Why yes, California, they are coming to take your guns away

One of the biggest problems with gun control is that there are hundreds of millions of guns already out there, and even if the government somehow managed to ban the manufacture and sale of new ones, it's not like they could go out and confiscate the ones currently in circulation.

Could they? California is going to give it a try, the Los Angeles Times reports:

The state will send dozens of new agents into California neighborhoods this summer to confiscate nearly 40,000 handguns and assault rifles from people barred by law from owning firearms, officials said Wednesday. The plan received the green light Wednesday, when Gov.Jerry Brown signed legislation providing $24 million to clear the backlog of weapons known to be in the hands of about 20,000 people who acquired them legally. They were later disqualified because of criminal convictions, restraining orders or serious mental illness.

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The bill is the first of more than a dozen gun measures introduced by California lawmakers after the December massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

California maintains a database that cross-references a list of gun owners with those who have been "disqualified" from gun ownership due to a criminal conviction, a restraining order or mental illness. Up until now, only lack of funding has prevented the state from sending agents to these people's homes to literally take their guns away. California is a fiscal disaster, of course, so at this point Gov. Moonbeam probably figures what the hell. What's another $24 million they don't have? Left-wingers like to scoff at Second Amendment supporters and cartoonize them as paranoids who think the gubmint is "coming to take our guns away." Um . . . If you don't have a hard time seeing the potential for abuse here, my guess is that you just don't want to see it. Consider the matter of restraining orders. We all know it's not difficult to get a restraining order, if only a temporary one. Someone complains about a threat of violence or stalking or whatever, and a judge slaps a restraining order on the person accused as a way of protecting the person who complained. If these same restraining orders can now include your "disqualification" for firearm ownership, just how much protection is there of your constitutional rights? Once these agents show up at your house and demand your weapon, can you come and get it back when the restraining order is lifted? Are you sure? And is anyone less than totally confident about the integrity of the process by which the state decides you are mentally ill? Judging from California's budget situation, I'm not even sure most of the Legislature there is sane. Media cheerleaders for gun control will no doubt reassure us that there is "no reason to believe this will be abused." Let's try a thought experiment, shall we? Change "gun control" to "Patriot Act" and see what they say. The simple fact is that governments at every level have decided to tear away as much of the Second Amendment as they can, and the media are cheering them on because the media only believe in protecting the constitutional rights they agree with (i.e., the ones that benefit them). And don't think Washington is done with this either.