Congress appears to be totally dysfunctional. The House of Representatives passes bill after bill, hundreds of them. Then, Senate Majority Leader and self-described Grim Reaper, Mitch McConnell (R-NY) sits outside of the Senate door as the bills arrive and with his razor-sharp scythe kills them. Fortunately, there is a solution beginning to emerge across the country.
Since Washington, D.C. has been failing the people, states have begun to take up the governing gavel and gone to work. California has been blazing the path with its new ammunition background check law. Within the first month, the law halted over 100 people from illegally purchasing bullets.
Within the past week, there have been separate three mass murders with assault weapons. In the first one, two children ages six-years-old and 13 plus a 25-year-old man died at the popular Garlic Festival. Two more people succumbed to their injuries in El Paso, Texas bringing the total of killings to 22. Hours later in Dayton, Ohio, a man with an automatic rifle killed nine people is 32 seconds, when police arrived and disabled him.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said this via a court filing, that the new law prevented and deterred people, according to The San Francisco Chronicle:
‘”Countless” other prohibited persons were likely deterred from even trying to purchase ammunition that they cannot lawfully possess.’
Later in August, a federal judge will determine whether the new California law has violated the Second Amendment, which has existed as the right to bear arms among additional federal laws.
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) suggested that the federal government should follow his state’s lead, that ammunition buyers also pass a background check. He pointed out that guns have to have ammunition:
‘Guns don’t kill people.’
Newsome met with Becerra, law enforcement officials, emergency responders, civil rights leaders, members of the community, researchers for an hour and a half. They came together to explore what else California could do to interrupt the cycle of mass killings with military-grade rifles and 100- or 250-bullet drums. Bump stocks or multiburst trigger activators are already illegal under California Penal Code 32900, according to Shouse Law.
An attorney who was representing the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the state affiliate which filed the lawsuit to block background checks said that the organizations have sympathy for the mass shooting victims:
‘But this ammo law is not gonna save any lives. You’re not smoking out the violent felons. Violent criminals aren’t going to buy ammunition and have a background check done. All of this red tape is just going to push people out of the sport and from owning a gun to defend their families.’
The first month the bill was in law almost 11,000 people were immediately denied immediate approval to purchase bullets. California processed nearly 47,000 people out of the 57,000-plus potential buyers.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association claimed in the state filing that background checks were too time-consuming, too burdensome, and too filled with false rejections:
‘…tens of thousands of ammunition transactions were processed in July alone.There is no substantial impediment. Ammunition purchasers must pass an eligibility check that, in the vast majority of cases, delays a purchase by a few minutes.’
The state’s court filing said that it took under five minutes to complete the background checks.
The first week at the state’s customer support center there was a spike in phone calls, but then that number dropped sharply. According to the filing, there were “some technical issues.” There were some processing checks delays on the buyers, especially those who had more than one first name. However, that problem had been corrected.
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