California plans on using a newly approved budget of $24 million (isn’t California almost bankrupt?) to confiscate nearly 40,000 guns from people who acquired them legally.

California maintains a database of prohibited persons who are barred from owning firearms.

This database includes, expectedly, criminals, but also includes people tho the state deem mentally unfit to own a firearm, or people who have had a restraining order taken out against them.

This might sound like a good idea on the surface, except when you think about the fact that it’s the state who determines who is allowed and not allowed to have a gun under this system. We’ve shown in the past that this system is far from perfect. In fact, a woman who sought voluntary mental health treatment due to an issue with medication she was taken, found state agents on her doorstep to confiscate her husband’s guns. There is an appeal process, but likely they won’t get back their guns, which were wrongly taken in that case (voluntary treatment is not supposed to be a disqualifier), because the guns are quickly destroyed.

We reported on this whole process in a bit more detail here just a couple of months ago.

There is obviously huge issues in such an imperfect system which subverts due process and is arbitrarily maintained.



According to the LA Times, the money for the program will come from background check fees which come from revenue generated by California’s lengthy and complex process for purchasing a gun. So this massive gun confiscation is being paid for exclusively by law abiding gun owners.