California Farmer Has Guns Confiscated ... After... Register Rifle

California Farmer Has Guns Confiscated and Faces Felony Charges After Trying to Register Rifle

NRA-ILA link

FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2018
California residents attempting to comply with the Golden State’s ever-increasing swamp of firearms laws and regulations should take warning. According to a report out of Bakersfield, a good faith effort to obey the state’s labyrinthine firearm rules will not spare a gun owner in technical violation of the law from the wrath of the California Department of Justice.

Back on May 17, local NBC affiliate KGET reported on the case of farmer Jeffrey Scott Kirschenmann. According to the news outlet, the trouble started back in April when Kirschenmann attempted to register a rifle he owned with the California DOJ.

In California, “assault weapons,” or commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms with features the California State Assembly finds distasteful, are subject to registration. Pursuant to SB 880 and AB 1135, the California DOJ is now accepting registration of firearms lawfully owned prior to January 1, 2017 that fit the state’s new, stricter, definition of an “assault weapon” signed into law in July 2016. The change in definition targets firearms equipped with a “bullet button,” which allows the user to efficiently remove a fixed magazine with the use of a tool. The registration period runs through June 30, 2018.

The KGET report explained that during his attempt to comply with state law, Kirschenmann submitted photos of “an illegally modified” AR-15 to the California DOJ. This prompted an investigation by the DOJ that culminated in a raid of Kirschenmann’s home. Once inside the property, investigators allegedly discovered several unregistered “assault weapons,” a pair of suppressors, and what California terms a “multiburst trigger activator.”

Kirschenmann was arraigned on May 21 and given $150,000 bail. The farmer faces nine felony counts of unlawful possession of an “assault weapon,” two counts of possessing a suppressor, and one charge of possessing a “multiburst trigger activator.” There is nothing in the report to indicate Kirschenmann violated any federal laws or that he has misused his firearms in any manner.

The California DOJ’s persecution of Kirschenmann, following what appears to have been an honest attempt to obtain assistance in complying with state law, will sow further mistrust between the state government and gun owners.

The climate of distrust is understandable. Becerra and his predecessor, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), have been at the forefront of demonizing gun owners. At Becerra’s 2017 confirmation hearing he told lawmakers that he considered his NRA F- rating “a badge of honor.” Back in February, Harris told the media that Americans can’t take pride in their country due to what she considers insufficient gun control laws.

Many gun owners are already reluctant to comply with registration laws, as such schemes are quite accuratelyviewed as a means to facilitate firearms confiscation. Moreover, Kirschenmann isn’t alone in his alleged failure to conform to Sacramento’s mandates. As history shows, when faced with California’s increasingly onerous and byzantine gun laws, many decent folks have unwittingly broken the law, ignored new restrictions, or opted for civil disobedience.

In 1989 California passed legislation that categorized certain semi-automatic firearms as “assault weapons” and required them to be registered. Few complied. Following the deadline and a “second chance” grace period, the Los Angeles Times reported that 46,062 firearms had been registered. Revealing the scale of noncompliance, the report went on to note that “The state Department of Justice has estimated there are 200,000 to 300,000 [commonly-owned semi-autos in the state]. Others have calculated as many as 450,000 to 600,000.”

With woeful registration compliance rates, one might expect gun control’s true believers to show leniency to those who make an attempt to comply with the law. Of course, that notion assumes gun control advocates consider registration in itself to be a valuable public policy. In truth, anti-gun advocates value registration only so far as it creates an additional barrier to gun ownership and enables confiscation.

Understanding this, California’s gun control laws have worked precisely as intended in Kirschenmann’s case. California officials have utilized them to remove firearms from one more benign American citizen and in doing so have inched closer to their goal of total civilian disarmament.

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Does this remind anyone of the equation Registration = Confiscation ?

Registration means Confiscation and also in this case, Litigation...

Nobody here cares what happens to my constitutional rights.

They're all worried about poor suffering foreigners (who they were never elected to represent.)

They want them to have the best possible free legal representation that the American taxpayer can provide . . . After they robbed you because they knew you didn't have a gun to defend yourself with, because the state had already robbed you of that.

Well the California DOJ assault weapons registration process has turned into a 24 karat gold klusterf#k.

How many of the estimated half-million evil "assault weapons" are actually now registered and approved?

Unknown, but it appears to be only about 1 in 1000. Furthermore it appears that only about 1 in 10 even attempted to register, with about 90% of aspiring registrants remaining in limbo.

It's not enough to submit the registration. Your registration must be accepted, reviewed & approved. Unfortunately the DOJ has never been able to release complete, accurate, legal information on everything which will trigger disapprovals. Tiny modifications done by the owner may be deemed as illegal Manufacturing and a cause for the guns approval to be rejected.

Their position has been that the citizens will have to fight this out in court to be judged on what is and is not allowed on a gun by gun basis, because the law clearly does not and cannot cover every possible case.

It has been understood from the beginning that if you attempt to register a gun you believe meets the law and the DOJ believes it does not, you are basically screwed, and they can just come take your gun plus arrest you for being in possession of an illegal weapon.

No wonder so many people fail to even try registration. If they don't know you are a felon maybe they can't catch you. If you let them know you might be okay and you might not but there's no way to tell for sure before you do it.

Basically what the California government is asking us to do is go to them and say, "Here by making this custom pistol grip to fit my deformed pinky finger I may have committed a crime. Please tell me whether or not I have."

Thank God that 90% of us are not that stupid!

There are several big lawsuits right now about the California assault weapons registration debacle. The system was so poorly developed that it looks like only a tiny number of people were ever able to complete the registration process online.

The whole system is 200%+ over budget, while only about 1/9 who applied to register were able to complete the process before the deadline.

From the Firearms policy coalition:

• DOJ had approved 6,213 individuals to register 12,519 firearms as “assault weapons” as of June 30, 2018

• DOJ processed 12,168 applications for firearm registration between Jan. 5, 2018, and June 30, 2018

• DOJ still had 52,443 applications for firearm registration pending as of June 30

• Based on DOJ’s rate of their application processing between January and May 2018, it would take DOJ another 2.15 years to finish processing the remaining “assault weapon” applications

• The “assault weapon” registration system was originally estimated to cost $55,770 – 429 man-hours billed at $130.00 per hour – but over $113,370 was spent on programming alone

• $119,970 in fees had been collected from gun owners through May 30, 2018

• DOJ received funding to hire “24 analysts and two managers” to process “bullet-button assault weapon” registration applications, but those are “limited term positions that will cease to exist one year after these employees’ start dates”

So it doesn't look like they'll be able to finish that at all within the current budget.

I guess they expected to have a lot more money from those expensive application fees but people didn't show up to the party.

By the way I may be off on those percentages because I am unclear in some instances whether they are referring to total individuals registering, or total Firearms registered.

Cadd. Not surprising.
The only link in that post [May 30, 2018] did not work for me. Do you have links to some recent articles on this?

Registration = Confiscation

Not to mention how many of those individual registrants are joint registrants for the same firearms.

EDIT... here is a better link:
https://www.firearmspolicy.org/california-bbaw-registration-key-facts-stats

This is the general assault weapon page:

https://www.firearmspolicy.org/brea...t_button_assault_weapons_regulations_with_oal

Scoop, if you Google up the Firearms policy Coalition you might find some even more up-to-date figures.

Try this link:
https://www.firearmspolicy.org

That cut&paste was from last night's email notifications.

I'm not sure that date was supposed to be a link but I wasn't trying to paste all the links over from that article either.

It's the curse of the "third rail issue." Anybody that touches it gets hurt because the emotions of the public have been led by the nose toward instant, unthinking, hate.

The estimates of affected guns which I read were much much lower.


When 97% avoid a law, that's a perfect indication of a bad law.