Regulating out of existence, that is. This is not only a bad bill, it’s a dangerous bill. Air guns are not toys and should not look like toys, but that appears to be what this bill would do. My opinion is the manufacturers should just pull out of California if this passes.
I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in that state.
California is one of the most beautiful states in this union. The scenery is breathtaking, the weather is nice, and of course the coast line.
Other than that, it’s a socialist shit hole that doesn’t even remotely resemble America. The problem, of course, is as Californians flee their state, they bring their socialist disease with them.
Northeast PA is seeing the same thing. As people retire and flee the high taxes of NJ and NY they come to PA and start demanding the same things that caused the taxes in NY and NJ to climb. They blame the gov’t for their leaving and yet they come here and bring the same politics that caused them to flee.
You are now off my blogroll.
Didn’t even know I was on it, so no skin off my back.
Not everyone in CA is liberal scum and we work hard to try and retain what little freedoms we have left. I would say it is bad precendent to abandon the cause in a state that has a history of impacting the rest of the union.
Having said that, there are reasons why we live here (work and personal).
Oh, I’m well aware that not everyone in CA is a lefty, but the left controls California and is constantly hatching nonsense like this. I can totally understanding staying and fighting the good fight, but there has to be a point where it’s just too much.
Imagine if McDonald had said that..
OMG?!?!?! steveG, take a Zanex. There are states that people like me would never live in, don’t take it personally. I would never, ever live in NJ, NY, California, MD or Mass.
Ours and your choice. You can stay and fight, I will support your cause. But there comes a time when people have to abandon ship my friend. California is darn near there.
As for people ruining the areas they move into, I see it in North East PA. The New Jersey folks want gun freedom, but they want street lights and all the other socialist crap that they were used to in the nanny state they came from. Freedom means doing some things for yourself.
I’m sure the next step will be banning any real guns painted in the specified toy gun colors?
If at first you don’t secede, try try again? http://www.jeffersonstate.com/
ALL my friends would LOVE to live there if they could. And they only have a couple reasons and there very bad. First because of how anti-gun it is. Some my freinds despite being NWO 9/11 conspiricy nutjobs want severe gun control. There second reason it is liberal and they think the police are not as bad as out here in AZ which is flatly wrong. And third the drugs. They LOVE doing illegal drugs and in CA they feel they can get away with it and the cops don’t care. Out here the drug laws are very harsh.
All rather stupid reasons. And they calls themselves libertarian…
Sounds like NJ. Airsoft guns there are regarded as firearms.
I live in another liberal state and I don’t blame anyone for suggesting leaving the state.
But before suggesting so, you must understand not everyone there [or here] is an anti-gunner.
Just like before Florida passed CCW, I don’t see anyone suggesting people should leave FL now because it didn’t allow CCW back in 1985.
There are so many air guns already out there, changing the color of new ones will, at best, give people a false sense of security. If the cop quoted in the story is telling the truth (a big “if” in my opinion), he’s been extremely restrained so far by not having yet shot any of the apparent hordes of people who’ve brandished BB guns at him. If he suddenly expects all air guns to be painted like Easter eggs, think of the carnage he might unleash (that’s sarcasm for those who need emoticons.)
Unfortunately, those speaking in favor of air guns in the article aren’t really doing themselves any favors, e.g. “Guns aren’t supposed to be bright orange. A bright-colored gun doesn’t prepare kids for what a real gun will do.” Well, no. Appearance & function aren’t related, which is the same reason why calling a semi-automatic rifle an “assault weapon” cause it looks scary is nonsensical (all REALLY dangerous guns are black, right?). But I’d say giving a kid a BB gun and somehow expecting that because it superficially looks like a “real gun” that they’ll learn to respect real guns is a fantasy. Sadly, most of the kids I grew up with were given BB guns with no supervision and promptly used them for poaching, vandalism or assault; frequently all three.
Maybe life back in the hollar gave my peers growing up a different perspective than kids today have regarding proper use of BB guns, but the grampa quoted at the end of the article makes it sound like unsupervised bird popping is still the primary use for these things: “These kids learn that these guns, just like real guns, will penetrate flesh,” he said. “They learn that if it can kill a bird, it can kill other things, and learn from that.”
My kids got rifles & shotguns in elementary school & were carefully taught how to use them. But I’d never buy a kid BB gun–IMHO they teach disrespect for firearms, disregard for the safety of others, and poor hunting ethics. I agree this is a stupid law, but in truth, a law limiting the age at which somebody could use a BB gun without supervision is something I’d can potentially get behind.
Never underestimate the stupidity of California Democrats or gun-control zealots.
Commiefornia gun-control laws are terrible, and have gone about as far as possible before running into serious reactionary consequences. Yet the enemy still keeps pushing the boundaries, hence this stupid law aimed at bb-guns and airsoft guns.
But this very stupidity is why Commiefornia is on the front line of the battle over gun-control. Those stupid laws are about to run headlong into the pro-gun litigation spawned by the McDonald v Chicago ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court.
And just as Washington D.C. was too stupid to back off rather than let the nations entire gun-control movement get slapped down in D.C v Heller, the California Democrats are likewise too stupid to back down. Expect dramatic consequences within two years!
(Unless of course Obama is able to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with a majority of anti-gun justices in the meantime!)
Byron S, I was arrested back in 1989 for having a crossman pump BB gun in NJ up by Split Rock Reservoir. Me and my friends went up there squirrel hunting. I was the only one over 18 (I had just turned 18) and a guy from Jersey City water works saw us walking into the woods. We came back out a few hours later to be greeted by cops with guns drawn. I wa arrested for possession of a firearm without having a FOID card.
I tried to explain that there was no fire associated with an air rifle, and therefore couldn’t be a firearm, but wa informed I was wrong.
Luckily, the Rockaway Twp cops called over to the next town where I lived and the police chief – who’s wife played tennis with my mom – was on duty and told them he’d take care of me.
That was pretty much the end of it. Though I never got the BB gun back. It was a good one too.
The problem started in California when all the lefties moved there from the east coast and said “oh you don’t have laws against that”? Downhill from there! It was a nice place to grow up years ago but it became time to leave so I did. Now I have to go back to there to make a living but when I’m done-See ya!
SteveG, nothing personal, but I wholly disagree with your contention that Kali has a history of impacting the rest of the nation.
I’ve been told for the last 30 years that Kalifornia-style gun control was coming, coming, coming.
And you know what? In 30 years, it’s never gotten here. Not only has it not gotten here, the gun control scene has actually gone in the opposite direction in the vast majority of states.
In my experience, folks who argue that Kali is a big influence on the rest of the country are typically folks from Kali, and thus overestimate their state’s alleged influence a wee bit.
If it passes in California it will be attempted all over the nation…
-Gene
Hot women?
California with shitty gun laws vs. Pennsyltucky with better gun laws. Tough choice.
“California is one of the most beautiful states in this union. The scenery is breathtaking, the weather is nice, and of course the coast line.
Other than that, it’s a socialist shit hole that doesn’t even remotely resemble America. The problem, of course, is as Californians flee their state, they bring their socialist disease with them.”
If its any consolation Massachusetts isn’t all that pretty, and the weather sucks! :)
For the record, airsoft guns are not (currently) considered firearms in NJ, though BB and other airguns firing a projectile less than 3/8″ are firearms by law. (Presumably airsoft doesn’t meet the threshold of “capable of causing harm”)
Isn’t there a Federal law about airguns that preempts state laws on airguns?
Can’t outlaw sale, which NJ allows.
Ian, that hasnt stopped them for arresting people with airsoft guns on firearms charges. And looking at the letter of the law, all airsoft guns are illegal there. Heck, nerf guns look to be illegal.
As for the California bit, We live in a day and age where information and contacting like minded people is so easy. Californians need to wake up and take their state back from the socialists and the progressives, otherwise, they will permanently sink the 8th largest economy in the world, and give it back to Mexico (but I repeat myself).
@Bryan: it does mean that I can buy airsoft without paperwork, though. I wouldn’t carry an airsoft gun off a field or outside of an arena without casing out, though.
Hey, I think NJ law considering firearms is overall the worst in the nation; just that there are some exaggerations that are not true. Shame the cops believe they are true too, though…
Aren’t BB and Pellet guns “arms” under the 2nd Amendment just the same as firearms, swords or knives are?
Probably air guns are arms under the Second Amendment, but the courts have never ruled that. It would be an argument that would need to be made, probably along the lines that the right to keep and bear arms also has to include the right to practice with them, and air guns fit in that scheme.
You have the additional burden of having to show how having a brightly colored air gun interferes fundamentally with the right. It sure is obnoxious, but it is unconstitutional? You can still fire the air gun even though it’s all blue.
Some CA cities ban the possession of airguns, nevermind shooting them!
What David said at #2 and what Dannytheman said at #8 about New York and New Jersey transplants in Northeast PA is so true. Some of these transplants seem to act like Poconos are just like Manhattan or Jersey City, except that the mountains, the woods, and the hillsides are all playing substitute for the skyscrapers, the SRO’s, and the brownstones.
Fortunately, I happen to know that some of these New York and New Jersey transplants who actually do realize that Northeast PA doesn’t have to have street lights all along every mountain road, or solar panels on every other utility pole.
Some of these same New York and New Jersey transplants also have finally figured out that there’s nothing wrong with open carry when the carrier is on his or her own private property, or that there’s nothing wrong with shooting a coyote that had been howling all night long for weeks on end, and probably was the same one that attacked and killed one of the local’s favorite house-cats after it ventured outside one night, only to be found dead the next day.