Law abiding gun owners are being punished once again by the once great state of California. A new law in California will take current personal information about gun owners and send it around the country to various “gun-violence” researchers.
Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 173, this bill will require the California Department of Justice to send information identifying firearm and ammunition purchasers to a new research center at the University of California Davis or any other institution that requests it. The information being passed around will include; address, name, date of birth, what they purchased, when and where they bought it, and much more.
As for the institutions that can gain access to this data, its almost entirely up to the discretion of the California Department of Justice. Research groups that are affiliated with accredited Universities are permitted to request this information and the California Department of Justice can decide if they will get it from there.
This bill came under fire by the California Rifle & Pistol Association. The organization hammered both the bill and California Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement.
The identities and confidential personal information of individuals should only be provided by DOJ or other state entities to law enforcement agencies when conducting an investigation that has a specific need for it. No other entity – not even research institutions – has sufficient justification to have access to an individual’s private information. Research conducted by the California Firearm Violence Research Center and other institutions to prevent violence should not be about individuals and their personal information, rather about a broad-based study about the prevention of violence, where an individual’s specific personal information is irrelevant.
Most importantly AB 173 is in direct violation of the California Constitution which states in Article 1, 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.” In all, the California Constitution names “privacy” as a fundamental right of all Californians five times!
