Attorney General Kamala Harris has teamed up with state Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco and anti-gun state legislative leaders in Sacramento to ban and confiscate the firearms owned by hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Californians.
Senate Bill 249, as amended, would make a small but profound change to the definition in state law of what constitutes a detachable magazine for a semi-automatic firearm. By doing so, as many as one million semi-automatic rifles (with a “bullet button” or other magazine locking device), which were legally sold in California over the last twelve years, would become illegal on July 1, 2013. If you're one of the hundreds-of-thousands of Californians who purchased one of these modern sporting rifles (a centerfire semi-automatic rifle with a magazine locking device that prevents detachment of the magazine without a bullet or tool) since 2000, your firearm will have to be surrendered or may be confiscated.
If SB 249 is enacted into law, not only would you lose your modern sporting rifle, there would be no compensation for your loss, no provision for its registration, no public awareness program that your firearm is now outlawed and no details on what would be required to make it legal again.
Thousands of law-abiding gun owners could then be arrested for inadvertent violations. If you own a newly-banned firearm, your only choices would be to destroy it, surrender it to a law enforcement agency, sell it out-of-state or have it confiscated at the time of your arrest! Which option would you prefer?
SB 249 is not the only anti-gun bill working through the California Legislature that threatens law-abiding gun owners. Anti-gun extremists have bills affecting open carry of an unloaded long gun (AB 1527), repeal of state preemption of bb gun regulations (SB 1315), mandatory lost and stolen reporting (SB 1366), hunting heritage (SB 1221), liability for negligent storage of bb, airsoft and other toy guns (AB 2333) and transfer of firearms (AB 2460).
Your state Senator and Assemblyman MUST hear from you TODAY urging them to OPPOSE ALL anti-gun legislation listed above! SB 249 is the worst gun confiscation bill introduced in California in twenty years.
Contact information for your state Senator and Assemblyman can be found here.