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We have lots of silly laws in California. These probably have been on the books for decades.
I suspect the laws stay there because the vast majority of Californians never drive in the snow. When they go skiing or up to Tahoe forcing them to carry chains gives them a fighting chance of getting out if/when it snows. In many places like I-5 over the Grapevine the default mode of CHP is to just close the road if there is any ice and snow. I bet people who reside in the mountains probably do go with snow tires.
In all my almost 30 years of driving in California I've only had two occasions where chains might have been required. One was a winter storm at Lake Tahoe. I was driving a Honda del Sol at the time and rather than deal with Highway 50 or Highway 89 I drove down the Nevada side and over to I-80 which was plowed and had no chain requirements.
The other was coming back from Vegas in a winter storm. Coming up the high after the state line it started to snow. I was in a big RWD pickup truck with several hundred pounds of equipment in the bed holding my wheels down. I was driving past semis spinning their wheels and saw several cars that had gone over the side into the ditches on the road sides. CHP closed the road about 5 minutes after I headed up. That was a pretty scary bit of driving. I had chains in the truck but I didn't want to have to find them under all the stuff in the back and then put them on. But it did mean I wouldn't be stuck on the hill if it had come to that.
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