They're already putting up billboards with a cute kid pointing a gun at his head down in LA. In Michigan, organizations from several states fought long and hard to prevent shall-issue from becoming reality, and waged an unsuccessful campaign to overturn it. Every single time, they've recycled the same old pack of lies they used when Florida went shall-issue - "blood in the streets," "dead children," "the Gunshine state," "shootings over parking spaces," - even when none of those predictions ever comes to pass.
Far from putting them on the defensive by going for the whole shooting match in the iniatiative, they have the money to put us on the defensive. We'd spend all our time trying to convince our neighbors that despite the glitzy multi-million dollar print, radio, and television ad campaign from VPC, HCI, AGS, etc, that no, it won't allow the crazy homeless guy who mutters to himself downtown carry a gun legally. No, this won't allow the wife-beater subject to a restraining order go out and buy and carry a gun legally. No, this won't allow children to carry guns to school legally. No, this won't let the paroled murderer who can't even vote buy and carry a gun legally. They have the money to set the terms of the debate, and we don't.
Because even if we went with a one-sentence amendment, all of those caveats would still be true due to state and federal law, and we'd pointlessly have spent enormous amounts of capital countering the well-funded lies of the anti-gunners.
It's not the three-cushion bank shots that have us in this position. When was the last time we tried even a one-cushion bank shot out here anyway? It's the politicians like Perata and Scott, and our Ninth Circus Federal District Court that ruled that there is no individual right, and the racists that drafted our Constitution with no RKBA in order to keep the "spics" and the "coolies" from claiming a right to arms. We haven't been making any shots, three cushion or no, we've been fighting a rear-guard battle against their shots against us.
If you want an unambiguous right to arms, including machine guns, there's Nevada to the east and Oregon to the north. In California, we don't even have the right to defend ourselves with firearms, and that's what we're trying to change. And thanks to the only process available to us to bypass the courts and legislature who are standing against us, we have to get a majority of California voters to support it. And in order to do that, I believe, we need to head the gun-haters off at the pass by preemptively framing the debate in terms of "mom, apple pie, and defense of self, family, and home."
What's the alternative? "En Attendant Emerson," as it were, while they crush us out of existence and drive us out of the state with a 25c per bullet ammo tax, Goldilocks gun bans, and discriminatory taxation and fees? It took them 9 years to rule on the Roberti-Roos "assault weapon" ban. How much longer can we fight a rear-guard legislative battle here in the face of the tide of anti-gun bills they keep churning out?
Getting Simon elected will give us some breathing room, I'll grant, but effective self-defense will still be against the law in most places in the state.
This is why I left the state of California. I can not see any hope for gun owners in California. You can always disobey the gun control laws if you want your freedoms but then you may face the consequences of ending up in prison for life or dead from a S.W.A.T. team's bullet.
My advice is to leave the state and let it go to a dunghole and then the people may elect some representatives who actually support the Constitution.