Exercising The Right
California Leads the Way on Gun Control
Political commentators love to tell us that the current state of politics in California is what’s in the near future for the rest of the country, with Democrats eventually completely controlling all branches of government and Republicans being an ineffectual minor party. If this is the case, then we are facing a bleak future indeed, as Newsweek reported on October 13 that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into state law a bill that permits “employers, co-workers and teachers to obtain gun violence restraining orders against owners of firearms that are a potential threat to them.”
To illustrate the leftward drift of California politics, this legislation was previously vetoed twice by the former governor, even though he was also a Democrat. The law expands existing red flag measures, which previously allowed only authorized family members and law enforcement to seek a court order to take away firearms from a gun owner, to a wider group of petitioners who can seek such orders. The new measure takes effect on January 1, 2020 and is only one of five gun-related laws that Newsom is supporting.
But these matters make strange bedfellows, as the normally left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposed the legislation because the ACLU feels that it allows people with only a tangential relationship to a person to strip them of their civil rights without the accused being able to contest the order and argue in their defense prior to the government taking of the firearm.
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