Some states have training mandates for anyone who wants a concealed carry permit. Others require them for just wanting to buy a gun. Both are ridiculous, though the latter seems far more constitutionally questionable than the former. On the upside, if you move to one of those states and already have a gun, you don’t have to deal with it unless you want to buy another while you’re there.
California, though, has decided to take that already questionable mandate and make it even more ridiculous.
A new bill seeks to not just require training for anyone who wants to buy a gun, but will require training for anyone who moves to California and already has firearms.
Californians would have to take a four-hour course with live-fire training to buy a gun if a bill advancing through the Legislature gets signed into law.
Senate Bill 948, by Berkeley Democratic Sen. Jesse Arreguín, also would require gun owners moving to California to obtain a firearm safety certificate and register their firearms within 180 days of their arrival. Beginning in 2028, obtaining that certificate would require completing the training.
It’s the latest effort by California Democrats to add more restrictions on firearm ownership in a state that already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. However, it’s hardly certain the bill will become law. A similar measure died in the Legislature last year.
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Adam Wilson of Gun Owners of California called the proposed requirements “an insurmountable barrier to exercising a constitutional right.”
Clay Kimberling, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said that’s especially true for the estimated 115,000 gun owners who move to California each year.
“Whether they move into the state on a new job, a new military assignment, or family obligations such as helping a sick or elderly family member, lawful firearm owners would now have to search out an instructor, pay for the class … and take eight hours out of their day … for simply wanting to continue to practice their constitutional right to keep and bear arms in a new state,” Kimberling said.
That original version of the bill also would have required new California arrivals to register firearms and take the course within 60 days.
Now, everyone who owns a gun should get training, including basic gun safety education. It’s just smart to know what you’re doing with something that can take a life so easily.
The problem is the mandate itself, including for those who move into the state, as well as gun registration.
Sure, you couldn’t make me move to California if you put a gun against my head. There’s absolutely nothing in the state that would attract me at this point in my life other than the weather, and I live too close to Florida for that to sway me all that much. But some people don’t have much of a choice, particularly those in the military. You move where they tell you to move, and while you do get to try and have some say–at least, I did when I was in the Navy–sometimes, you’re just out of luck and that’s where you need to go.
And for those people to suddenly have to not just register their guns, but go through a state-mandated training course is beyond dumb.
It should be noted that these are the same people who would lose their minds if anyone suggested a civics course for transplants before they’re allowed to register to vote in a new state, but continue to insist that the Second Amendment isn’t treated as a second-class right.
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