Following the massive failure of California gun control laws, as demonstrated by the deadly Sacramento shooting that appears gang-related, NPR is reporting that lawmakers “are considering at least 24 more bills.”
The package includes anti-gun Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to allow private citizens to sue gun manufacturers, which would ultimately collide with federal law, namely the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Another bill would ban so-called “ghost guns,” while there is no evidence that such a gun was involved in the Sacramento mayhem. Investigators did recover was a stolen handgun that had been illegally converted to fire full-auto.
Writing at CalMatters, veteran journalist Dan Walters observed, “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.” In his report, headlined “California’s gun restrictions are a failure,” Walters posits that the state’s gun control laws “have hassled law-abiding hunters and gun hobbyists and some are in danger of being declared unconstitutional.”
Weighing in on the state’s gun law failures, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms ripped President Joe Biden for interjecting himself into the tragedy by exploiting it to push his own gun control agenda. He also wants to ban “ghost guns” and called for background checks for all gun sales, even though that is already the law in California.
“Biden’s response to the Sacramento killings is little more than a shell game,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “He wants to ban ‘ghost guns’ without any evidence such a gun was involved. He wants to require background checks for all gun sales, but the individuals now in custody were prohibited persons who would never have undergone a background check in the first place. Biden wants to ban so-called ‘assault weapons and high-capacity magazines’ but police reports say they recovered an illegally-altered stolen handgun that fires like a machine gun, which is already illegal. He wants to repeal gun manufacturers’ protection from liability, which would have had no impact on stopping this violent act, and the president knows it.”
In his CalMatters article, Walters asked, “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,” he wrote, answering his own query, “the evidence notwithstanding, while others want to appear to be doing something about a problem because they don’t have any other answers.”
CCRKBA’s Gottlieb accused Biden of “callously using this tragedy to advance an anti-gun-rights agenda with absolutely no relationship to the crime.”
He noted that the two suspects now in custody in direct relation to the deadly shooting that left six dead and a dozen more wounded are brothers and both have criminal records precluding the legal possession of firearms.
“While the rest of us are wondering why such people are out on the streets, possessing guns they shouldn’t have under existing laws,” Gottlieb said, “the president is promoting an agenda he knows would not have made a difference. That isn’t being disingenuous, it’s simply dishonest.”
