No, it’s not due to a view of the Second Amendment that claims the right of every American to own rapid-fire artillery. My opposition to red flag laws stems from government’s inbred incompetence. The more responsibilities are piled onto government, the more the ineptitude overwhelms. It’s the perfect storm for exploitation by sinister political actors. In the confusion, due process and equal application of the laws gets buried under prejudices and arbitrary and capricious actions. Oh, then add civil service protections and unionization for the hirelings in the people’s government and the people’s government quickly becomes a worker soviet. Get the picture?
As proof, and previously mentioned, Democrats demand expanded background checks for gun purchases when recent violations of the existing background checks seldom go to investigation, let alone charges. Also, state gun-enhancements in the commission of crimes get tossed out the window by progressive – read “soft on crime” – DA’s enthralled with “equity”, meaning racial proportionality, meaning the race-norming of the numbers on the docket so they don’t exceed the race’s 13% of the population. More succinctly, a form of criminal justice affirmative action is implemented to give “protected classes” a head start by discarding the weapons charges entirely. Either way, more embellished background checks, expanded rules and bans on difficult-to-define guns and their appurtenances, and new layers of regulations in red flag laws will not translate into safer communities. An already difficult task was made gargantuan for an already difficult-to-manage government workforce.
Don’t think for a moment that hiring more government workers will do the trick. More government workers won’t necessarily mean more work gets done. It’ll just create a larger worker soviet, as California has proven with the CSEA and CTA. It’s a state government of the public employee unions, by the public employee unions, and for the public employee unions. The word “capture” keeps coming to mind. There’s a reason for the California DMV, or CalTrans (the state transportation agency) for that matter, being a nationwide insult to efficiency.
Speaking of California, look at what they’ve done to their election laws. It’s more proof that more laws and an explosion in their attendant regulations means more . . . of a mess. While guns and voting are different arenas, if you fumble one, don’t expect a person in their right mind to give you unfettered access to the other. Chaotic elections give to us a clue about the fate of the Second Amendment.
Led by the mantra to “count every vote” and the rhetoric to fight “voter suppression” by the poohbahs of the one-party state, laws were passed that can only make your eyes roll. An election system is efficient if results are produced in a timely manner and come with the reasonable expectation that vote totals actually reflect legal, honest-to-God votes. Today, nothing can be further from the truth. In an earlier time, election results were frequently known hours after the polls closed. Only three-quarters of the votes were counted in LA’s June mayoral contest after 5 days.
Many things are awry in California’s election zoo. It’s a criminal act in the state for a poll worker to ask a person for ID. Yes, a criminal act! They’ve done this as they’ve made it exceedingly difficult to identify ballot misbehavior. To boot, ballots are shotgunned through the mail, a method famous for election shenanigans. My son, a recent California refugee, got two ballots for this June’s primary election: one from Sanders County, Mt., where he now lives, and one from California. The state mailed the absentee ballot to him at his Montana residence (?). He has a Montana driver’s license to prove it. You’d think that someone in the California county clerk’s office would notice. So much for that thought.
He has no inclination for vote fraud, but can we be certain about others, especially if the system is constructed to make it difficult to detect the chicanery? Remember, this is the party of bail funds for rioters, inciters of public incivility against their opponents, mobs to intimidate the administration of justice, and plotters with friends in the administrative state to hound a duly elected president from pre-election to the four years of post-election. Is this a party that would shrink from pushing the envelope on voting if they have a reasonable expectation of never being caught? If you’re naïve enough to think so, I have some Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment to sell you.
I can’t prove fraud, few can, because the system is designed to hide it. Ballots, after being scattered through the mail, are picked up by who-knows-who, taken behind closed doors to be marked by God-knows-who, and then collected in bulk by who-knows-who. California in 2016 made it a matter of law to sanction the “harvesting” of the vote. Uhhhh, what can go wrong?
In a brief moment of sanity, in a holiday from its usual display of Trump derangement syndrome, the LA Times in 2018 condemned the “overly-permissive ballot collection law”. The Times said the law opens “the door to coercion and fraud and should be fixed or repealed.” Precisely!
Voter registration with verified identity, eligibility, and address is made into a Keystone Cops’ comedy skit. Moter-voter – automatic voter registration at the DMV (driver’s license, vehicle registration) – makes a conduit for prohibited persons such as felons, the underaged, non-residents, and illegal immigrants (the “undocumented”). Unknowingly, or knowingly, they can get swept onto the voter rolls. Remember, the whole system is manned (or womanned, or whatever) by proud SEIU-protected state workers.
Federal law requires a regular clean-up of the rolls (removal of the ineligible, dead, inactive, or moved), something that California is notoriously delinquent. California hasn’t been removing “inactive” voters from the lists for 20 years, in spite of a Supreme Court reaffirmation of the requirement in 2019 (Husted v. Randolph Institute). The problem aggravated to such an extent that Judicial Watch forced a consent decree onto the state to fulfill federal law. It is being done in fits and starts or not at all.
Then, compound the problem: the provisional ballot morass allows a person to vote anywhere in the state, away from the precinct registration rolls, which puts more pressure on an election workforce not prone to efficiency to begin with. Don’t expect SEIU-protected underlings to be aficionados of signature analysis in obscure comparisons. When you add to the muddle the ballots allowed to arrive days after the election, it is no wonder election day in California turns into election month(s). And the results . . . ?
Can anyone have faith in California elections? Would you entrust the “the right to bear arms” to the California mentality of government, amply displayed in their crazy-quilt elections laws and regulations? If you are, I suppose that there is a larger clientele for Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment than I thought.
RogerG
Bibliography:
*Read John Fund’s piece on California’s election system here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/californias-crazy-vote-count-is-a-warning-to-other-states/
*The LA Times editorial against ballot harvesting can be found here: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-mail-ballots-harvesting-20171115-story.html
*For a full accounting of the public employee unions representing California state government workers, refer to here: https://lao.ca.gov/StateWorkforce/BargainingUnits