An act to add Sections 171c, 171d, 171e, and 12031 to the Penal Code, relating to firearms and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately.[1]
The Mulford Act was a 1967 California bill that prohibited public carrying of loaded firearms without a permit.[2] Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford and signed into law by governor of California Ronald Reagan, the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party, which was conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods in what would later be termed copwatching.[3][4] They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.[5][6]
Assembly Bill 1591 was introduced by Don Mulford (R) from Oakland on April 5, 1967, and subsequently co-sponsored by John T. Knox (D) from Richmond, Walter J. Karabian (D) from Monterey Park, Frank Murphy Jr. (R) from Santa Cruz, Alan Sieroty (D) from Los Angeles, and William M. Ketchum (R) from Bakersfield.[1] A.B 1591 was made an "urgency statute" under Article IV, §8(d) of the Constitution of California after "an organized band of men armed with loaded firearms [...] entered the Capitol" on May 2, 1967;[7] as such, it required a two-thirds majority in each house. On June 8, after the third reading in the Assembly (controlled by Democrats, 42:38)[8], the urgency clause was adopted, and the bill was then passed 70 to 5.[1] It passed the Senate (split, 20:19)[9] on July 26, 29 votes to 7[10], and was passed back to the assembly on July 27, 1967 for a final vote, where it passed 62 to 9.[11] The bill was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on July 28, 1967.
Both Republicans and Democrats in California supported increased gun control, as did the National Rifle Association of America.[12][13]Governor Ronald Reagan, who was coincidentally present on the Capitol lawn when the protesters arrived, later commented that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that guns were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."[3]
1 2 Winkler, Adam (September 2011). "The Secret History of Guns". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on October 10, 2012. Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers' police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city.
↑ Simonson, Jocelyn (August 2015). "Copwatching". California Law Review. 104 (2): 408. doi:10.15779/Z38SK27. SSRN2571470. Organized copwatching groups emerged as early as the 1960s in urban areas in the United States when the Black Panthers famously patrolled city streets with firearms and cameras, and other civil rights organizations conducted unarmed patrols in groups.
↑ Arica L. Coleman (July 31, 2016). "When the NRA Supported Gun Control". TIME. Archived from the original on July 29, 2016. Retrieved 12 October 2017. The NRA also supported California's Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party's impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967.
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