With Democrats firmly in control in California it is a much easier task to find ten really, really bad laws in our modern-day version of Sodom and Gomorrah than it was for Lot to find ten moderately good men in his day.
1) AB 1884: Plastic Straw Ban
This law bans restaurants statewide from giving out single-use straws unless requested by customers. It only applies to full-service dining establishments, but exempts fast-food restaurants. Restaurants violating the law could be fined $25 daily for violations, or a maximum of $300 per year.
Seriously? First they banned single-use plastic bags — the really useful ones — and now ‘single-use’ straws.
What’s next? Single-use rubbers?
2) SB 1192: The “No Coke for Kids”* Act
This law bans soda from being served with meals in restaurants that come with a drink, forcing the restaurant to provide a “healthy” beverage as the drink default option — such as milk, water, sparkling water, or flavored water with no added natural or artificial sweeteners.
3) AB 3219: The “Citizen Disarmament Act”* of 2019
This law prohibits anyone convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense after January 1, 2019 from possessing a firearm for the rest of their lives.
What’s next? Your guns confiscated during divorce proceedings based on your ex’s testimony?
4) AB 2103: CCW Permit Training Tax
Another requirement on law-abiding gun owners forces gun owners with a concealed carry license to pay for and undergo a minimum of eight hours of training, and to demonstrate proficiency and safety on the shooting range.
Requiring training in order to receive a CCW is another way to make it harder and more expensive to obtain one. It’s nothing more than a tax on your God-given right to keep and bear arms.
There is no danger posed from law-abiding CCW holders. Just the opposite. Every CCW holder I know trains constantly and takes that training very seriously.
5) SB 1100: The “Long Gun Age Discrimination”* Act
This law bans anyone younger than 21 from buying a long gun, such as a rifle or shotgun, from a licensed firearms dealer. This is just another attempt by the left to disarm Californians by taking a shot at our youth. Ostensibly inspired by last year’s tragic Florida school shooting, banning the legal purchase of a long gun will not result in fewer mass shootings in so-called “gun-free zones.”
Anyone hell-bent on committing mass murder will find a way to get his or her hands on a gun — legally or illegally.
6) SB 1200: The “Minority Report” Gun Confiscation* Act Part II
This law adds magazines and ammunition to the list of items that can be “temporarily confiscated” with a gun violence restraining order. (“Bump stocks,” like the rapid-fire device used in the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, are now explicitly banned in California because of Senate Bill 1346.) SB1200 also eliminates fees to file a “gun violence restraining order” (GVRO) against your annoying neighbor, or your ex, or a family member you don’t like.
The key word about this law and the original GVRO act is that the government can take your legally acquired guns, ammo, and magazines without due process. That’s a blatant unconstitutional taking. The burden falls on you to prove to the government that you don’t pose a danger to the public and should have your weapons returned. Good luck with that.
6) SB 946: The “Illegal Alien Statewide Street Vendor Protection”*Act
This is another bill to protect the activity of illegal alien street vendors in the state by denying local ordinances that ban street vendors. t is an assault on local control.
Rather than clean up the streets and require all street vendors to abide by all the same laws that brick-and-mortar food service businesses (a.k.a. restaurants) must abide, California Democrats overrode local regulations where each community decided for itself—and mandated that these questionable businesses have a “right” to work the streets. Many are illegal “cash only” businesses that pay no taxes to support the cleanup of the streets they litter.
7) AB 216: The “Illegal Alien Voter-Fraud Enablement” Act
Under the guise of making the vote by mail process easier and more accessible, this law requires taxpayers to pay for the postage of all mail ballots. It’s bad enough the Democrats have rigged the entire system to enable and even encourage voter fraud, but now they want to stick you with the bill for for all those ballots mailed back by illegal aliens and dead people, which still count as long as they are received up to three days after the election.
The biggest scandal of the California midterm elections in 2018 was related to this constant push for “easy access” — first, having most people vote by mail without any way to verify who actually completed the ballot, then allowing anyone to collect ballots from strangers and mysteriously deliver them en masse on Election Day. The “vote harvesting” schemes dreamed up by Democrat consultants, whereby they door-knock and collect ballots without any supervision or control, and hand-carry them into polling places, arguably cost the Republicans almost every seat in California.
8) AB 1066: The “Illegal Alien Overtime “Act
Democrats and establishment Republicans who hate the idea of a border wall and the enforcement of immigration law always tell us that without illegal aliens, all our produce will rot in the fields. This new law will expand overtime pay rules to farms so that people who in most cases have no legal right to work here,will receive time-and-a-half for the work they are not authorized to do.
9) SB 826: “Glass Ceiling Affirmative Action” Act
This law compels public companies in California to have at least one female director on their boards by the end of the year. Now, it will no longer be an accomplishment for a woman to be invited to serve on a corporate board because the affirmative-action-obsessed Democrats in California just made it a requirement to have at least one woman on the board.
The left is so obsessed with mandating gender equality while leading the fight against the only two genders God ever made that they never see the contradiction.
10) SB 179: The “Gender X Confusion” Act
If you don’t want to “identify” according your biological sex, California just made it easier to opt out of the real world. You can call yourself ‘nonbinary’ by selecting gender ‘X’ on your driver’s license. Imagine the possibility for intentional confusion by criminals, and further possibility for voter fraud when someone can no longer be identified as a man or a woman.
What’s missing?
There is one new law that is glaring in its absence. In the aftermath of 2017’s SB 54, which made California a “sanctuary state” for illegal alien criminals, law enforcement has been banned from contacting Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the vast majority of criminals, including the illegal alien gang-banger from Mexico who allegedly killed Newman, CA Police Corporal Ronil Singh — made doubly tragic by the fact that Singh was a legal immigrant.
We need a new law to make it a life sentence to aid and abet an illegal alien or a terrorist before or after their murderous rampage.
Is it just me, or have you noticed the complete lack of any curiosity on the part of the fake news media about how the illegal alien suspect was able to get his hands on a gun in the most gun-controlled state in the union?
I haven’t ranked the horrible new laws in any sort of order, so feel free to comment on which you think is the worst, or what egregious laws I missed.
Unfortunately, I don’t see Democrat priorities changing anytime soon. It’s illegal aliens and criminals first at the expense of law-abiding American citizens and law enforcement.
Tim Donnelly is a Former California State Assemblyman. FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.donnelly.372/ Twitter: @PatriotNotPol
* Most of the laws referred to in this article have other, official names.