who gave gun owners the brief, seven-day reprieve on the high-capacity magazine ban back in 2019. But in 2020, his efforts to bring some sanity to the discussion about background checks for ammunition were cut even shorter. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay on his injunction, giving Californians less than 48 hours to purchase ammo without a background check.
Benitez can only do so much if Californians won’t fight for their own gun rights. Background checks on ammo purchases are an experiment that has been tried and has failed miserably. Enough already.