How to Stop Anti-Gun Bills in California from Becoming Law

California isn’t the only state in which the legislative district lines have been drawn in favor of Democrats but California voters have one advantage that most states do not have. We can recall state legislators from office and it doesn’t take a whole lot of signatures on a recall petition to force a state legislator into a recall election.

Let’s take a look at the California Assembly Public Safety Committee where all gun bills have to pass through or else die in committee. The committee is controlled by Democrats, 5-2. Last week three anti-gun bills passed through the committee on a party line vote, all 5 democrats voted for the bills both Republicans voted against the bills.

One of those Democrats who voted for the bills is Democrat Assemblyman Miguel Santiago from the 53rd Assembly District. There are a little over 150,000 registered voters in his district. It would take only 6,445 signatures of the registered voters in the 53rd Assembly District to force him into a recall election.

Recall Rules

Persons being recalled from office are not allowed to run as a replacement candidate. If the voters recall him then he is out of office, even if nobody runs as a replacement candidate.

Office holders fear being forced into a recall election, particularly if they are Democrats. Members of the Democrat Party, particularly those who give money to candidates, eat their young. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, they will go into a feeding frenzy if one of their kind appears vulnerable, particularly when this happens in a district like the 53rd Assembly which is a Democrat district where there would be no shortage of Democrat hacks eager to run in a recall election as a replacement candidate.

Moreover, time and money spent campaigning to survive a recall election is time and money the politician forced into a recall election won’t have to spend on his reelection.

Barack Obama and Ted Lieu
Barack Obama and Ted Lieu

Five years ago South Bay congressman Ted Lieu was a California State Senator who had authored an anti-gun bill, SB 661, which would have expanded California’s Gun-Free School Zones to 1,500 feet from 1,000 feet.

While the pointy headed trolls from the CalGuns Foundation rubbed their own feces all over themselves by way of opposition to the bill and the ‪NRA, ‪CRPA, ‪SAF, GOA, ‪GOC, etc., did nothing (unless you count asking for money and doing nothing as something) I threatened Ted Lieu with a recall election which he scoffed at until I reminded him that he had been elected in a special election in which virtually nobody voted.

I told Ted Lieu that all I needed to do to force him into a recall election was to collect valid signatures of registered voters in his district equal to 20% of the number of people who voted in the special election. I pointed out to him that the number of signatures I had to collect was so small, I could collect them all myself but I’m sure there were others in the district who would like to help out.

Ted Lieu gutted and amended his own bill. The gun-free school zone expansion bill was dead.

Possible Recalls

Here is a list of the other four Democrat members of the Public Safety Committee and the number of signatures it would require to force each of them into a recall election:

Reggie Jones Sawyer (D-59) – 5,699 signatures of registered voters.
Patty Lopez (D-39) – 9,007 signatures of registered voters.
Bill Quirk (D-20) – 15,631 signatures of registered voters.
Evan Low (D-28) – 23,977 signatures of registered voters.

Forcing a Democrat who votes for a gun-bill into a recall election sends a powerful message to him and others in the legislature who would vote for an anti-gun bill – That there will be a price to pay for your anti-gun vote. And since there is no limit to the number of times a legislator can be forced into a recall election, you can expect to pay a price as many times as it takes.

Given the very few number of signatures it takes to recall these anti-gun members of this committee you must be asking yourself “Why haven’t any of the so called gun-rights groups backed a recall effort?”

The amount of money it would have taken to force Assemblyman Santiago and the other anti-gun Democrat members of the Assembly Public Safety Committee into recall elections isn’t even couch change for the so called gun-rights groups and they’ve had well over a year to do it.

Gun-Rights Groups Don’t Recall Anti-Gun Politicians

The answer to why the so called gun-rights groups don’t recall these anti-gun politicians is because the leadership of these groups want anti-gun laws. If it weren’t for these anti-gun laws and bills then these so called gun-rights groups wouldn’t be able to raise money and would collapse like a house of cards.

Take for example Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. In addition to drawing a million dollars a year in salary, NRA members give him nearly a million dollars a day to feed that bloated bureaucracy which is the NRA.

That money comes from suckers who will continue to throw money at the NRA and the other so called gun-rights groups thinking they are actually defending the Second Amendment when in reality the leadership of these groups could not care less about the Second Amendment.

You need only look at the lobbying reports and other filings with the California Secretary of State in Sacramento to see how little these groups actually spend on opposing California’s anti-gun laws.

States like California and New York serve as fundraising cautionary tales for these groups in pro-gun states. The warning to gun owners in those other states is to give the gun-groups money or risk California/New York style anti-gun laws in your state or city. Not that the money those poor fools donate will go towards fighting anti-gun laws or politicians anywhere.

Biblical Stories

I am not a religious man. This June will mark forty-two years since I last attended church but a couple of biblical stories have stayed with me. One story in particular was Abraham negotiating with god to spare Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. The number of righteous men which would spare the cities was initially 50. Abraham got that number down to 10.

Five years ago this May I took a page from the Bible and told my supporters that I would file a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s 1967 ban on openly carrying loaded firearms in public if I could find 100 people to support my lawsuit. I now have just over 300 supporters.

It won’t take 100 people in an Assembly district to recall any of these anti-gun Assemblymen or their successors after the November election but it is a lot easier for 100 people to collect the signatures required than it would be for 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 or 10 people to collect the signatures.

However, if you can’t find enough people out of the nearly 40 million in California to support these recall efforts then you should ask yourself whether or not California is a state worth saving.