California Assault Weapon Ban Registration Commercial

[Write Winger]

This may be like trying to challenge the "no calls or texting while driving" law if your defense is "I didn't know about it". Likely wouldn't work.

I was 19 at the time. I seem to remember everyone knowing about it, and blatantly saying eff that to registering their guns cuz of the fear of confiscation.

To play devil's advocate here, the state should have done registration of all new sales only, like they just did with long guns. Would have prevented this whole excrement sandwich, and gone the way of hand gun registration. Not saying I agree with gun registration of any kind, but it would have been a better way of going about it than trying to make an already legal market illegal and creating hundreds of thousands of felons by the act of not acting.

[Bolillo]

DOJ did NO market size estimation to reach a given population, they did not know the population size, penetration into various areas, etc. They also did not do multilanguage broadcasts in areas where English was often 2nd language. So it was a total marketing fail...

Looks like the Harrot v County of Kings court alluded the 1991 fail:

"According to a Senate Judiciary Committee report, the Attorney General sought the bill because of very poor compliance with the original January 1, 1991, registration deadline. “[C]onsidering the fact that the great majority of gun owners are law abiding citizens, regardless of their opinion of a particular law, it is unlikely that a 90% rate of noncompliance can [be] explained as a concerted political statement. Far more likely is the possibility that owners of assault weapons were simply unaware of the deadline, or unaware that their particular weapons were included on the list of proscribed firearms. (Sen. Com. on Judiciary, rep. on Sen. Bill No. 263 (1991-1992 Reg. Sess.) p. 3, italics added.)”

So, the Senate Judiciary Committee is on record with, at a minimum, acknowledging the 1991 fail. My own view is that they repeated the same fail again with the Category 2 / SB23 "education" at the end of 1999.

The state certainly appears capable of widespread, multilingual outreach and education such as the texting while driving efforts. Obvious difference between texting and AW registration is that texting is an infraction and the instrument (cell phone, car) remains legal to own. AWs were legal to own, but it became felonious to have one and not to register. Given that logic, would it be unreasonable to suggest that the state's outreach should have been much more extensive for a potential felony than for a simple infraction?

[jpigeon]

I LOVE CA. Our tax dollars hard at work...

[Californio]

Never saw it but in those days I was working 20 hour days and had no time for media.

[Ding126]

I tried PRARing this.

DOJ has little or no records now apparently. This was done very casually and haphazardly.

While there is state law mandating 'education', failure to adequately consider market size, do market research, etc. the DOJ felt they were doing their job by sending flyers to gun shops, running the "reg-a-gun" website, and running TV ads like this on UHF TV midnight mexican midget wrestling programs... I recall only one ad seen in Nov maybe December 2000 on CBS - and I think it was placed during '60 Minutes'

DOJ did NO market size estimation to reach a given population, they did not know the population size, penetration into various areas, etc. They also did not do multilanguage broadcasts in areas where English was often 2nd language. So it was a total marketing fail...

Will it help us with any pending or future cases?

[SigP510]

"...you register your truck man..."

Apples, Oranges ?

Last I checked, driving your truck on a public roadway isn't a fundamental, individual right.

This commercial gets my blood pressure up. Gotta love the general demographic they appear to be targeting there.

[Ubermcoupe]

This may be like trying to challenge the "no calls or texting while driving" law if your defense is "I didn't know about it". Likely wouldn't work.

Agreed, as I am sure the AG/DOJ would love to prosecute an AW case.

It might still help in addition to other legal reasons in an AW challenge, but on its own I doubt it to make any measurable impact.

I have hope the AW laws will change soon enough!

[cmaynes]

yeah- registering it makes less dangerous..... but its for the kids....

[1859sharps]

Yeah,
We can thank george deukmejian, the ah-nold forerunner RINO piece of crap for signing that bill into law. Were any of you kiddies around to remember this? roberti-roos? I was. Pete Wilson was our greatest Governor in recent history. He would never have signed that piece of crap and screwed us gun owners. After His term, doofus davis gave us sb23. Not only that, He (Wilson) knew how to keep the demon-rat spending in check by using the veto pen.

I forgot to mention, deuk signed that bill on his way out of politics. What a coward and a way to screw the base that voted for him. ah-nold had a good teacher yes?

ED

yep, I remember those years too. they are why I dropped the republican = good for gun rights, democrat = bad for gun rights simplicity.

Do you remember Wilson saying he would sign a "assault weapons" ban if give a "good one". though on the way out as he was termed out he veto'd what later became sb23 under Davis because it was so badly written. I always wondered if he was playing politics or if he really would have signed a ban if it was written well.

[Fate]

Guy with toothpick is a dadburn commie.