California’s formerly-Republican Governor has signed two anti-gun bills embodying controversial theories.
Assembly Bill 821 bans the use of lead bullets in a number of California hunting zones inhabited by the California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) on the basis of the belief that the few surviving California Condors could ingest bullets from wounded-and-lost game animals or from hunter’s gut piles, then fail to regurgitate or quickly pass such foreign objects, consequently succumbing to lead poisoning.
Journalists report studies supporting such deaths, but those familiar with the digestive processes of raptors generally may well find it difficult to believe that indigestible lumps of metal are likely to remain inside the birds long enough to produce poisoning. Vulturine birds like other raptors eject indigestible portions of prey or carrion, such as bone or fur or feathers, in the form of pellets.
Arnold Schwarzenneger also signed the patently absurd Assembly Bill 1471 which mandates the application of imaginary non-existent technology in semiautomatic pistols. After January 1st, 2010, semiauto pistols in California must be
designed and equipped with a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched or otherwise imprinted onto in two or more places on the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired.
California’s democrat-majority assembly pretends to believe that an ability to trace ejected cartridge casings to specific individual firearms would be of great value in crime solving. That theory, of course, overlooks the possibility of smart criminals simply picking up their spent cases at shooting scenes, the truly diabolical taking a file to the microscopic array, and the just-plain-practical throwing the murder weapon into the Pacific.
In reality, of course, the impact (and concealed intention) is really simply to ban semi-automatic pistols in the state of California.
Governor Schwarzenegger ran originally as a Republican and a reformer. When he found himself taking large hits in the polls as the result of massive political advertising by state employee’s unions and hostile coverage by the liberal establishment media, he sold out and made peace with the democrat legislature, the unions, and the liberal activist lobby groups. Now he gets flattering press coverage for precisely this kind of betrayal.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation observed:
Governor Schwarzenegger has now effectively banned more firearms than Senators Kennedy, Feinstein and Schumer combined,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel. “The governor has proven to gun owners and sportsmen that he is just another liberal anti-gun Hollywood actor — he just plays a moderate Republican on TV. Mr. Schwarzenegger has now exposed himself for what he really is, the most anti-gun and anti-sportsmen governor in America.
