Gun owners connect
Newly formed group meets to discuss goals for raising awareness, recruiting new members
Tuolumne County Gun Owners, a new group forming in the Mother Lode, held a meeting Sunday evening in Sonora to recruit new members and raise awareness about potential legislation they fear could negatively impact concealed-carry permit holders and businesses in the county.
About 20 people attended the meeting that began at 6:30 p.m. in the Sierra Building at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds on Southgate Drive.
“Tuolumne County, as you know, is a little bit different,” Mark Villaseñor, chair pro tem for the new group, told the audience. “I don’t know anybody here who doesn’t have a gun. I just don’t. Everybody I know has some kind of firearm at home, whether it’s for bear defense or big cats or just because they’re into firearms. We have a lot of potential to grow and do a lot of really good things here in the county, and I hope it comes to fruition.”
Tuolumne County Gun Owners, a new chapter of the nonprofit California Rifle and Pistol Association, invited about 1,200 CRPA members from five counties to the event, Villaseñor said.
The event was billed as the inaugural launch of the Tuolumne County chapter of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and it was headlined “A Looming Community Threat: Lawmakers Aim for Open Defiance of Law.”
Deb and Martin Pierce, a couple who live in Tuolumne, attended the meeting with their 14-year-old grand-niece. Deb Pierce, 56, said she agreed with Villaseñor. They said they own a variety of guns, from hunting rifles to inherited guns to handguns.
The Pierces said they absolutely feel their gun rights are threatened.
“If you think about what he said, most people in the county do have a gun or guns,” she said. “But we don’t advocate for gun rights. Most people are minding their own business. But it’s time to stand up and fight for our gun rights.”
“Our right to keep and own firearms,” Martin Pierce, 59, added.
Curtis Doty, a board member with the nonprofit organization Tuolumne Safe, said he believes everyone has a constitutional right to carry firearms that’s protected by the Second Amendment. He said he feels obliged to exercise that right.
“It’s my obligation as a Californian to do it,” Doty said, “and stay here and exercise my constitutional right to carry.”
Villaseñor gave what he described as a nonpartisan public briefing on how reintroduction of elements of a defeated gun control bill, Senate Bill 918, “threatens disaster upon local businesses, increases consumer costs, and makes our community less safe.”
Villaseñor said SB 918, which was introduced in the California State Senate in February and amended four times in June and August, has a provision that defies the U.S. Supreme Court by requiring businesses to post a sign if they allow
concealed carry.
Villaseñor, who identifies himself as a disability-rights advocate, said Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature will try to include the signage provision in a yet-to-be named or numbered bill.
That’s relevant to disability rights, Villaseñor said, because if someone who is disabled has a licensed concealed weapon on them and wants to go in a business that does not have a sign and decides not to go in because he or she has a concealed weapon, it would amount to a denial of access and discrimination under the American Disabilities Act.
He cited a California Supreme Court case called Munson vs. Del Taco dating to 2009.
According to Villaseñor, that could mean statutory penalties of $4,000 per instance against the business under the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, even if a business doesn’t expressly intend to violate the American Disabilities Act.
Basically, Villaseñor said, the state will be trying to tell all businesses how to post information under state regulations, and that is essentially compelled speech, which is unlawful under the Constitution.
In addition, there are a lot of concealed-carry licensees in Tuolumne County, so this could affect a lot of people who live here, Villaseñor said.
Tuolumne County is known for having a large proportion of concealedcarry permits compared to other counties for its size, Villaseñor said.
To promote the event, Villaseñor and Tuolumne County Gun Owners offered prize drawings to include everyone who attended, with prizes like a gun vise and a singlestage reloading press that were on display at the meeting, as well as a new California compliant Aero Precision AR-15, which was not present at the meeting.
“We’ve been waiting for the state to get back with us,” Villaseñor said. “We’ve told them we’re not selling it. We’re giving it away. The folks here have been really good with us, and we said, ‘You know what, we won’t have it there.’ ”
The only condition with the AR-15, Villaseñor said, is that Tuolumne County Gun Owners asked the winner to become a member of the club.
“It doesn’t require a hundred dollar donation or anything like that,” Villaseñor said. “It’s just our way of saying, ‘Hey, we appreciate being welcomed to the community.’ We’re starting off small.”
Villaseñor said the AR15 went to a young man who is familiar with the brand, and he emphasized it did not go to a first-time gun owner.
Another prize offered Sunday evening was a book, “The Law of Self Defense” by Andrew Branca.
“If you have a CCW (a concealed weapons permit) or if you’re thinking about getting a CCW, I highly recommend it,” Villaseñor said. “It gives you a little more confidence, if you do carry, to carry the weapon competently without violating the laws of self defense.”
The CRPA, founded in 1875, has more than a million members statewide, Villaseñor said.
As of June, the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had issued 7,181 CCW concealed weapons permits to 2,692 permit holders over the past 10 years, from 2012 through June 2022. The Sheriff’s Office provided the information in response to a California Public Records Act request from The Union Democrat earlier this year.
The greater number of permits compared to permit holders indicates permits renewed by the same permit holders over the past decade, County Counsel Sarah Carrillo clarified in response to the request.
Demand for permits to carry concealed handguns in California is higher in conservative counties.
Over the past 10 years, Orange County issued 65,171 concealed-carry permits, while Fresno and Sacramento counties issued more than 45,000 each, according to an analysis of state Department of Justice data conducted by Calmatters, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization based in the state capital.
San Francisco County issued a total of 11 concealed-carry permits over the same decade, the analysis showed.
In the current age of mass shootings, often involving rapid-fire, magazine-fed assault rifles intended for military killing and selfdefense, California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and gun-rights advocates in the Golden State can feel they face an uphill battle.
The deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year is the massacre in which 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, just 10 days after 10 people were shot and killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Days after the Uvalde massacre, Newsom and his staff touted California’s existing gun laws and the state’s “nationleading record on gun safety,” which “provides a pathway for states seeking to rein in gun violence.”
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California’s 2020 gun death rate was the 44th lowest in the nation, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 13.7 deaths per 100,000 nationally, 28.6 in Mississippi, 20.7 in Oklahoma, and 14.2 in Texas.
California’s gun death rate for children is also lower than other states, and is 58% lower than the national average, according to Newsom and his staff.
Tuolumne County Gun Owners has a street address of 1257 Sanguinetti Road, Suite 244, in the Crossroads Shopping Center. For more information about Tuolumne County Gun Owners and the CRPA email the chapter at tcgunowners@ gmail.com.