new california law requires gun registration 010214

Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.

http://pioneer.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/heraldandnews/default.aspx

New Calif. law requires gun registration; Buyers of rifles, shotguns affected by new regulation

Herald and News 1/2/14, by Scripps Howard News Service

REDDING, Calif. — A new California law that requires stores to register the sale of rifles and shotguns with the state has helped spur businesses at gun shops as consumers rush to beat the Jan. 1 deadline.

And while gun owners grumble about the new rules, dealers say the law will do little to hurt the sale of firearms in California. Starting Wednesday, all rifle sales in California will be treated the same way handgun sales have been in the state since the 1970s.

In addition to an individual background check, a dealer record of sale that includes the make, model and serial... ... number of the long gun will be required on every sale or transfer. Before the new law, the record of a rifle purchase was destroyed after five days.

“It hasn’t impacted handgun sales at all and I doubt they are going to seriously impact long gun sales,” Rich Howell, general manager of Olde West Gun & Loan on North Market Street in Redding, said of the dealer record of sale. “People are still going to purchase firearms.”

Indeed, the Great Recession hasn’t affected the gun industry in California.

Year-over-year gun sales in California in 2012 jumped 36 percent to 817,738 and were more than double the number of handgun and rifles sold in the state in 2007, according to the Department of Justice.

Howell said about one of every four people who purchased a rifle in his store the past few weeks did so because of the new law.

Howell, though, also attributes prison realignment, the state’s shift of placing low-risk related prisoners into custody probation programs, to a rise in firearm sales and other issues playing out across the nation in which people are purchasing firearms for personal protection.

Gun owners interviewed said the new rifle registration law is another example of government intrusion that will do little to keep guns out of criminals’ hands.

“It’s just another level of bureaucracy to pass along to law-abiding people,” said Ithiel Carter, shopping for a rifle in Olde West Gun & Loan in Redding.

Rosario Orosco came in to Jones’ Fort on Cypress Avenue to sell a gun. Orosco asked what’s to stop somebody from now going to another state and purchasing a rifle.

“That’s kind of crazy,” Orosco said of the new law. “There are millions of rifles out there that aren’t registered, and now they are going to try to do that?”

The law only affects the sale and transfer of rifles. The state is not going to attempt to go back and register rifles sold before Jan. 1, 2014.

Patrick Jones, manager of Jones’ Fort, said the new law is significant and disheartening.

“It’s depressing to people because we keep seeing new legislation that we don’t feel is directed at criminal behavior at all,” Jones said.

Jones fears the new law allows the state to create a massive “dossier” of legal gun owners.

But like Howell, Jones doesn’t think registering rifles and shotguns will hurt sales.

====================================================

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml