Saturday, June 01, 2013

California Senate passes bill for background checks to buy ammo and a $50 fee

The California Senate on Wednesday approved a package of seven gun control bills, including background checks for people who buy ammunition, introduced in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The shooting deaths in December of 20 children and six adults in Newtown as well as mass shootings in Colorado and Arizona, spurred Democratic legislators in California to look for ways to tighten the state's gun laws, which are already some of the toughest in the nation. “We all can recite the horrific acts that have occurred in our country over the last year,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). “These bills attempt to respond to those well publicized tragedies and many more that go unpublicized.” The measures include a requirement that Californians who want to buy ammunition, and the vendors who sell it, would have to submit personal information for a background check to determine whether they have a criminal record, severe mental illness or a restraining order that would disqualify them from owning guns. The goal of SB 53 is “to ensure that criminals and other dangerous individuals cannot purchase ammunition in the state of California,” said Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles), the bill’s author.  “To purchase a product that has the potential to maim or kill another human being you can (now) walk into a gun store, no questions asked,” he added. “I think that’s a little outrageous.”
Ammunition purchasers would submit their information and a $50 fee to the state Department of Justice which would maintain a list of qualified buyers that would be checked by ammo stores. Purchasers would have to show their driver's license or other ID at the time they buy bullets...more

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