California ‘Disarmament’ Campaign Targets Law Abiding Gun Owners

New California law is preventing law-abiding gun owners from buying ammo much more than people who are actually prohibited.

“California ammo background checks hinder legal buyers,” headlines a December 11 Action News story by Spencer Joseph in Shasta County, adding, “New California law is preventing law-abiding gun owners from buying ammo much more than people who are actually prohibited.”

According to Attorney General Xavier Becerra, since July 1, when California began requiring background checks to buy ammunition, there have been 345,000 such checks. In 101 cases, ammunition purchases were prohibited and 62,000 buyers denied or rejected. As Joseph explains, “most of those 62,000 can legally own ammunition.”

Welp…California's ammunition background check system is working exactly as it was intended. It's preventing tens of thousands law-abiding gun owners from buying ammo and preventing next to no purchases by prohibited persons.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHEDhttps://t.co/NbQkN5uUJx

— The Truth About Guns (@guntruth) December 12, 2019

Richard Howell of Olde West Gun and Loan in Redding told Action News “the denial rejection rate has been unbelievable” and those denied include law enforcement officers. The denials stem from minor discrepancies on identification documents. If these don’t square with the state database, Howell said, “you’re going to be denied and I don’t care if you’re Fire Chief, Police Chief, or the Sheriff of Shasta County, you’re not getting a box of ammo.”

Ryan Sabalow of the Sacramento Bee cites the case of Sutter County deputy sheriff Zachary Berg, who was denied purchase of shotgun shells before a recent duck hunting trip. A Yuba City hardware store denied Berg the purchase “because his personal information didn’t match what state officials had in their database.”

Sabalow cites several law enforcement officials and veterans who, like Zachary Berg, were denied ammunition purchases. The rejections “appear to have occurred because of errors and omissions in the Department of Justice’s own gun registration database.”

According to Becerra, rejection rates are declining and some purchasers have “better luck” on the second try. Former California Senate boss Kevin de Leon told Sabalow the rejections were “a technical issue that’s easily solveable.” Other gun-control advocates applaud California’s ammunition law.

Except it’s almost one in five – 18% of law-abiding citizens have been refused state permission to buy ammunition, Truth About Guns reports.

Attorney Ari Freilich of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence told Sabalow the system is already working “as intended.” Freilich also tied the rejections to “red flag” laws that allow seizure of weapons from those who have committed no crime.

As Daniel Reid of the NRA explained “it’s not targeting criminal misuses. It’s targeting otherwise law-abiding persons in the way that they can exercise their rights.” As the state targets law-abiding citizens, other laws go easy on violent criminals.

Under Senate Bill 1391, signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown, any criminal under the age of 16 could murder one, three, or ten people with an illegal firearm, escape prosecution as an adult, and gain release at age 25.

In the California Senate, Kevin de Leon authored SB 54, the sanctuary law that protects false-documented illegals from deportation, even the violent criminals among them. The Senate boss supported the 2016 array of gun-control laws but if he attempted to buy ammunition he might have a problem.

In 2017 Kevin de Leon claimed that his father was a Chinese cook born in Guatemala and that the name on his birth certificate and voter rolls is Kevin Alexander Leon. The former Senate boss failed in his bid to replace fellow Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate and is now running for city council in Los Angeles.