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Comment by wl | Hacker News Reader

The gun store issue in California is even worse because of the gun laws. You cannot lawfully acquire ammunition anywhere except at a gun store. You cannot lawfully acquire or transfer a firearm to another person except at a gun store. Lending a firearm to a friend in case of civil unrest is right out. And if you have a place to shoot right now, your ammunition supply is probably a little perilous.

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The background-check-for-ammo law is a constitutional disaster. There was recently an injunction against the AG enforcing it, but the ninth stayed the lower court's order.

I read the decision granting the injunction, and wow. The ID requirements are even higher than for buying a gun -- you need certain kinds of ID that proves that you are a citizen (passports can take a long time to get, and some people have complications with their birth certificate). For those who were able to provide such an ID, the background check falsely rejected 16% of applicants, amounting to over 100K people.

I really think that people would be more willing to compromise if they felt that their rights were respected. But what a lot of people don't realize is how outright hostile these gun control laws are. They are meant to penalize and annoy gun owners, not provide safety.

Another example is the handgun roster in California, where you can only buy certain models that were approved before 2013. They aren't safer, they just made the new standards infeasible to meet, so no more models are approved. This doesn't help anyone, unless you think annoying gun owners is a worthwhile goal.

There's an interesting constitutional issue there... which is that the right to bear arms is not the right to buy ammunition. That is made all the more challenging for an originalist, because metalic cartridges with percussion caps were not invented for almost a hundred years after the Bill of Rights.

If black powder and shot for a muzzle loader are available, has your right been abridged? Is it merely that you as a fully unprepared militiaman are inconvenienced? Does that mean that if you're late for a TV interview, zoom meeting, or tweetstorm you're free to drive through traffic lights in pursuit of the 1st amendment?

"If black powder and shot for a muzzle loader are available, has your right been abridged?"

Your idea has been deemed dangerous by the internet police, and your ISP connection will be cancelled. Don't worry, you are still free to write a letter to your local newspaper, so your rights have not been infringed.

Our rights are naturally extended with technological advances in the same spirit. Demanding cell tower records is considered a "search" and twitter is "the press".

"Our rights are naturally extended with technological advances in the same spirit"

It seems to me that very frequently, people declare something to be completely different just because it uses new technology. And then people argue if it really is different or not. There's never an airtight proof of who is right.

A saying that I think I may have first seen on HN is something about quantity having a quality all its own. E.g. maybe at some point from a musket to a rifle to a machine gun to a bazooka to a nuke, there is a line to be drawn.

>“though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.”

-George Orwell

Bear arms is usually understood as being read with keep, as in in keep-and-bear arms.

It means to carry firearms, whether you keep them or not. Both rights are being codified in keep-and-bear.

Applying the same logic to 1A, we could say that the freedom of the press is not infringed - you can have as many as you want! - but it doesn't say anything about ink. Or laser and offset printers, for that matter.

In practice, the courts take dim view on such arguments, and if some element is required to practically exercise a right, it is usually protected under that right.

See, I actually agree... it's the originalists who have a problem.

If you want to talk about the press, and having rights abridged by not having ink then you better actually be in the business of printing (or maybe a potential member of a well regulated militia?). Waiting periods have been deemed perfectly constitutional so it's a lot harder to argue that those so horrifically unprepared and unwilling to wait for their mail order ammo (yep that's legal!) to be delivered are really having rights infringed more than my free speech is being infringed by being forced to wear a shirt and shoes (or even pants) to be served food.

Mail order ammo is only legal until the state says it's illegal - CA did just that. My understanding of your original premise was that there are no venues available.

The Amendments do not grant rights but protect them.

> . Lending a firearm to a friend in case of civil unrest is right out.

In California, you can lend a firearm to other people who have a firearms safety certificate for up to 30 days, civil unrest not required, and the rules are looser for family members out to grandparents/grandchildren. In the event of some imminent need due to civil unrest, the general criminal defense of necessity, which is recognized in California law, would be available even if the loan was otherwise prohibited.

The state’s gun laws must be too loose if the firearms fetishists have to keep inventing fake restrictions to campaign against.

>In California, you can lend a firearm to other people who have a firearms safety certificate for up to 30 days... The state’s gun laws must be too loose if the firearms fetishists have to keep inventing fake restrictions to campaign against.

Maybe before you go around calling names it would be beneficial to do some research of your own? I'll give you benefit of the doubt and assume that your knowledge of CA firearms laws is outdated as opposed to being maliciously incorrect:

Years ago you could lend guns to anyone with an FSC or HSC for <30 days. However the powers that be decided that this was a "loophole"[1] and banned all loans to non-relatives. These are not "fake restrictions", you can verify them on the state of California's own website[2]

edit: as mentioned below, it's still legal to let a non-owner handle a firearm as long as the original owner is constantly present and supervising. So sharing on a trip to the range is legal, but letting someone take a gun home afterwards is not.

[1]: https://a17.asmdc.org/article/2016-legislation-0

[2]: Law which amended PC § 27880[3] to ban nonfamilial loans: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

[3]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

>> “banned all loans to non-relatives”

False; see PC § 27885:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

——

To give some idea of how complex firearm law is in California, take a peak at the 141 page document below (current as of 2019) covering “just” the state’s penal code:

https://www.atf.gov/file/117166/download

True, when I think of loan I was thinking more along the lines of "let a friend take it home", not loans that require colocation. Definitely agree with you on the complexity— some of my personal favorites are how CA and the Feds measure the lengths of guns completely differently, leading to much confusion. And of course there's 3 or 4 different definitions of what it means to "possess" a gun, which depend a lot on the context

  False; see PC § 27885:

PC § 27885 (a) The person loaning the firearm is at all times within the presence of the person being loaned the firearm.

I think most people's definition of "loan" isn't limited to the loaner having to be right there for the duration. That's like a library "loaning" a book but forbidding you from taking it out of the librarian's view. In practical terms, it bans loans.

Curbside pickup ammo and guns is allowed, see for example http://reedsindoorrange.com/

Allowed the whole time in all California jurisdictions, or allowed now (after lawsuits)?

It was not allowed until after (but not necessarily as a result of) the lawsuits. CA gun stores first started getting shut down in March. On April 10th, the ATF issued guidance saying that it was OK to do curbside pickup (for the whole country, not just CA: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/atf-business-p...)

  and guns

Not according to your stated example. Quoting:

"Ammunition and accessories only No firearm registrations."

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