CRPA LEGISLATIVE ALERT!

[bwiese]

Bill, could you please expand on this, or provide a link about this if you have explained it here before?

It appears Sam Paredes of GOC started hammering on Dept of Fish & Game's commisioner Hanna by sending a nastygram to a bunch of legislators. Got everyone steamed up & worked up without considering the bigger picture - regardless of Hanna being helpful/useful, it got a dude kicked out and NRA takes the blame (when that's the last thing they'd do). Paredes fought the wrong battle at the wrong time because he appears to have had a personal grudge against Hanna.

AB821 could well have been quietly vetoed by Gov as unneeded, with the cover that DFG could easily handle it on a smaller scale more appropriate for fine-tuned regulations. The useless extra drama provided by the Hanna situation in effect removed any cover the gov might have had, and may have pushed him to this position.

While we don't know the gov's true feelings, certainly it made it harder for his staffers (which did not support either 821 or 1471).

Also, I just checked my email, and the first email I have from CRPA urging opposition on 1471 is May 21. They sent several other emails about it since.

Good to know, haven't heard much otherwise. You'd think they'd maybe try to talk to Calguns and others.

I just remember fuming at GOC and CRPA not showing up at the Aug 2006 DOJ regulatory hearings - they sent one-page letters in. We saw 'em downtown right afterwards, nothing else was really going on (except perhaps private nongun lobbying efforts).

[bwiese]

I should add that AB1471 was, at least in part, brought to you by CRPA and SASS.

These clowns supported the original SB15 'unsafe handgun' laws back around 2000; AB1471 microstamping just patches into this block of laws (nb: which can be very useful to us in fighting it).

CRPA's lobbyists are tied in with big CA firearms retailers who loved the idea of big blocks of handguns becoming noncertified. As large retailers they can cycle this dead inventory out of the state, and at the same time devalue used guns already in circulation (by making them PPTable only). Smaller nonchain dealers with large used gun inventories were hit bigtime.

SASS comes along at the same time with its 'lobbyist' and gets bought off with the single-action exemption.

At the time the Legislature saw 3 gun groups - they dunno about relative size/power/skills/representation between the 3 - and they though it was a safe vote because gunowners appear 'split'.

If AB1471 had to exist in 'free standing' form - i.e, not as patched into unsafe handgun laws (12125PC et seq) there'd've been many other open questions that could be used to attack it, and there'd've been a higher bar to cross.

Thanks, CRPA.