Sorry to ruin the weekend of California airsofters, but with the filing of SB 199, they should be keenly monitoring the progress of this bill filed by State Senator Kevin de León as it moves through the State Senate and the State Assembly. Last 23 January, the bill has already passed the Senate Appropriations Committee with 5 Ayes (De León, Hill, Laral, Padilla, and Steinberg) and 1 No vote (Gaines). SB 199 is then filed for 2nd Reading on the Senate Floor on Monday, 27 January 2014.

Maggiore Soap of Devtac Airsoft posted this video on the update on SB 199 prior to the 23 January votes:

Watching the video clip of the Commmittee hearings and at the same time reading the video description of having a fund raising for Soap to speak at the State Capitol, there is one thing that struck me: there is no unified voice from the California airsoft community and industry to state their case against SB 199.

I hate to say this, but the concerned airsoft player who was at the committee didn't score points for the community whilst the other representatives who opposed the bill came well-prepared even with their brief statements. Now, we hear from The Airsoft Safety Foundation, that they had a meeting with Senator De León which they posted at their Facebook Page:

"The Airsoft industry is committed to ensuring that our products are used in a safe and secure manner and that we do everything possible to make sure that tragic incidents no longer happen in our communities. However, we feel that SB 199 is misguided and will provide a false sense of security to Airsoft users and even greater confusion for law enforcement officials. The fact is that real firearms currently come in all different colors, making them indistinguishable from the colors that SB 199 would mandate for our products. Our industry leaders recently had a positive meeting with Senator de Leon to express our concerns and offer real recommendations that are enforceable and will actually support public safety. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with the Senator so that changes can be made to SB 199 that will increase safety in our communities without destroying our industry - an industry that is rapidly growing each year and contributes millions of dollars to our economy and provides thousands of jobs for our residents."

I hope that both the Airsoft Safety Foundation, which represents the airsoft industry and the California airsoft community would come out with a single unified message against SB 199 in its present form. This way, the messaging stays focused and all those involved will be able to do their campaign based on what the message says. It will be harder to win the campaign against SB 199 if there are just too many messages that would just muddle up everything.

There will be compromises that can be made along the way, but if these are compromises that will help provide safety and at the same time airsoft will stay the same as it is, then they will be worth it. There are always ways to come up with a win-win situation.

Recall Efforts Against Senator De León On Facebook

It's not a new effort as this has a Facebook page created in 2011 with the filing of SB 798 by Senator De León but it has experienced a sudden increase this month with the filing of SB 199 and videos of De León on "Ghost Guns", a gun that fires 30 rounds per half a second, and 3-D gun printing which was just so over the top and it's unbelievable that the Senator doesn't really know what  he is talking about.

But can a real recall effort against Senator De León be pulled off? This is a protracted process  as it will entail a lot money and grassroots organizing in California Senate District 22. Signatures of voters to be gathered by campaigners should be 20% of the votes cast during the last election. In this case, the elections of Senate District 22 which was held last 2010, had 90,557 votes cast and De León ran unopposed (getting 100% of the votes). 20% will mean about 18,111 of votes. I think it will be very hard to recall him in his bailiwick where he is virtually unopposed, especially for someone who is said to be the next State Senate leader of California. But, there's no harm in trying.

There is really a "Ghost Gun"

Well, it's an airsoft gun not a real assault rifle as shown by Senator De León. Daniel of Airsoft GI shows the high ROF AEG he had on his hands though he didn't confirm if the ROF is around 60bps (or 30 BBs per half a second).

As for easy 3D printing of firearms, we still need to hear about a very affordable, home-made, and  undetectable firearm.