Here is a message from the NRA:

Anti-gun hysteria has reached a fever pitch in the Golden State. The California Assembly is considering a bill (Assembly Bill 2062) this session that, if passed, will have dire consequences for California’s law-abiding gun owners.

AB2062 is scheduled to be heard on Wednesday, May 7 in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.Sponsored by State Assembly Member Kevin De Leon (D-45), AB2062 would require that law-abiding gun owners obtain a permit to buy handgun ammunition and would impose severe restrictions on the private transfers of handgun ammunition. Applicants for a “permit-to-purchase” would be required to submit to a background check, pay a $35 fee, and wait as long as 30 days to receive the permit.

Under AB2062, it would be unlawful to privately transfer more than 50 rounds of ammunition per month, even between family and friends, unless you are registered as a “handgun ammunition vendor” in the Department of Justice’s database. Ammunition retailers would have to be licensed and store ammunition in such a manner that it would be inaccessible to purchasers. The bill would also require vendors to keep a record of the transaction including the ammunition buyer’s name, driver’s license, the quantity, caliber, type of ammunition purchased, and right thumbprint, which would be submitted to the Department of Justice. Vendors would be required to contact the purchase permit database to verify the validity of a permit before completing a sale. All ammunition sales in the State of California would be subject to a $3 per transaction tax. Lastly, mail order ammunition sales would be prohibited. Any violator of AB2062 would be subject to civil fines.

Here’s what you can do to help protect our Second Amendment freedoms:

• Participate in NRA’s Virtual “Lobby-Day” on Tuesday, May 6 and tell the Assembly to stop supporting ill-conceived anti-gun proposals like AB2062.
• On Tuesday, May 6, call, fax, and email the Assembly between 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM and voice your opposition to more gun control proposals. Respectfully, tell your Assembly Member to oppose any assault on our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. To identify your Assembly Member and to get contact information, please click here. A roster of the entire Assembly can be found here.
• Firearms owners able to travel to the State Capitol will be visiting the legislative offices at the same time your calls, faxes, and emails will be arriving. Please be polite while you address your concerns! The combination of your calls, faxes, and emails, together with those personal visits, will show legislators that California’s firearms owners strongly oppose AB2062 and similar anti-freedom proposals.
• Forward this message to every gun owner you know and include all gun clubs, stores, ranges and Second Amendment groups. Please cross-post this on the internet on websites and firearm-related forums.

I have to admit that I never would have dreamed, a decade ago, that I would be serving as a conduit for the NRA. I’ve never handled a gun myself, and find them somewhat frightening. I know that guns in criminals’ hands are a huge problem. I also know that good people die in gun accidents all the time.

What I also know, though, is that the Constitution is not ambiguous about guns: The Founders saw government as the greatest threat to people and they wrote the Second Amendment with the idea that armed citizens could come together to protect themselves against a dangerous government — something I bet German Jews, Chinese intellectuals and Sudanese villagers all wish they could have done.

I know too that the NRA’s slogan — “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” — something that I always thought was superficial and glib, is absolutely true, as experiments in London and Washington, D.C. have both shown. Lastly, I know that, just as good people die in gun accidents, they also die in car accidents, yet no one would think to outlaw cars.

But to get back to the NRA’s action message. We know that, if the Legislature passes that law, it will instantly be challenged in Court. It will probably fail, although there is a possibility that it won’t. It will certainly cost the California taxpayers a great deal of money as California defends the indefensible. Isn’t it easier just to protest the proposed law now, before we go down that risky and expensive path?