This character continued: "Any call for gun control is treason.... You can't protect your freedom when the government has more guns than the people."
That's the type of dangerous paranoia the gun lobby nurtures, making armed whackos even more deranged and sending politicians into hiding for their political safety.
Gov. Jerry Brown generally has been quiet about guns. But last week he endorsed the concept of Obama's plan.
"One of the missing ingredients" in California's strong laws, the governor told reporters, is that guns "come in from other states — Arizona, Nevada — virtually free-flow.... So national legislation is crucial."
California politicians who support gun control should be pushing the hardest for Obama's legislation. To bolster their own state's laws. Some are.
"I'm very excited about what the president is proposing," says state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. "It's long overdue. We know guns are being brought into California illegally and usually we find out about it too late."
The attorney general is running a program — the only one in the nation — that tracks known handgun and assault weapon owners to make sure they're still legally permitted to possess a firearm.
If one is convicted of a felony, becomes mentally ill or is hit with a restraining order, a red flag goes up. Then a squad of officers may knock on the door and seize his guns.
Last year, near 1,900 weapons were confiscated from such people in California. And if that is government "gun grabbing" — a term the gun lobby uses to stoke fear — so be it. It's about keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys, supposedly an NRA aim.
Obama's gun control proposal would enable California's bad-guy-tracking system to potentially operate nationally.
When the NRA argues that California's strict gun laws are not effective, that's baloney. But our laws would be even more effective if the NRA's main goal wasn't to keep national gun controls pathetically weak.
