The only thing that stops bad guys with evil in their hearts is a good guy (or gal) with a gun. That concept is well-known and hearing it burns gun-haters like holy water thrown on a someone who’s possessed. Tell that to a gun control advocate and watch them squirm. So intense is their hatred of guns and armed self-defense that they’re happy to aid and abet criminals as long it means keeping good people defenseless against violent crime.
So it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s answer to the recent murder sprees in the Golden State is to disarm more good guys. Here we go again.
It’s true: Newsom told the media that he backs a Democrat plan to limit good guys and their concealed carry guns. One would think this is something from the Babylon Bee, lampooning a clueless poliician suggesting that disarming good guys will somehow prevent bad guys from committing crimes. Alas, no. It’s actually news as reported by the Sacramento Bee . . .
Gov. Gavin Newsom and other high-ranking California Democrats on Wednesday revived a plan to strengthen the state’s concealed carry gun law.
The move marks the second attempt at shoring up California regulations after a June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down key provisions of the state’s law.
Newsom, standing alongside Attorney General Rob Bonta; Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank; and other Democratic leaders and gun control advocates, said the state’s recent mass shootings pushed him to continue fighting to make California a leader in gun control.
“We’re saving lives, but we have more work to do on this effort,” Newsom said…
Whose lives are you saving, Governor? Criminals’ lives? And just for good measure, the governor cited some junk science report that suggests that right-to-carry laws increase violent crimes by 29%.
The governor cited a June 2022 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found right-to-carry laws increase firearm homicides by 13% and violent crimes committed with a gun by 29%.
Newsom juxtaposed California’s efforts with Florida legislators, who earlier this week introduced a measure to allow residents of the Sunshine State to carry guns in public without a permit as long as they are not prohibited from owning a firearm.
”That’s a reckless approach that endangers everyone and will lead to more deaths,” he said.
Remember the Rand analysis of gun control studies that showed that virtually no gun control study met proper scientific practice when it comes to research. What’s more, using these junk science studies to support bogus claims that gun control actually prevents the criminal misuse of guns is less scientifically accurate than claiming drinking milk causes car accidents.
But that’s apparently all Newsom and gun-grabbers have left as support for continuing to ratchet up the limits on gun rights in California.
Gee, Governor, we can cite statistics, too, but you probably won’t like them. From Real Clear Politics . . .
With the country’s strictest gun control laws, California probably shouldn’t hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow. The periods after 2000, 2010, or 2020 show a consistent pattern: The per capita rate of mass public shootings in California is always greater than the rate for the rest of the country. The rate is also much higher than for Texas, which gun control groups give an “F” grade for its gun control laws. Since 2010, California’s mass public shooting rate per capita is 43% higher than for Texas and 29% higher than for the rest of the U.S. From 2020 on, California’s rate was 276% higher than Texas’ and 100% higher than the rest of the country.
It’s almost as if being the state with the most restrictive gun control laws on the books hasn’t really saved as many lives as you Newsom claims. And making it even more difficult to get and use a carry permit would be, well, counterproductive.
But while California is moving to create more gun-free zones, the problem is that it has already been virtually impossible to get concealed handgun permits in the parts of California where the attacks occurred. In Los Angeles Country, where two of the attacks occurred, there is only one permit for every 5,660 adults. In San Mateo County, where the other attack occurred, there is one permit per every 24,630 adults. By comparison, there is one permit holder for every nine people in the 43 right-to-carry states.
Unsurprisingly, concealed handgun permit holders don’t stop mass public shootings in California. But they do make a difference in the 43 states where there are a lot of permit holders. Indeed, people legally carrying guns stopped at least 31 mass public shootings since 2020. And when Americans are allowed to legally carry concealed handguns, they stop about half the active shooting attacks in the US.
Huh. It’s almost as if more guns in the hands of more law-abiding Americans makes it easier for them to defend themselves against criminal predators. And knowing that probably discourages many of those predators from committing more crimes. Not that Gavin Newsom is about to acknowledge that. He’s rather have a bottle of holy water tossed at him.
