An Op-Ed in the Sacramento Bee about the fiasco created by a background check requirement for ammunition purchases in California should serve as a warning for Washington State gun owners who need to become activists as 2020 unfolds.
Seattle-based gun prohibitionists want to create the same kind of mess for Evergreen State gun owners, according to their legislative agenda.
Writing in the Bee, Holly Heyser, communications director for California Waterfowl, recalled how during the first four months of the ammo background check law in her state, “the checks thwarted 101 ammunition purchases by prohibited persons, and a staggering 62,000 purchases by people who had every right to buy ammunition.”
The real purpose of California’s law and Washington’s gun prohibition lobby agenda is not so much to prevent bad guys from getting guns and ammunition as it is to discourage law-abiding citizens from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, activists suspect. As noted by Heyser, “Don’t see any problem with people having to wait weeks to buy ammo? We do. Hunting seasons are finite. If you don’t have ammo, you can’t go hunting. On the eve of the state’s first bird seasons, hunting license sales plummeted, and they had not rebounded by Dec. 1. People gave up.”
Getting honest citizens to “give up” is the end game.
According to the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the billionaire-backed group responsible for a trio of gun control initiatives since 2014, the 2020 legislative agenda includes a provision to regulate ammunition sales.
“Washington’s background check system helps ensure firearms do not make it into dangerous hands,” the group says on its website. “However, we do not currently address access to ammunition and the high-capacity magazines that make semi-automatic weapons extraordinarily deadly. We should take steps to require background checks on all ammunition and magazine purchases and prohibit magazines that can carry more than 10 rounds.”
Heyser also revealed California’s law has no provisions for ammunition purchases by non-state residents. Their names are not in California’s database, so they can’t buy ammunition, and if they could, it would be far more expensive due to the additional costs involved. The added costs are another way to discourage people.
A separate article in the Bee told the story of a sheriff’s deputy who also couldn’t purchase ammunition.
There is a pending legal challenge to the new gun law.
Another item on the gun control wish list is to require training before anyone can be issued a concealed pistol license. There has never been such a requirement in the state, perhaps partly due to the state constitutional right-to-bear-arms provision that recognizes the right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state, and that right “shall not be impaired.” There are presently more than 645,000 active CPLs in Washington State according to the most recent data from the state Department of Licensing.
Washington rights activists are currently scrambling to gather up signed petitions for Initiative 1094, the measure aimed at repealing gun control Initiative 1639. They have been busy for several weeks gathering signatures in an all-volunteer effort.
Yet, even as they work toward rolling back what they believe to be an extremist measure, anti-gunners intend to continue pushing more regulations in their way.
