Inevitably, last weekend’s horrendous fusillade of bullets on a downtown Sacramento street that left six people dead and at least a dozen wounded generated demands for new gun controls in state that already has the nation’s most restrictive firearms laws.
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However, if anything, what happened just two blocks from the state Capitol underscores the folly of believing that “gun violence” can be meaningfully reduced by trying to choke off the supply of firearms – any more than the prohibition of liquor or the war on drugs succeeded.
The state’s gun laws have hassled law-abiding hunters and gun hobbyists and some are in danger of being declared unconstitutional. However, Californians already own more than 20 million rifles, shotguns and handguns and are buying hundreds of thousands more each year.
Nor have these laws prevented the lawless from obtaining weapons via theft, smuggling from other states or the illicit manufacture of untraceable “ghost guns.” Indeed, state restrictions have made the black market even more lucrative, mirroring the side effects of Prohibition and the decades-long drug war.
Initial evidence indicates that those who fired more than 100 rounds in a street crowded with bar and nightclub patrons probably were violating one or more gun laws. The two brothers that police arrested and are suspected of involvement in the mass shooting were charged with illegal possession of weapons – one for possession of an illegal fully automatic firearm.
So why, if California’s much-vaunted gun control laws have failed to choke off the supply of legal and illegal weapons, do politicians continue to claim that enacting even more will have an effect?
Some may believe it, the evidence notwithstanding, while others want to appear to be doing something about a problem because they don’t have any other answers. And those who propose and enact new gun laws are often woefully ignorant about guns or even existing laws.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg lamented to a radio interviewer about California’s difficulty in reducing the number of guns, saying, “You just have to go to a gun show in Reno to buy an assault weapon without a background check and come right back to California.”
Advocates of more laws often cite a “gun show loophole” but it’s a myth. Under federal law, one must be a resident of Nevada and undergo a federal background check to legally buy a gun in Reno.
Moreover, while California professes to have banned “assault weapons,” the state’s definition of them involves cosmetic features, rather than their lethality. Perfectly legal semi-automatic rifles that lack those features are available for sale everywhere in the state.
The newest effort at gun control in California, backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, would authorize personal lawsuits against the manufacturers and sellers of illegal assault rifles or ghost guns, mirroring a new Texas law allowing suits against those who perform abortions.
Wanting to disarm people while demented entities roam armed shows another phalanx of our real enemies.
Isn’t it convenient that the Socialist cabal headed by the now corrupt Democrat Party is ignoring their failures of previous anti gun legislation?
What? I Really??? serious? You betcha I am.
The radicalized factions of the then anti-US hippy’s of the 1970’s had exactly what the “new” proposed legislation. Did it work? Not even close. When faced with popular backlash they lost seats and the laws were repealed.
The same dictatorial anti-Constitution Socialist’s in Sac. that we are now were faced with a) increased gang related gun crimes, and b) serious gun running by criminal Mexican Cartels, and guess what Chinese Communist gun factories.
The no-bail, they are just misunderstood boys are the basis of the Democrat Party. The explosion of crime now that the pandemic restrictions are off are a direct results of Socialist destruction of the State.
But what the heck as long as they are getting illegals to vote, and destroy the State and Nation they don’t care.
Come and try taking my weapons COMMUNISTS DEMOSHITS….JUST TRY
They need to look in the mirror! They are the problem with their feel good laws. You need to keep criminals in jail and prison!! Not early release! The idiots under the dome own this.
Yes, they want your legal guns but it is all right to let the a$$hole prisoners out early to kill again. And who is responsible? Pretty Boy Newsom and his appointed Prison/Parole chief!
The only sane approach is to look at the PEOPLE who are using guns for killing and mayhem. Guns don’t kill all by themselves.