California Lawmakers Pass Bill Requiring $50 Fee for Ammo Purchases

California: Mankind's Last and Best Hope to Face Down the Twin Scourges of Middle America and Sane Fiscal Theories

Along with a whole gaggle of various gun restrictions. Does anyone want to bet on if this is going to decrease crime in Compton, Oakland, Watts, or any other place these lawmakers haven't set foot in, or won't travel to without an armed escort?

From the L.A. Times:

California lawmakers Wednesday advanced a dozen gun-control measures, including background checks for ammunition buyers, and gave early approval to a tax penalty on the Boy Scouts for barring openly gay leaders. 

Legislators also voted for a new $75 charge on real estate transactions to pay for affordable-housing projects. 

Mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Conn., in December spurred Democratic lawmakers to look for ways to tighten California's gun laws, already some of the toughest in the nation.

So let's see here... Control guns to increase crime, then raise taxes, and then punish politically incorrect and therefore politically unpopular institutions. It's like a Christmas wish list of trendy American Leftist policies. And people wonder why California is sinking without the benefit of a mega-quake from the San Andreas...

Californians who want to buy ammunition would have to submit personal information and a $50 fee for a background check by the state, under a bill passed by the Senate. The state Department of Justice would determine whether buyers have a criminal record, severe mental illness or a restraining order that would disqualify them from owning guns. 

Ammo shops would check the name on buyers' driver's licenses against a state list of qualified purchasers.  

[...]  

The Senate also OK'd a bill that would outlaw the sale, purchase and manufacture in California of semiautomatic rifles that can accommodate detachable magazines. The measure, SB 374 by Steinberg [Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento)], also would require those who own such weapons to register them with the state. 

The Assembly joined the action on guns by passing a measure to require the state Department of Justice to notify local law enforcement agencies when someone buys more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition. The bill would also ban kits that convert magazines to carry more than 10 rounds and would extend a ban on gun ownership for anyone who conveys a serious threat of violence to a licensed psychotherapist. 

Yup. According to California's legislature, there's not a problem that can't be solved by over-regulation, notification/intimidation, and collecting taxes/fees for ineffective government programs and filling political coffers. Well, actually I suppose those programs are only ineffective if you believe that their purpose is to do what they're nominally supposed to do. If you think these of these programs as vehicles for enriching politically connected relatives/spouses, or political allies (public employee unions, for instance)... well, then they're quite effective.

This is like reason number 75,978 as to why I left California and will never return. Well, that and the basically ignorant and arrogant belief that anyone not from California or a big city in the east is an stupid and/or evil, possibly inbred, hick that will attack you on sight.

Think I'm kidding or exaggerating? I'm not. I've had conversations with family and friends in California who, in all seriousness, have claimed that the Tea Party thinks that's it's OK for men to rape women(!) because that's just the way it is in "other" parts of the country. I bet you didn't know that California is one of the last bastions of humanity in this country-- a country whose morals have, apparently, decayed to the point of Mad Max 2.