Shooting Straight With Dan Reid

California’s 39 million residents have long been on the frontlines of the legal, legislative and cultural war over our Second Amendment-protected rights. Some of California’s gun owners have publicly spoken out as they packed up and moved to freer states. To save their businesses from the animosity of the state government, some notable gun manufacturers have also fled the state.

Retreating, however, is not an option for this civil-rights association. This is first and foremost because all American citizens need the advocacy and support of this association—and there are millions of gun owners in California. But it is also because a failure to invest in the legal and legislative battles for freedom in California would only mean that, in time, the front would move to other states.

This interview with Dan Reid, NRA-ILA managing director of state and local affairs of California, covers a lot of the legal and legislative ground. All of this is important because, if freedom loses in California, the repercussions are likely to be felt in other states as anti-gun legislators and attorneys working for gun-control groups see opportunities to further diminish this right.

A1F: Please, first tell us a little about how and why you have taken a lead role in this struggle for freedom.
Reid: I’m in charge of our state and local division. We have a team of lobbyists spread out throughout the country. I oversee the lobbying team here in California. Before taking on this role, I was the western regional director. I spent about 12 years lobbying in Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and spent some time in Oregon. I was born and raised in California. I earned my undergraduate and law degrees here. My interest in fighting for this freedom came during law school. We’d spent weeks talking about the First Amendment in our constitutional law class, but when we got to the Second Amendment, we spent like 15 minutes discussing this individual right. This was before D.C. v. Heller (2008). As I was then a gun owner in the state, I knew there was a lot more to this right.

So, I looked at all the different California gun laws and thought, How do these infringements survive constitutional muster? I knew this was and is an historically important American struggle, so I sought a position with the NRA.

A1F: There are a lot of gun owners in California, so some legislators in Sacramento must understand this constitutional right. But you must also be battling a lot of ignorance.
Reid: One way to see the challenge clearly is to consider the criminal justice reform movement in the state. They began decriminalizing actual crime here. And there is merit to having a conversation about criminal justice reform. But they were pushing this whole narrative that the state should go softer on actual criminals, but that, at the same time, the state should come down hard on law-
abiding gun owners.

When their policies led to an increase in crime, they had to show voters they were doing something, so they doubled-down on gun control and then went back to their districts and said, “Hey, look, we did something on guns.” This is insanity.

A1F: It seems like the blame law-abiding gun-owners ploy fell flat in the last election.
Reid: Definitely. The public is fed up with the rampant crime problems that we’ve seen. So, in this most-recent election, there was a proposition on the ballot that walked back a lot of those soft-on-crime policies. It passed overwhelmingly despite opposition from the governor—a politician who literally advocates for a rewrite of the Second Amendment. We’ve had a lot of car break-ins, retail theft rings have caused tons of stores in the state to close down and we’ve had a lot of violent crime. This has directly impacted a lot of people. This is part of the reason why voters tossed out a bunch of anti-Second Amendment district attorneys in the last election. Our members do matter in elections—even here in California!

Nevertheless, California is a little bit unique. Sometimes they not only pass a statutory change, but there’s also a regulatory component that goes along with it. Also, we generally see these changes done in an emergency fashion at the 11^th hour. And so, it can be very challenging to rally people quickly enough to stop bad legislation. It is also difficult to educate the public about a proposition when we’re up against very wealthy anti-gun ideologues who are themselves insulated from most of the repercussions from gun-control laws.

A1F: What is going on with the mandatory background checks on ammunition purchasers?
Reid: Proposition 63 was passed in 2016. It requires background checks on anyone trying to purchase ammunition. It has impeded a lot of lawful activity; for example, Kim Rhode, who won three Olympic gold medals in skeet, is a California resident. She was getting ammo in by the pallet so she could practice hard daily. But Proposition 63 has made it almost impossible for her. We have been very involved with her in legal challenges to this onerous law.

Basically, Proposition 63 has been a complete nightmare. California’s background checks for ammo purchases are actually “eligibility checks.” When they were drafting the thing, they didn’t seem to realize, even though we testified to this in committee, that they can’t use the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for background checks for ammunition purchases. Since they couldn’t actually utilize that background check system, they instead began checking various state databases to see if a person is a resident, a registered gun owner and so on. It is very clunky and often does not work.

Residents can buy ammunition out of state, but they can’t bring it back in. There are a lot of other legal wrinkles in this bad law. NRA-ILA is in the process of challenging various parts of Proposition 63.

A1F: It’s such a dumb way of fighting crime. That’s not what it is about, of course. It’s about controlling the citizenry, but I’m wondering if somebody walks into a store, can they actually get cleared in a timely manner?
Reid: Initially, this was wildly problematic. And it still is an issue. If one data entry is wrong or if you have the same name as someone else, then you could be denied through no fault of your own. There are so many examples of concealed-carry holders and even of law-enforcement officers who have been denied. It also gives the state the data to create a gun-owner database of law-abiding citizens. There are so many problems with it. This fight—thanks to the backing of the NRA’s many members—is still ongoing in the courts.

A1F: What about the handgun roster? As a non-Californian, I’m confused by it. And I suspect many Californians are as well.
Reid: The original idea behind it was they wanted to go after the so-called Saturday night specials. They wanted to basically limit the number of handguns that were offered for sale. So, it started off with a simple drop test. The idea was that if a gun is cheap, it’ll probably fail the test by going bang. Well, over many years, they’ve added more and more standards—a load indicator, a magazine disconnect and more. These various features don’t necessarily make guns safer, but that is irrelevant to them. The idea here is to make it harder and more expensive to own a gun.

Indeed, if we look at our law-enforcement agency’s guns, we find that they are not mandated to have magazine disconnects because that is not something law enforcement wants on their firearms. So, law enforcement has generally been exempt.

A1F: Is this the way of thinking that led to their zeal for so-called micro-stamping requirements?
Reid: Anti-gun legislators see microstamping as another way to get control—and to make using this right more difficult and expensive. This issue got a lot of attention around 2007. But it was not actually implemented at that time because the technology was encumbered by a patent and the purveyor of this technology was going to receive royalties for the micro-stamping technology. And that goes against what can be implemented as a mandate in state law.

Their stated claim here is that, if a firearm is used in a crime, they can find a shell casing and put it under a microscope and say, “Oh, it’s registered to John Doe.” And then they could just go and arrest John Doe. Case closed. Who needs Columbo, right?

But what if the gun is stolen? Or what if the criminal defeated the micro-stamp with a file? Or what if the brass is removed from the scene? Or what if they used a revolver?

Even a little analysis shows the idea to be fanciful and downright dumb.

This legal fight is ongoing. We do have litigation on the issue that is moving forward.

A1F: So, all of this is predicated on the provably false idea that lawful gun owners are the cause of crimes?
Reid: Right, at the end of the day, this is designed to infringe upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. Criminals aren’t operating in the system. They don’t care about the roster. They don’t care where they get their guns and ammunition. They’re not getting them through lawful channels. And so, laws like these do not impact them.

As for the average citizen in California, they get their copy of this magazine and so on and want the latest and best firearms, but they can’t get them here. Those guns are not on the roster.

A1F: Well, I think that just about all Americans shook their heads when Kamala Harris said she had a Glock but couldn’t tell anyone what it was—leaving many wondering if her Glock is California-compliant. That said, is the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the NRA-backed case New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen helping your challenges to these laws in California?
Reid: Oh, that decision is a huge deal. I’ll never forget being in committee and hearing a legislator question the authority of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. I’ve actually heard California legislators argue that their job isn’t to pass constitutional legislation, but just to pass laws and to let the courts sort out the constitutionality.

Before Bruen, California was a may-issue state for carry permits. They understood that with the Bruen decision, they were going to have to go to shall-issue, but they didn’t want to do this. So instead, they shifted from using discretion to determine the applicant’s “need” for a permit (which the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional) to using discretion to determine the applicant’s suitability for a permit. Now they want to look at peoples’ social-media posts and so on as they apply this subjective “qualified individual” standard. This is also being tried in other states and the NRA is challenging this infringement in the courts.

As the state government did in New York, our state legislators also expanded sensitive-place restrictions to cover almost the entire state, severely limiting where a concealed firearm could be lawfully carried. They did this even though concealed-carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding people out there. The NRA also has litigation on this.

This is a theme in California. At any given time, there is a lot of litigation. We are involved in pending cases on everything from semi-autos to magazine bans, to ammunition, to privacy, to gun rosters, to sensitive places. This is where all these bad ideas seem to start. It’s critically important that gun owners across the nation pay attention and know that the NRA is fighting here, both in the legislature and in the courts. That’s why we need people to continue to be NRA members as we fight for this freedom.

A1F: California also seems to have taken the war on youth to another level.
Reid: Exactly. The state’s youth-advertising ban was designed to stop young Americans from learning to shoot. This is part of a culture war on our rights. Whether it be hunting, competitive shooting, gun shows and more, they’re trying to stop citizens from learning about and utilizing this right. This is why they passed a law that said you can’t run any gun-related ad that may be appealing to youth. This greatly impacted camps, youth shooting competitions and so on. And it carried a hefty fine. NRA-backed litigation has pushed back considerably on this, but the state is still trying to limit the means of communication so that people can’t find out about gun training, hunter safety or shooting competitions.

A1F: We’ve only touched on some issues here—we haven’t even addressed the many attacks on gun-owner privacy in the state—but given the results of the last election, I am wondering if you’re more hopeful about the future of our freedom?
Reid: I think we have to stay positive. I always encourage people. I tell them their vote matters. This is especially true in state elections. Legislators do feel the pressure from the state’s many gun owners. It’s important that citizens push back, that they call their legislator or send emails. These politicians want to get reelected. Consider that, even though a lot of bad gun bills have passed in the state of California, there are anti-gun bills introduced every session that do get beaten back. If we can make enough noise, it helps. What makes the NRA strong is that we have active members who participate in the process.