Consider yourself lucky you don’t live in CA. I was forewarned by my gunshop sales crew about the new tax taking affect July 1st. I did two large stock up on ammos before the law took affect. At this point looking at my options moving out of state (i even looked at around St George, UT where Jim is 
)
California's new tax on guns and ammo takes effect.
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An absolute gorgeous state to go and visit. But I would never live there in a billion years
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Yuck. I couldn’t live there. Come on over to St George. The water’s fine 
. We love it here.
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The problem is that other states see this and say hey why don’t we do it too? I live in Oregon and we have super majority dem senate and house and governor. Very hard to stop them. They screwed up and did measure 114 as a measure so it could be more easily challenged in court to get a stay. Looks like when they are back in session they will try it through legislation.
Exactly right, unconstitutional, anti-gun legislation at the state (or local) level has spread like a virus from places like my home state, California. I do think many of these measures, like magazine bans, semi-auto rifle bans, purchase frequency limits, taxes, etc, will ultimately be overturned by the Supreme Court.
I am not surprised the Court did not take any of the Illinois cases this term as they were all in an interlocutory posture. The Supreme Court has consistently indicated they do not like to consider cases until there is a final judgement in the lower court. When one or more of the various challenges to the laws in CA, WA, OR, IL, and NY have final decisions at the appellate level I think we will likely see the Supreme Court grant cert. When it does happen, the court has several precedents to rely on to overturn these laws including Staples, Heller, McDonald, Caetano, Bruen and perhaps others. Chevron deference being struck this past term may also play a roll in some of the ATF cases like bump stocks, triggers, and frames and recievers. While that does give me hope our God given rights will ultimately be respected by the Court, I have to admit, even I am getting somewhat frustrated by the pace at which the system moves.
That is why it is critically important we continue to educate those around us about guns and advocate for our rights locally. Speaking generally, I think those of us here are very comfortable with guns and understand the history and tradition of the 2nd Amendment. We likely understood what the Founders meant by “well regulated” and no, it does not mean lots of govenrment regulation. I think we all understood the 2nd Amendment as an individual right even before Heller. We knew that modern firearms are, in fact, covered by the 2nd Amendment. And so on. However, while a sizable one, gun owners are a minority in the modern day. I know many people at work, church, in the neighborhood, who do not own guns and have never shot a gun. In the absence of experiential knowledge, many are prone to the hyperbolic emotional claims made by gun control advocates. AR-15 are macine guns and an AR will literally rip a person in two (the later being a paraphrase of “expert” testimony offered in a CA case). That was the whole point of the anti-gun group the Violence Policy Center coining the term “assault weapon” in the 1980s. I recently had a conversation with a highly educated and generally rational man who believed the 2nd Amendment only applied to firearms in existance at the time of the founding. The point being, while I think ultimately the Supreme Court will find many of the gun control laws being forced on us are unconstitutional, we need to do our part locally as well in the fight to preseve our rights. We shouldn’t be obnoxious about it, but talk to your non-gun owning friends and neighbors about guns, when the opportunity arrises to educate them. Write your local elected officials, especially those advocating gun control, to hold them accountable for thier votes. Of course, always be respectful and polite. I am sure many of you do, but take this as an encouragement.
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Ok I agree but…. I think the majority do not care because they don’t think we have a problem. Half of us want more government- not less. So most do not consider the need for a lot of the bill of rights in general. Why fight for something that seems anachronistic? Oddly one side is more militant about certain health rights that they consider constitutional than rights that actually are.
I hear you and I will admit, I got on my soap box and was on a roll. Why fight, well, I would suggest while some may see the 2nd Amendment as anachronistic, that doesn’t mean it’s value is in any diminished. I have heard a number of heterodox academics say one of the greatest mistakes conservatives made was ceeding the universities to the left. And to be honest, we did.
I would say, we should learn from that and engage our friends and neighbors about guns and the value of the 2nd. In my experience, many people don’t care because they are ignorant. I have also learned you can reach people. I had another conversation with a die-hard liberal I know that went from banning “assault weapons” to well maybe that won’t work, but we have to do something. That’s progress. I don’t know if we will win, but I think it is worth the effort.
I have a number of family/friends who aren’t antigun per se, but are at best ambivalent. They are now asking me question, trying to learn about them, not because they are suddenly wanting to hunt. But because they are scared by what they see and hear in the world around them.
Feels to me the ground swell is pulling in the first fringes of middle.
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Well thank God i was born in America and not chomofornia.