As stated in the California State Constitution:
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.
All people have the inalienable rights to:
A right which is fettered with unreasonable restrictions and infringements on its exercise is no right at all, hence we can reasonably assume that the People of California would not intend that a person be prevented from preparing, equiping and training themselves to exercise these rights to the best of their abilities and as their condition allows.
Therefore, it is submitted that the following amendment be made to the California State Constitution to clarify this intent: add the following section to Article 1:
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SECTION 32. The right of the People of the State of California to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (a) No article, section or clause of this constitution nor law, statute or rule shall infringe a lawful persons right to buy, sell, tranfer, own, possess, manufacture, carry or use arms and/or their ammunition or any other components necessary for their operation, possession or carriage. (b) Any article, section, clause, law, statue or rule in contravention of Section 32 shall be considered null and void and without effect. (c) It is the intent of this section to preempt all state laws and legislation and that this section occupies the field of arms related regulation in California (d) The presence of arms during commission of an unlawful act does not provide any shield or immunity by virtue of this section to any person for the criminal or civil liability of said unlawful act.
The following commentary does not form part of the amendment, fully described above, but seeks only to clarify its intent.
The above amendment intends to:
If its not explicitly banned by the Feds its allowed in California!
It short it puts the great state of California on a par with the founding states such as Vermont where concealed carry is unrestricted and crime rates are the lowest in the nation.
It effectively embodies into the California Constituion an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
Assuming you agree with the aims of the above how do we go about making it a reality?
Many pro-gun, RKBA organisations will tell you that trying to put a contitutional amendement like the above on the ballot initiative process is a "waste of time and effort" which "could be better spent elsewhere" because to gather the signatures necessary to even get the proposal on the ballot costs millions of dollars in campaign awareness and paid signature gathering.
Wait, I'm not going to hit you up for donations, keep reading.
What if I told you that I could make it possible for you to sign this petition by simply printing out a form from this site, signing it, and posting it to me in the U.S Mail?
Would you do it?
How many people do you know, who you could pass this message on to, who would also do it?
There are approximately 36 million people in California of which approximately 23 million are elible voters and of whom approximately 15 million are registered voters, of which 8 million turned out at the last gubernatorial election.
Currently, 694,354 signatures are required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. It costs $200 to register a proposal with the Attorney Generals office, 15-40 days after which you can begin circulating petitions. You have 150 days in which to collect and submit the required number of signatures. At which point the amendment goes on the next statewide ballot for voter approval where it will require a simple majority to pass. Thats 7,500,001 votes if every eligble voter votes. If the usual paltry turnout holds we could probably pass it with less than 4 million (8.5 million turned out at the last election).
So to recap, we need 700,000 signatures within 150 days to get it on a ballot and we need 4 million to vote for it. Thats 4.6% of eligble voters to sign and 26% to vote for it.
How many gun owners are there in California who would support the above?
I'm not asking you for money/donations.
I don't want you to volunteer time and effort to collect signatures from strangers in hot dusty parking lots.
All you have to do is sit at your computer, print out some pages, sign them, stick 'em in the mail and then contact other people you know who would do the same.
In this Internet connected age, I do not believe that this cannot be achieved. We just need to plan a little.
Online signatures are not allowed by the ballot process, a signature must be gathered and witnessed by a "circulator" so how can we just give you a form to fill in online?
Read on!
Sections 102, 106 and 9021 of the California Elections code allow that:
If a petition circulator is a registered voter, he or she may sign the petition he or she is circulating.
Currently, the requirements to be a circulator of a petition are less onerous than to be a signer, you need only be an eligble voter of the state! So, if you are eligble to sign it, a registered voter of the county, you are more than eligble to circulate it.
So my proposal is that instead of thousands of paid signature gathering circulators collecting hundreds of signatures each, we have 700,000 unpaid circulators, you, each collect and verify one signature, your own.
Download the circulator declaration and sign and date it. This makes you a bona fide circulator.
I,__________, acknowledge that it is a misdemeanor under state
law (Section 18650 of the Elections Code) to knowingly or
willfully allow the signatures on an initiative petition to be
used for any purpose other than qualification of the proposed
measure for the ballot. I certify that I will not knowingly or
willfully allow the signatures for this initiative to be used
for any purpose other than qualification of the measure for
the ballot.
___________________________
(Signature of Circulator)
Dated this ____ day of __________, 20___
Download and sign the petition section as a voter, now sign it again as the circulator. (Here's a sample petition to show you what it would look like)
Of course if you can get half a dozen friends, co-workers, family, to sign the petition before you verify it as a circulator and send it back that will help but its not necessary.
If you want to print out lots of the petition sections and camp outside the local mega-stores collecting signatures you are welcome to do so, and we'll all thank you for it, but again its not necessary that you all do this.
Just print out two or three sheets of A4, sign them and mail them to me. Paper, ink and postage is less than a dollar.
So we don't even need thousands of dollars to print up and distribute all the petitions and forms, everyone does their own!
Isn't this worth it to you? What have you got to lose?
Does this sound too easy? Do you doubt this is legal? Check for yourself here or here.
The one problem is that we only have 150 days from when I get the title and summary form the AG's office until we must submit the petition with the requisite number of signatures. Can't circulate the petitions before the start date, can't submit petition after 150 days from start date. If you fail, and resubmit the request to try again a new 150 day window begins and you can't use any of the signatures from the previous attempt!
So basically we only get one crack at this.
So as well as asking you to take the time and postage to print, sign and return two or three sheets of paper I also need to ask you to point as many people to this site as possible. Advertize, virally communicate, put links on your webpages, myspace, youtube whatever, put a link in your email sigs, your newsgroup sigs. Mention the campaign in online forums, letters to the editor of your newspaper, put links in comments on articles for modern online publications, digg it...
So my first step is to get a draft of the amendment. My first stab is above. Anyone, including lawyers, are free to contribute or make suggestions. Once I pay the $200 and submit it to the AG its frozen and 15 to 40 days later the 150 days starts. When you see a big announcement here that will be the time to download the forms, start printing, signing, getting others to do the same. Don't do it before then, it just wastes your money and upsets my mailman.
We need 694,354 valid signatures to get a Full Check approval or 763,790 signatures to 110% approval based on statistical sampling to verify valid signatures.
If we do this we may finally have a reason to go back to the voting booth.
While I'm formulating the amendment and getting ready to submit it there are some things you can do. Get yourself and anyone else who you think would support this amendment to register to vote. You have to be a registered voter at the time you sign the petition. We don't want to waste the 150 days while people register. I don't care what party you register for or if you are decline to state because initiatives are non-partisan.
So here's the plan and timetable.
Drop me a line or comment on the blog if you have any suggestions or want to indicate what sort of response you think you could generate in support of this.