California Banning: Unloaded guns and teenage tanning sessions

California Banning: Unloaded guns and teenage tanning sessions
posted at 2:05 pm on October 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Two months ago, I wrote about an effort in California to ban the practice of openly carrying unloaded firearms in public. This practice had been unregulated until state legislator Anthony Portantino discovered this grave threat to public safety that has produced, er, no violence and no issues, except that it makes some people nervous. Today, Politico reports that Governor Jerry Brown has signed the ban into law:

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday that he signed into law a measure that bans handgun owners from openly carrying their weapons in public.

Previous regulations had allowed the open carrying of unloaded handguns in public, but police chiefs and sheriffs objected to the rule because people felt frightened when they saw handguns in public places.

“They are tied up dealing with calls from the public about gun-toting men and women in the coffee shop,” California Assemblyman Antony Portantino, who introduced the bill, said last month.“As law enforcement officials tell me, it’s not safe and someone is going to get hurt.”

Gun rights activists had exercised their right to open carry their unloaded firearms by showing up to public places in large numbers with firearms in holsters, which alarmed some members of the public.

As I explained at the time, this is not only an affront to 2nd Amendment rights, it’s entirely absurd:

The state of California wants to ban a practice that presents no immediate threat, conducted by law-abiding citizens with no record, that has produced noshooting incidents. Anti-gun advocates would rather waste time on this than, say, solving the massive budgetary and debt problems the state faces, as well as solving the problem by allowing law-abiding citizens to get concealed-carry permits with a “must-issue” law.

This reaches the point of absurdity near the end of the video, when the author of a bill to ban open carry of unloaded weapons, Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, tells Reason TV that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect property — which doesn’t include the person himself. That’s actually backwards, even under existing lethal-force-in-self-defense laws. People are not permitted to use lethal force to protect property in California, or Minnesota either, with or without carry permits. (Neither can the police, by the way.) They can only use lethal force of any kind when faced with an immediate threat in which a reasonable person fears for their own life or of “great bodily harm,” which roughly means losing a limb or an eye, not just getting beaten up. All the carry permit allows is the ability to have the lethal force at hand if that situation arises; it doesn’t exempt the permit holder from laws defining lethal force in self-defense. In most cases, and certainly in Minnesota, those laws require a victim to retreat first if possible rather than using the lethal force, sometimes even in their own homes.

Instead of solving the problem by allowing law-abiding citizens to get licenses to carry effectively, the state of California has taken further steps to keep them disarmed. But at least people won’t have to look at nasty guns, even those that have no ammunition in them. What a win for public safety!

Speaking of which, that’s not the only ban California has implemented. Teenagers who get preyed upon for a procedure that its providers claim is entirely harmless but can lead to serious health complications have been barred from such providers — even with parental consent. Yes, Brown and the legislature have saved California teens from … tanning beds:

Minors in the state of California will no longer be allowed to use tanning beds after Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Sunday prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from using ultraviolet tanning devices. …

Previously, California had banned minors under the age of 14 from using tanning beds, but allowed those between 14 and 18 years of age to use tanning beds with parental consent.

The bill was part of a cluster of legislation signed on Sunday designed to “improve the health and well-being of Calfornians,” according to a statement from the Governor’s office.

So let’s get this straight. If you’re 17 years old in California, you can’t get a tanning-bed session even with parental consent — but you can get an abortion on demand as well as RU-486 (the “morning after pill’) without parental consent. Senator Ted Lieu called tanning beds “lethally dangerous” and praised Brown’s “courage” in banning their use by minors, but no one has died on a tanning bed. That’s not true in California about abortions or RU-486:

In August 2003, Holly Patterson, then 17, discovered she had become pregnant with her boyfriend, seven years her senior. On September 10, shortly after her 18th birthday, the couple went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to inquire about an abortion of her seven-week-old unborn child. There, she received the first of two drugs in the mifepristone abortion protocol.

At the Planned Parenthood facility, Holly received an abortion drug regimen not approved by the FDA consisting of 200-mg mifepristone orally — which blocks the hormone progesteromontene that is required to maintain a pregnancy. At home, 24 hours later, on September 11, she followed the clinics instructions to vaginally insert 800-mcg of misoprostol to induce labor contractions and expel the body of the dead baby.

On September 13, Holly repeatedly called the Planned Parenthood clinic hotline to complain of severe cramping. She was told her symptoms were normal and to take the clinic prescribed Tylenol-Codeine painkiller. Later, Holly called the clinic’s hotline again and was told to go to a local hospital’s emergency room if the pain continued.

The next day, Holly continued to experience extreme cramping and bleeding, and visited the emergency room of Valley Care Medical Center in Pleasanton. She told the doctor about her drug-induced abortion and she was sent home after an injection of narcotics getting a prescription for more painkillers.

The severity of the pain continued. Holly was weak, vomiting, and unable to walk. She was re-admitted to Valley Care Medical Center on September 17 and died later that afternoon with her father, Monty Patterson, who had just learned of the pregnancy, at her side. …

In October, the Alameda, California coroner’s office issued a report concluding that Holly Patterson died from Septic Shock, due to endomyometritis (uterus related blood infection),due to a therapeutic, drug induced abortion. Months later, reports showed Holly tested positive for Clostridium sordellii toxic shock syndrome following medical abortion. Hers was the first case of a Clostridium sordellii toxic shock infection after medical abortion reported in the United States — later shown to be brought on because Planned Parenthood violated FDA protocols by telling Holly and other patients to take the abortion drug vaginally.

Since her death in 2003, there have been 10 reported deaths from sepsis (serious infection involving the blood) and 9 of these were from Clostridium sordellii. Dozens of women worldwide have died from the abortion drug as well, according to FDA reports and the European maker of the drug. The FDA also indicates more than 2,200 women in the United States alone have been injured by the abortion drug — with some requiring hospitalization,emergency surgeries and complete blood transfusions.

Frankly, I’m amused that anyone in sunny California feels the need for tanning beds in the first place. But they seem a lot less “lethally dangerous” for teens than Planned Parenthood does.