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Notes -
Apologies re the Senator thing - I had heard at some point that she was "first elected in the 70s" and assumed this meant to the Senate. My bad on that point.
But on this point:
Did it? I haven't heard of any such provision in the law and I haven't been able to find one with a bit of googling. It seems like currently it's a matter of discretion for the county sheriff, and I haven't been able to find anything saying that this has changed since the 70s. Pre-Mulford Act was clearly different, but that was 1967.
And while I'll grant you that normal people are not (usually) personally targeted by terrorists with the exception of e.g. Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and so forth, they do get personally targeted by violence! California has something like 200,000 assaults per year and I expect most of those are personally targeted. I never heard Feinstein saying it was important for e.g. women with violent ex-partners to be able to get guns, nor did I see her proposing legislation to that effect. So yes, I do think she was hypocritical.
Again, I agree with her on the merits. Bad guys get guns off good guys with guns - there's no realistic way to ensure that all the safe and none of the dangerous people are armed, so effectively everyone should be disarmed. But I have no respect for anyone who refuses to live by the rules they set for others.
Sometimes the best way to find the text of old laws is to search the case law section of Google Scholar. That's how I found this:
Salute v. Pitchess, 61 Cal. App. 3d 557 (1976)
It is my understanding that the vast majority of assaults arise from sudden disputes. Of the remainder, the vast majority are crimes in which the victim is chosen more or less at random. That is a far cry from being targeted in a premeditated fashion, as a specific individual.
Again, where is your evidence that she did that? Where is your evidence that she ever tried to avoid compliance with a law that she passed! And, do you even know what her position on gun control was at the time that she got the permit? I can certainly imagine that she might have become a proponent of gun control later, after George Moscone and Harvey Milk were murdered, with a handgun, by what seemed to be a responsible citizen.
Edit: Or, after the 101 California St shooting
Alright, I think I'll just concede this point. I don't know enough about Feinstein's history and the timeline of all these things to say with confidence that it was a case of inconsistency and not evolution in perspective. And I don't really care enough to keep reading up more about what a dead woman used to think.
Having said that, I still don't think it puts you in the clear as a legislator if you build in exceptions for a narrow class of people like yourself. It's obviously better than actively flouting the law, but if the law allowed elected officials to drive above the speed limit I would still be disdainful of those who did so.
But no, I don't have proof that that is definitely exactly what Feinstein was doing so I'll just drop it and let you take the win on this one.
Again, I really don't understand why you are saying this. Feinstein was never a CA state legislator, and besides, the state law was in place at least as early as 1969, since it was discussed in Galvan v. Superior Court, 70 Cal. 2d 851 (1969). And, of course, Feinstein did not become a member of the class to which the exception applies (ie, people with good cause to carry a concealed weapon) until after the law was passed. So, not only do you "don't have proof that that is definitely exactly what Feinstein was doing", you have enormous evidence of the opposite.
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