Why is the government in California a huge ass?

A brief aside (not rant!) about CA gun laws

I have a half dozen handguns and a couple rifles, and only one of them was not legal in California and had to be left behind: it’s a bullpup and CA firearm laws stipulate at least a 16” barrel and 26” overall length; my RFB has an 18” barrel but measures 24½” overall, making it 1¼” too short. So that couldn’t come over. All of my handguns are legal, but all of the magazines for one of them couldn’t be brought in because of the magazine capacity law.

CA has the lowest per-capita gun violence in the country, so it’d take a particular kind of idiot to claim gun laws don’t work in reducing violence; and maybe that’s why California pisses 2A types off so much: it’s proof that gun laws work.

I’d be sad to not have guns and be able to go to the range and practice shooting, just as much as I’d be sad if California outlawed alpine skiing, or swimming, but it’s just a hobby, not my identity.

The California DMV hates Californians

It’s the only reason I can think of for why DMV laws are so incomprehensibly stupid. California regulations around driving certainly doesn’t improve the drivers: the Bay Area drivers are the second-worst to any state I’ve driven in, and I’ve lived in a half dozen states and driven in a dozen more. Boston drivers are the worst in the country, The shoulder is regularly used as an extra lane by drivers around Boston but Bay Area drivers are second – they’re worse even than LA drivers. The same claim about gun laws and gun violence emprically does not apply to drivers; hence my theory that the CA DMV simplay hates Californians.

To start with, if you’re a veteran, in every other state all you need to prove it is a form called a DD-214; it’s like a social security card issued by the military with an honorable discharge, and it’s used by every. fucking. agency. in the US to prove you are a veteran of the US military.

Except in California.

California has to be special. It has to be different. It requires a form called a VSD 001, a form which – since my discharge in 1998 and getting driver’s licenses in three different states – I have never heard of or needed to prove that I was a veteran. The California DMV website does not tell you that you need a VSD 001; the web site will, in fact, accept a photocopy of a DD-214 when you submit your paperwork online to book a reservation for the written test. So after making an appointment for 09:30 AM, and after waiting 4 hours past your appointment time, Wait times at DMVs around the country are a joke; CA isn’t any better or worse. you’ll be told that, no, you can’t get a veteran designation because the State of California does not accept the US Government’s own notorized form that certifying that you’re a veteran. I’m particularly salty about this one. Maybe California also also hates anyone who served in the military.

The rule-makers at the California DMV can’t do basic math

This one is almost too funny to be angry about: the people in charge of the DMV apparently can’t do math.

• California law requires you to register your vehicles which you bring in with you when you relocate within 20 days of bringing them into the state. Keep that “20 days” in mind.
• The California DMV requires you to have a valid California driver’s license to register your vehicle in California. Per the CA DMV web site, you can’t do any vehicle-related DMV operations without a California driver’s license.
• The DMV requires an in-person test to get a California license, regardless of whether or not you already have a valid out-of-state license.
• Wait times for appointments to take a test are often 3 weeks out. That’s 21 days, alone longer than the deadline. Once you get your CA driver’s license, you’re looking at another 3 week wait time before you can get another appointment to register your car, because the DMV web site does not provide a way to register your vehicle online, and even if it did, you still have to go to the DMV in person to have the VIN verified.

So, because of the DMV itself, it’s impossible to meet their 20-day deadline. Even if you could squish two services into one appointment (which is not allowed; appointments are made for one transaction), you’d still be late by at least one day, unless you got very lucky and were able to get an appointment in fewer than 3 weeks. I’ve never seen appointment wait times less than two weeks, and it’s frequently longer.

There is one way to get in under the deadline: if you’re willing to drive to a different city and wait in line at a DMV there, you can sometimes find earlier appointments. For example, I did once find an appointment a week out in a city only two hours away; the DMV is, of course, not open during non-work days, so you’d have to take a vacation day to enjoy the experience.

These rules are either malicious, or people at the DMV are particularly incompetent. I’m expecting there to be a late fee, so it may just be motivated by greed, which would surprise me less than several people at the DMV being unable to perform addition.

The California DMV web site is poorly implemented

This surprised me most of all, since California is where Silicon Valley is located. You know, Silicon Valley, where all of the high tech people are? You’d think they’d be able to find some competent developers to put together a web site, but it’s not only a surprisingly shoddy implementation but the information organization is astoundingly awful. There is no information about re-registering an out-of-state car; there is information about importing a car from overseas, but nothing about relocating. I had to resort on an LLM search to figure out the process for rehoming a car to California.

California DMV rules about car registration are egregious

It’s almost as bad as the veteran designation. When you register your car in CA, you’re required to bring both a title and proof of registration. The thing is, many states don’t provide paper registrations, they only provide tags as proof of registration. Minnesota is one of those states. Now, I haven’t yet dealt with the CA DMV about the car registration yet – that’s in another two weeks, when I can finally have my appointment – but I fully expect to go in at 9 (my appointment time), wait through lunch (which is exactly what I did for my license test), finally get to talk to a DMV employee, and be told that I need to go off and do something else to get proof of registration. By which time, the Minnesota registration for my car will have expired, and I will not be surprised if CA requires me to renew my MN registration just so I can meet the “proof of registration” requirement. And if so, by the time my car is registered, it’ll be nearly 60 days past the “within 20 days” rule.

I expect to spend possibly up to 16 hours next week, waiting on hold to talk to someone from the DMV to clarify this stuff, so hopefully I won’t have to make a third appointment and spend a day anyway at the DMV waiting for them to get around to it.

Why do they make everything harder than it needs to be?

I’ve lived in Oregon, Washington state, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. I’ve lived in Germany. I’ve owned cars and had driver’s licenses in all of them. Nowhere have I encountered any DMV as hostile and byzantine as California. It’d be one thing if every DMV was this bad; I’m only annoyed at the DMV wait times because, well, it’s annoying, not that it’s the only horrible service in the country. The fact that other states somehow manage to provide driver services that don’t suck underscores how bad it is in California.

I’m a California native; I was born here, and lived here through my childhood. Being an adult here makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills, but I believe California just has a deep-seated hatred for its own citizens.

Perhaps it’s only the Bay Area; the residents are mostly horrid: they leave grocery carts in parking spaces; drivers are largely agressive and inconsiderate; people litter terribly; and grifting is common. For example, first week I was here some guy’s car broke down in the street and when another person and I tried to help him, he tried to con one of us into calling him a tow truck. He was on texting on his phone when he asked us. Like, dude. I’ll help try and push your car off the road, but I’m not paying for your tow. Costco is hell – that’s nothing new – but it’s particularly bad at the Fremont Costco, where we have to go for prescriptions (as mandated by our horrible insurance). At first I thought the employees were just particularl rude, until I observed how the customers treated them, and now I sympathise with the employees. Go into Irvington and walk down the street, and say “good morning” to everyone you pass. Women won’t make eye contact and men either ignore you or look at you with suspicion. In fact, the nicest people I’ve encountered on the street are the homeless: if they’re pushing a shopping cart on the street, they’re usually upbeat and friendly, and I haven’t once been panhandled as a result of saying “hi.” Not that there aren’t panhandlers, but they’re mostly sitting on curbs in front of stores; the walkers are just going about their business.

Perhaps I’ve just grown used to Minnesotans being civilized, but I kind of feel as if even the people in Philadelphia aren’t as awful human beings as is common in the Bay area. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not everyone – clearly there are a lot of decent people. But head South to Santa Cruz and the asshole ratio drops precipitously. And for all its reputation as a hotbed of environmental liberalism, I haven’t seen so much littering since Washington DC. Perhaps that civic attitude carries into the DMV; I don’t know. It’s disappointing, though, and the fabulous weather doesn’t quite make up for it.