California Establishes Gun Confiscation Force

There is actually a police force in California whose sole job is just to confiscate guns.

A broad, bald Tennessean, Special Agent Sam Richardson runs a six-person team of California Justice Department agents who are coming for your guns, but only if you no longer have the legal authority to own one in this state that has tightened firearm laws in increments over the years.

His division is the only law enforcement agency in the country assigned specifically to track down and take guns from felons, the mentally ill and others whose Second Amendment rights have been curtailed in court because of public safety concerns.

Notably, WaPo points out that these are the people who even the National Rifle Association says should not have guns, a statement echoing in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The program makes California’s gun-control policy perhaps the most aggressive in the nation. A dozen years ago, the state set up a database that flags law enforcement officials when a registered gun owner is convicted of a felony, deemed mentally ill, has received a restraining order or committed one of about 37 qualifying misdemeanors.

The list is known as the Armed Prohibited Persons System, and while it has failed to prevent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Isla Vista and other cities in the state, it has taken tens of thousands of guns out of the hands of people prohibited from having them.

The work of Richardson’s agents is overwhelming, with the number of guns and “prohibiteds” growing faster than the under-resourced teams can take them off the street. So is the ingenuity of those selling guns, and those making guns, and those owning guns, legally or not.

There are 10,226 people on the list statewide. Of those, about 2,000 are in Los Angeles County, a vast urban desert covered by only Richardson’s team and one other.

Does anyone really think that the sole purpose of this effort is restricted to those deemed unsuitable to possess guns?

And who is mentally ill? If you had a period of depression, does that permanently disqualify you from owning a gun? What about if you have some anxiety disorders? Do you really trust liberals with authority to interpret these rules properly? Or will the look to expand definitions to put “dangerous persons” such as those who believe in a strict adherence to a plain reading of the Constitution on the list?

Of course, people who have been convicted of violent felonies, as well as those who have profound mental problems that prevent them from telling reality from fantasy, should not have firearms.

The problem remains that these people will still find a way to get guns. And so will terrorists. Just because we don’t like that does not mean the problem will go away.

The proper solution, one hated by the left, is to put firearms in the hands of peaceful citizens thereby increasing the risk to criminals that they will get shot either before they can commit their crimes, or at least as soon as they start their rampage.

It might not be “nice,” or “tolerant” or whatever useless words the left might like to call such an idea.

But it does have two positive attributes. It is Constitutional. And it works.

We’ll take an armed citizenry over left-wing, unworkable, and dangerous non-solutions any day.

Source: ZeroHedge