California gun owners, listen up

For law-abiding California gun owners, I have good news and bad news.

The good news: a Fresno Superior Court judge has found that California's restrictive new ammunition law (AB 962) violates the California Constitution, and has blocked it from taking effect. AB 962 would have prevented mail-order ammunition sales, and required fingerprinting and registration for all handgun ammunition purchasers.

Of course this isn't the end of AB 962, gun haters will keep fighting to make it more difficult for us to find ammo. I predict this will end up in federal court, where it will be ruled a violation of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. But there's a lot of time and money and legal fees in between, and the availability of mail-order ammo during the litigation is anything but certain.

The bad news: they are trying to ban Open Carry again. Anthony Portantino (D-Los Angeles) has submitted AB 144, which will make it a misdemeanor to openly carry an unloaded firearm in public. Currently, concealed carry is prohibited without a permit, but unloaded open carry is permitted.

Portantino did an interview with KNX in Los Angeles (linked at Portantino's website), and he said that firearms "belong in Western movies," not on California streets. He also said "there is no reason to take a gun into a supermarket." Yes, he made that last remark after the slaughter outside a Safeway in Tuscon, Arizona. Yes, he represents Los Angeles, where gun crime is rampant and where a law abiding NRA member openly carrying an unloaded revolver in Safeway is the least of your troubles.

Open carry has been legal, but has become controversial only recently due to the rise of an Open Carry movement in California. The sight of law-abiding gun owners gathering in groups and openly carrying unloaded firearms in coffee shops or restaurants in tony California suburbs sometimes causes a bit of a stir, and the police are often called.

I am sympathetic to police officers who are tired of responding to reports of firearms in the produce aisle, but the remedy to public panic over a lawful activity is not to ban the activity, but to educate the public. More speech, not less; more open carry, not less. Own a gun? Go to an Open Carry event. Afraid of guns? Take an NRA gun class; go to an Open Carry event and talk to the people there.

Touch wood, my firearm has still killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car. Making it more difficult to buy firearms and ammunition in California only makes it more difficult for the law-abiding gun owner; the gangbangers on the street have their own distribution networks. And responding to public squeamishness concerning the sight of a firearm by banning open carry will do nothing to reduce crime, but will silence the necessary public dialogue over crime's chicken-and-egg question: which came first, the criminal, or the gun?