By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Fox News is reporting about a California sheriff who “blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week after a court blocked the governor’s latest gun control push that would have banned concealed carry in many public places.”
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco made some blistering comments about Newsom and the law, known as SB2, which was struck down by a federal judge as “repugnant to the Second Amendment.”
“They have a very pro-criminal stance in California,” the sheriff told Fox News Digital, “and they have for years, all of the laws. Newsom’s goal is to close as many prisons as he can, to not prosecute and to not sentence anyone to state prison. They blame law enforcement. They blame society. So, there’s never a personal responsibility on someone’s criminal behavior. It’s always someone else’s fault. And there is this agenda that is extremely pro-criminal in Sacramento.”
SB2 was successfully challenged by the Second Amendment Foundation and several allies including Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Liberal Gun Owners Association, the California Rifle & Pistol Association and eleven private citizens. They are represented by attorneys C.D. Michel, Sean A. Brady and Konstadinos T. Moros at Michel & Associates in Long Beach, and Donald Kilmer, Law Offices of Don Kilmer, Caldwell, Idaho.
U.S. District Judge Cormack J. Carney handed down an injunction in December, the state appealed to a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel and briefly got Carmack’s order stayed. However, a second Ninth Circuit panel reversed the stay and restored Carney’s injunction.
Newsom was furious, calling the ruling “dangerous” to the citizens of California.
“The fact about everything we’re doing taking away the gun rights and ownership and the (carrying a concealed weapon) aspect of the whole thing — where you can carry and where you can’t — it flies in the face of what they do with criminals,” Bianco reportedly told Fox.
Remarkably, Fox reported that Newsom’s office directed the news network to “a recent study that it says shows California gun safety laws have been ‘effective.’”
However, two separate online firearms news publications published reports refuting the study, which was conducted by Everytown For Gun Safety, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
TGM and Ammoland News both published reports noting that, while Everytown gives high marks to the Golden State based solely on the strictness of its gun control laws, California—according to the most recent data available, from, 2022—still produced more homicides than any other state.
As earlier reported by TGM, according to the website Statista, in 2022, the Golden State reported 2,197 murders, outpacing even Texas, where permitless carry is now the law, and there are more than a million active concealed carry licenses. Texas ranks among the weakest states in terms of gun control laws, according to the Everytown study.
Second, legal actions have resulted in some federal district court rulings that challenged California gun laws, which have been declared unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Bianco had another comment about Newsom and his gun ban agenda.
“It’s very dishonest,” the sheriff told Fox News, “and I think he needs to drop his gun agenda, his anti-2A agenda. And he needs to concentrate on the skyrocketing crime in California and the quality of life issues for the residents of California that are being destroyed by the policies that he is promoting.”
