Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA 98005

NEWS RELEASE

CALIFORNIA DEMS SHOULDN'T BALANCE
BUDGET ON BACKS OF SHOOTERS

For Immediate Release:

BELLEVUE, WA - Cash-strapped California Democrat lawmakers, eager to reduce the multi-billion dollar deficit racked up under Democrat Gov. Gray Davis are proposing to balance the budget on the backs of Golden State gun owners, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.

Among the measures promoted by Democrats like Paul Koretz of West Hollywood is a 10-cent-per-cartridge "fee" on ammunition. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the proposal is outrageous.

"It is an insult," Gottlieb stated, "that in a state where Democrats have continually passed measures to strip gun owners of their firearms rights, tax-and-spend liberal lawmakers like Assemblyman Koretz now want gun owners to pick up the tab for their reckless spending habits."

CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron was equally blunt, insisting that this so-called "fee" on ammunition is simply a tax by another name.

"Koretz and his Democrat colleagues have insisted that, to solve California's budget debacle, there must be some 'innovative thought'," Waldron observed. "It would be far more innovative for them to take out a budget axe and go to work. Taxing gun owners - a community that California Democrats have treated with contempt for years - to bail themselves out of the state's current budget disaster is the ultimate insult."

The ammunition tax is among dozens of tax extortion proposals now being considered to stem the flow of red ink in Sacramento.

"Gray Davis' administration and his Democrat cronies in the legislature have allowed the state budget to hemorrhage," Gottlieb observed. "They have also burdened law-abiding firearms owners with some of the most onerous gun laws in the nation. Instead of demanding that gun owners pay more money into state coffers - where it will undoubtedly be wasted anew - California Democrats ought to be rolling back the gun laws and encouraging citizens to arm themselves against crime and take up the shooting sports for recreation, and in the interest of homeland security, which is really what the Second Amendment is all about."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

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