As you were informed last year during testimony on AB 2062, the Federal Government had in place an ammunition registration program established in the 1968 Gun Control Act that was discarded by Congress in 1986 when the U.S. Treasury Department testified that the program was of no use in crime fighting.
In the 18 years that the nationwide mandate was in place (no state was exempt from the program), not a single crime was solved due to the registration program. Not a single crime solved even though there were literally tens of millions of recorded transactions. If the program had even a shred of merit, one would think that even a few crimes would have been solved. The fact is there were none.
Ammunition and ammunition purchaser registration, in any form, serve only to infringe upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. It has proven to do nothing to prevent criminals from violating federal or state laws. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Haynes has held that criminals cannot be compelled to obey these registration laws because doing so would violate their right against self-incrimination. They can be prosecuted for breaking the law but they cannot be compelled to obey the law. Therefore there is no crime prevention aspect to AB 962.
AB 962 will do nothing to prevent criminals from acquiring ammunition and will do nothing to assist law enforcement in catching criminals. This bill will only create a massive record keeping system costing millions of taxpayer’s dollars, destroy the legal commerce of ammunition, and will make it cumbersome for law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights.
For these reasons and more, I strongly oppose AB 962.
Sincerely,
Greg Raven
