CA:New gun law steps over 'line in the sand'

 SACRAMENTO — Gun registration had always seemed like the “line in the sand” — a proposal that would so offend the nation’s gun-rights advocates that they would bring out their full political muscle to stop it. Yet a California law mandating government record-keeping for all new long-gun purchases goes into effect on Jan. 1 and few people even seem to know about it.

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The new law also expands the infrastructure for confiscation for other reasons (i.e., after specific types of guns are banned). This is not an unfounded worry. In the 1990s, the state used registration lists to demand that many law-abiding assault-weapons owners relinquish their guns. “Registration has led to confiscation in California,” Michel said. “Registration is leading to confiscation in New York right now.”

Gun-ownership lists raise other fears. Police have lobbied for long-gun registration as a means to promote the safety of police officers by letting them know whether someone may be armed when police go to a house to make an arrest. But civil libertarians worry that police officers may overreact if they gain such information, which can be a big problem given the number of Californians who own shotguns for home defense and rifles for hunting and target practice. (The Department of Justice confirmed that local police agencies have access to these lists.)

“My research into more than a dozen raids that turned out badly is that … the presence of a firearm wires officers into a much higher tendency to shoot,” said Joseph McNamara, the former San Jose police chief and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “(T)he presence of a legally possessed firearm bought to protect the home may get totally innocent people killed by the police who casually use SWAT for drug search warrants especially if they register.”

Statistics from Canada, which required long-gun registration before abandoning it, find that only a tiny portion (around 4 percent) of such guns used in homicides are registered to those who commit the crimes. So police officials who use ownership lists to “protect” themselves will be gaining a false sense of security given the unlikelihood of criminals to use properly reported guns.

Gun-rights supporters have just introduced an initiative that would include gun rights specifically in the state constitution. The measure would forbid registration, but it’s unclear whether backers can gain sufficient resources to wage a statewide campaign. An ongoing federal case could arguably affect California’s system, also.

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