California will be ‘gun free’ within 5 year.
Via Fox News:
Several new state laws are set to take effect on New Year’s Day, including unprecedented minimum wage hikes, equal pay requirements and new abortion statutes — and in California, the legislation will curb gun rights, reduce criminal sentences and force publicly held corporations to elevate women to senior positions.
While the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, Seattle’s largest companies will have to start paying $16 an hour on Tuesday, after lawmakers brushed aside studies showing that the city’s ongoing minimum wage hikes are actually hurting the low-income workers they aim to help. Many New York City businesses, meanwhile, will have to begin paying at least $15 per hour this week.
Gun Rights
One new Illinois law will extend the current 72-hour waiting period for purchasing handguns to all firearms; another will allow relatives or law officers to ask courts to remove guns from people believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
California, which already bars people younger than 21 from buying handguns, will extend that to long guns with a few exceptions for military members and licensed hunters.
Opponents of the legislation argued that people can obtain long guns through illegal channels and that state legislators should focus on making sure criminals and those with mental health issues cannot get guns themselves.
Republican Sen. Jim Nielsen said he thinks “bills like this miss the target,” as the Los Angeles Times reported.
“What is magic about 21?” Nielsen asked. “All of a sudden you are not a danger anymore?
The state’s liberal lawmakers cited the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — in which a 19-year-old used an AR-15-style gun to kill 17 people — as justification for the legislation.
California also will ban guns for people with certain domestic violence misdemeanors and require eight hours of training and live-fire exercises to carry concealed weapons.
While conservative critics have said California is increasingly encroaching on the Second Amendment, top Democrats in the state have sought to cast doubt on their arguments. In a widely-cited tweet that he later claimed was in jest, California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said last month that guns were not an effective deterrent against the government because “the government has nukes.”
Immigration PolicyA Tennessee law will ban local governments from having “sanctuary” policies for people living in the country illegally. It bans local government policies that restrict compliance with federal immigration detainers.
The law also threatens to withhold future state economic development money from those that don’t comply.
Colorado, however, will make it easier for immigrants living in the country illegally to renew state driver’s licenses. The state has been issuing such licenses since 2014, but they had to be renewed in person every three years at one of just three state offices devoted to that purpose.
The law’s Republican sponsors argued the economies of their rural districts were at stake.
Crimes committed by illegal immigrants have spurred calls for change. In California, a state assemblyman earlier this month demanded a change to a “state sanctuary” law that prohibits local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal immigration officials after cops said a twice-deported man living in the United States illegally went on a daylong crime spree that included a murder.