California Bill to Ban Unloaded Rifles in Public

California lawmakers passed a bill that will make it illegal for citizens to carry an unloaded rifle in public. Previously, it was illegal to carry loaded rifles but perfectly fine to carry unloaded rifles. Once Assemblyman Anthony Portantino D-La Canada Flintridge realized that there’s no way to tell if a person’s gun is actually unloaded, he modeled this new bill to place an outright ban on all rifles in public. There is already a similar ban on handguns in the state of California.

Gun rights supporters, such as Assemblyman Tim Donnelly R-Twin Peaks, are unhappy about this turn of events, calling the bill “unnecessary.” Protesters are taking their guns to public locations to display their outrage over the bill. The NRA also voiced their disapproval (no surprise there).

As you might expect, there are a number of exemptions for people like hunters and military personnel, but all other Californians are out of luck. The idea behind the bill is to protect the safety of police officiers and Californian citizens. Portantino believes that if the public is permitted to carry guns around just willy-nilly, it is inevitable that violence would break out between the police and Second Amendment activists. 

Portantino doesn’t have kind words about gun owners. He stated, “I’d always hoped people would be reasonable,” and explained that he assumed that banning handguns would be sufficient to keep guns off the streets. 

So, evidently, gun control laws would go over much more smoothly if gun owners would just be “reasonable” and lock all their weapons away.