Come East, young man: why are Californians fleeing to Nevada?

Along WITH other states in the interior West, Nevada has become a destination for thousands of disenchanted Californians. A steady stream of residents and businesses are moving here for refuge from the crowding, crime, and high cost of survival in the nation-state on the coast. That migration does not seem to have shaken much sense into California's policy-makers, however. In fact, despite the continued mass exodus to Nevada and elsewhere, many residents of the People's Republic of California still like to delude themselves with an egotistic fantasy that their squirrelly, intolerant state is a perennial trend-setter.

Just about every time some California jurisdiction passes another strange new law, the Los Angeles Times hails it as a "trend" destined to sweep the nation. But California trends no longer animate nationwide movements, and thank God for that.

It was thus with gun control. California now has the most restrictive and punitive gun laws in the nation. It has criminalized more than fifty types of rifles, pistols, and shotguns, mandated a 15-day waiting period and registration requirement for all firearms, required guns to be transported in trunks with trigger-locks, rendering them useless should a life-threatening emergency arise; and soon, the state will force gun buyers to pay steep fees for state-mandated training. The Second Amendment, for all practical purposes, is dead in California--a move the Times hailed as a trend toward "rational" gun control that other states would leap to imitate.

Did they? Well, New Jersey did. New Jersey, where the woodchuck is the primary big-game species, enacted a Califoria-style prohibition on many types of guns. But no other state did.

Then there was California's vaunted, "trend-setting" Proposition 65, which requires the posting of warning signs in any establishment that sells items that tend to cause cancer or birth defects in specially bred, cancer-prone white laboratory rats. These items include everything from gasoline to hairspray to typewriter correction fluid. Virtually every business in the state is outfitted, by law, with warning signs that endlessly browbeat consumers with the assertion that everything in life presents terrifying risks. In essence, it is state policy to induce universal paranoia. If businesses don't comply with this fear-mongering, they are wide open to multi-million-dollar lawsuits.

Did Proposition 65 establish a nationwide trend? Of course not. No other state got sucked into California's notion that frightening citizens and holding the litigation broadax over the heads of companies that provide employment is good public policy.

The California legislature enacted a steep tax on "junk food"--chips, cream pies, and the like--in order to single out and penalize those who eschew tofu and bean sprouts. Another national trend? So far, no takers.

California also passed legislation several years ago that jacked up the cigarette tax in order to finance a $25 million a year hate campaign against smoking--forcing the state's 8 million smokers to finance their own harassment. You guessed it--no hats in this ring either.

California, which fancies itself a "tolerant" and "laid back" place (as The Los Angeles Times Magazine put it not long back) is nothing of the sort. It is about as tolerant and laid back as North Korea. It sets few trends these days because most of the rest of the country recognizes a budding police state when it sees one.

I sincerely hope Nevada can retain its relatively libertarian lifestyle as the rush of refugees from our neighboring state continues. Californians: Welcome to Nevada, and leave your authoritarian instincts at home.

Mr. Tammariello is the former editorial-page editor of the Las Vegas Renew-Journal where this article first appeared.

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