Gun control

Editorial: Gun control bills aim to change California's gun culture (East Bay Times)

With nearly 8 million gun owners and hundreds of thousands of semi-automatic weapons in California, Gov. Jerry Brown's signing of six new gun control bills on July 1 won't make us instantly safer. But it's a good step in what should be a decades-long campaign to change the state's gun culture.
...The most significant action in the bills Brown just signed makes this the first state to require background checks to buy bullets. The legislation also bans high-capacity magazines and requires people to turn in ones they own, as well as banning "bullet buttons" that make it quicker to detach magazines and reload.

The NRA calls all this "draconian" and "Stalin-esque." None of it threatens the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons, but the organization does have a legitimate point about one element: outlawing lending guns to anyone but immediate family members unless the borrower goes through a background check. Previously, guns could be loaned among people who personally know each other for as long as 30 days without a background check.

The change is a response to San Bernardino and other mass shootings in which a gun was purchased legally by a person who lent to a killer. It makes owners accountable for a gun's use. But hunters commonly loan guns to friends to try them out. It's part of the sport.

The Legislature should consider tweaking this law to clarify that lenders will be prosecuted only if a crime is committed with the gun. Responsibility would be clear, but owners wouldn't have to fear arrest for letting a pal try out a new hunting rifle.