I’ve been an American all my life. I was born in Sacramento, California in 1969.
I grew up learning about the freedoms we have as Americans, freedoms that are guaranteed to us as American citizens in the bill of rights, freedoms our Founding Fathers fought and died for, freedoms that most of the inhabitants of this planet do not enjoy.
I celebrated this country’s bicentennial on July 4, 1976.
I grew up shooting guns, riding BMX bikes with no helmets, riding motorcycles in the field just down the street, and working on cars with both my dad and my friends.
But as I grew older, my freedom slowly began shrinking, and often without my knowledge.
I always thought I was free, and I was when compared to people from many parts of the globe. It was not until I was an adult and I looked around the rest of the country and discovered that what I thought was freedom was very much not free, at least not in comparison.
As a teen, I started to notice freedoms disappearing. As a guy very much into cars, the sudden California mandate to smog check cars went into effect in 1984. Suddenly, thousands of people were suddenly forced to try and find smog equipment no longer made for 18 year old vehicles. Sadly, many classic cars were junked because people could no longer register them.
Later in life, as a working cop, I had no freedom of speech. Not surprisingly, this is not something they told you as you signed up for the career. Anything I said or did, on or off duty, could and often in the cases of other cops, has been used against them by people who dislike cops and who took issue with something said or done.
It has gotten so bad lately that cops around the country are being disciplined, some even fired, for something as benign as merely liking a social media post that is later determined to be offensive by those who are perpetually offended.
Despite those restrictions and potential negative repercussions, I have long been an outspoken advocate for both my former career and for gun rights. That said, due to the limitations on my right to free speech, I had to voice my opinion under an alias (Deputy Matt), knowing full well that if that my true identity was discovered, I would likely be forced into silence. That my friends, is not freedom of speech.
The right to bear arms? In California? That is laughable.
But it did not used to be. In fact, what many people around the rest of the country do not know is that California still has more gun owners than most other states (estimated 7.9M gun owners in CA). In fact, there are more gun owners in California than the entire populations of 38 of the 50 states (individually, not combined). Yet those 7.9M gun owners are vastly outnumbered by the 31.5M non gun owners, most of whom know nothing about guns and rarely think about guns except when some horrific crime is perpetrated and a gun is used. Only then do they think about guns, and sadly they listen to the people who know nothing about guns and want them banned, or “controlled.”
Yes, you still can own a gun a gun in CA, so long as it meets a set of insanely restrictive criteria all decided upon by people who know absolutely nothing about guns or how to use them, and who coincidentally are protected daily by people with guns. They write and pass laws outlawing certain types of firearms, accessories and even things that are nothing more than cosmetic. They do so claiming “it is for the children” meanwhile they ignore the advice of the experts in controlling crime (the cops). Shockingly, the cops have this crazy idea that rather than focus on the inanimate object used by some criminal, we should actually focus attention on the criminal… But I digress.
I have long fought the false narratives spread by the uninformed, ill-informed and those who are just plain liars. The narrative that guns are evil and so are those who own them.
As a career cop, I know that nearly all gun owners are good people not out to hurt anyone, I know and saw first hand the difference between an unarmed victim and someone armed, trained and willing to protect themselves. I saw the absolute, constant, abysmal failure of the strictest gun control laws in the country to prevent violent crime.
The only thing the cavalcade of gun laws in California does is make it harder for law abiding citizens to obtain the firearm they choose, the right that they supposedly have guaranteed them in the bill of rights, the right the leftist California politicians have crapped on for decades. Yet those politicians are currently passing more, even stricter gun control laws while simultaneously releasing more convicted criminals and lowering punishments for committing all crimes, even violent crimes.
Ridiculous Laws Regulating Everything
In fact, so many of our rights were infringed on in California, most people there are oblivious to it. Here are a few I ran into over the last 15 years:
- You want to put in a swimming pool, you have to have gates and climb proof barriers around it, even between your own door and the pool. In fact, they even tell you which way the gate has to swing.
- You want a showerhead that will actually rinse the soap out of your hair? Good luck. The newest restrictions limit shower heads to a mere trickle.
- How about choosing a roofing material color that matches/compliments the paint color of your home? Sure, so long as you want a light colored roof, because dark colored roofing material is illegal in CA.
- You have an old car (pre-1990ish) with a flat tappet camshaft and need oil with zinc to protect the cam from damage? Tough! Oils with zinc are illegal because, well, God only knows why but it supposedly has something to do with environmental regulations.
- You have a problem with star thistle on your property and want to buy the only herbicide that effectively kills it? Sorry, not legal in CA.
- Have a problem with gophers and want to gas them out? Sorry, also illegal in CA.
- Want to buy a modern, improved, Glock (Gen 4 or 5) with more refined internal safeties and variable grip sizes making them safer (easier to grip) for people with smaller hands? Sorry, those definitely are not legal in California, because they are “unsafe” according to the state and do not appear on the Handgun Roster, thus making them illegal to sell new in the state.
- Want a cheap, reliable, lightweight weed wacker? Better not be looking for one powered by a 2-stroke engine because they outlawed those.
- Have a dirt bike that you want to go ride? Better check your calendar and the color of your registration sticker, because about half of the dirt bikes made can only be ridden in California during non-summer months. Why would you want to ride your dirt bike in the summer, when the weather is nice and people take vacations?
- Just bought an old car that has been living in someone’s shed/barn/backyard for the last 18 years? Better hope they have been paying the state money to NOT use the car during that whole time (non-op fees) or else you are going to get stuck paying the exorbitant past due registration fees, fines and other charges if you want to register it in California.
Seriously, the list of crap that is illegal in California, things that are legal in nearly every other state in the union, is mind boggling.
Escape from Enemy Territory
Having recently escaped California, living in Free America is eye opening. I can now truly see that I was indeed that frog in the pot of water which was brought slowly to a boil. I am rapidly discovering just how infringed my rights had been, and it feels good, real good, to begin to exercise those rights. While it is not the same as escaping from prison after having been wrongfully convicted, it sure feels pretty close to me.
I recently purchased my first gun as a Free American. Not only is it a gun that is not legal in California, but after paying for it, I got to put it in the car and drive home instead of waiting 10 days. When I bought it, I also picked up a couple extra magazines for it, which are also not legal in California. Those who have never experienced waiting periods for gun purchases have no idea how liberating the feeling is to buy a gun and to actually be able to leave with it right then and there.
For those who live in the rest of America, the parts I call Free America, let this be a warning from someone who has been there. NEVER take your rights for granted. Do not allow the politicians to convince you to give up any rights for any reason. They will always tell you it is for a good reason, but it is not, and it is just the first of many dominoes that will begin falling as your rights begin to fade. Like the bumper stickers say, Freedom isn’t free.
