AB962...

...Is a festering turd of a bill that just popped out of the CA state senate appropriations committee today.
This is the one that seeks to restrict ammunition transactions - only licensed ammo dealers may sell more than 50 rounds per month, Internet ammunition sales will be banned, thumbprints required for purchases, create a whole new bunch of crimes, create a new registry for the CA DOJ to oversee - it's a nightmare. You can read the text of this thing here.
So - it passed in the Assembly, then went to the Senate appropriations committee, where it was placed in the suspense file a few weeks back. Well, they pulled it today and it appears that the APPROPRIATIONS committee thought that creating a new regulatory bureaucracy in the middle of the worst financial crisis in the state's history was just fine and dandy. How are they going to pay for this? Oh yeah, taxes on ammo.
Since both the Assembly and the Senate are stacked with Democrats in California (thanks to gerrymandering, as well as spinelessness on the part of the Republicans), it's pretty much a given that this will pass in the Senate also.
So, the only real hope of killing this thing is with a veto from Arnold. Yeah. Won't be holding my breath on that one. Political considerations are more important to him than freedoms for the populace, I think, and since he's squared off with the Dems over the budget for the last few months, he may just want to sign it to make nice... as he has done in the past...
Another shiv in the back of Lady Liberty.