gavin newsom trump gun control california
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
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By Larry Keane

Over the weekend, the governor of California managed to use the tragic incident in Virginia Beach to score cheap political points.

Here are the facts, as reported: The shooter legally purchased both handguns he used in this criminal attack. Newsom’s take: “We just don’t need background checks on guns, we need background checks on every single ammunition purchase…”

California Dreaming

Ignore for a minute the fact that someone who clearly passed two separate FBI background checks to purchase handguns would undoubtedly pass the same check to purchase ammunition. Just because California has a law on the books doesn’t mean it will accomplish anything but serving as an inconvenience for law-abiding citizens.

During the Obama Administration, his Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman fought against including ammunition in the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

He warned the international community of “significant burdens associated with licensing, authorizations, and record keeping.” Countryman continued, “Our own experience in regulating domestic transfers has shown that there is little utility for law enforcement in imposing the same controls on ammunition transfers as we do on arms. Accordingly, the United States largely eliminated most controls on domestic transfers of ammunition.”

Sen. Booker Steps In It Too

Even fellow Democratic presidential candidate, and bad-idea generator, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, couldn’t even pretend to name a policy that would have prevented the incident.

The Virginia Beach Police Chief has publicly stated that no gun control law would have changed the outcome of the attack: “We do have the Second Amendment, it is very stringent for our country. In this particular case the weapons were obtained legally. Everything was done in a legal manner by this individual.”

Yet the spotlight-hungry Newsom thinks he knows better than Virginia how the state should legislate away the Second Amendment rights of Virginians. Fortunately, Newsom’s vision of a California-ized America will have to wait.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel at National Shooting Sports Foundation.

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59 COMMENTS

  1. A politician with a law never stops a bad guy with a gun.
    He only controls the good guys, which is his true agenda.
    Even God’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” doesn’t stop Evil, Violence and Mayhem.
    Nor do the 20,000+ man’s laws restricting the Second Amendment.
    Making good people helpless does not make bad people harmless.
    Killing is a matter of will, not weapons.
    You cannot control the act itself
    by passing laws about the means employed.”
    The late Col Jeff Cooper, 1958
    Handgun expert and founder of Gunsite Academy
    For once I agree with Bill O’Reilly. Bad guys shooting people is the price of freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized our God-given right to shoot back.
    Politicians manipulate these tragedies for their own politician power and fortune. They pander to the Useful Idiots and DoGooders in our society generating fear and promising to protect them from Evil, Violence, and Mayhem. They just need to support Common Sense control on the people recognizing that the Second Amendment represents a threat to the politician’s power.

  2. “The Virginia Beach Police Chief has publicly stated that no gun control law would have changed the outcome of the attack…”

  3. hey Gavin Newscum, if gun control works so well, how come there was a mass shooting in LA county, and one in San Bernadino, and how come violent crime in L.A. is so bad?

    • I don’t think violent crime is as bad as it used to be in the 80-90s in LA. That wasn’t because of the government making things better, rather I believe it was due to the internet and video games distracting young males. You still need to carry a gun though, but the cops don’t want you to and if you do CCW they will harass you.

      • It is a change in social trends. In the 50’s America was at its best.
        The 60’s had to much going on with to much history to digest in that period.
        The 70’s & 80’s social foe where the Serial Killers who crept around at night choosing their victims one at a time.
        Now we have less serial killings and instead have more mass murders which affect more people in a single event. The impact they cause is more widespread and fearful.
        There was a time not to long ago when you could go to school, a movie or a church without the risk that we have today.

        • Maybe so, but it was more difficult to locate a “safe space”, and “gun free zones” were few and far between. How could that be safer?

    • Violent crime in L.A. is the lowest it’s been in forty years. That’s a nationwide trend with only a few major metro areas as exceptions. A lot of people for some reason I don’t fully understand seem to want to believe crime in this country is at some kind of peak, it isn’t. It peaked in the mid 90’s, steadily declining ever since. The difference in L.A. is dramatic, post 9-11 surveillance powers by the feds working with local have decimated organized crime in L.A.

    • With a name like “Gavin”, are you really surprised at anything that comes out of his mouth? He must be getting back at all the other kids who picked on him when he was young. You know, the other kids who grew up to be taxpayers.

  4. Background checks didn’t stop this guy from purchasing guns, but checking more w/ ammo will … I’m thinking not have stopped this guy?

    Seems like those checks didn’t help much. (Recent example in Chicago blew it again, because they didn’t actually check against the relevant records. Again. NYS of course set the standard w/ the SAFE act, rousting a guy for not a thing, misreported, then taking his guns, all w/in weeks of passage that could never lead to that.)

    He used hand guns, so we need to ban Evil Black Rifles. Because Evil Black Rifles had nothing to do with this.

    As much as I want to, NewCoke, n Book-em (Dan-O) spewing nonsense is no reason to gag order DiFi, Shiff for Brains, or “Musket” Morgan. (Also, public figures all, so legit subjects of satire, including ridicule, especially to make a point, double-plus especially a political point.)

    What we need is more responsible, measured gunplay, like those lovely, known, gang leaders in N Z who announced on public frakking T V that no, they wouldn’t be turning in their now generally banned arms (specifically banned for most of them already, with prior convictions n all, but you can’t fail a check yiu never make.)

    These folks remain at large, and presumably armed. But that’s O K because they’re “careful” to only shoot at other gangs, and try to keep the collateral damage down. Unlike law-abiding Kiwi gun owners, always looking to rack up their incidental kill score.

    One can only presume that mechanical credit-card machines are included in the new N Z bans, given that one was used to disrupt a spree killing in progress. Also, of course, the unauthorized responder will be charged with illegal possession: he grqbbedbthe spree killer’s gun, taking pissessiin w/ o a background check.

  5. I’d like to hear from an anti how many background checks are enough.
    Lets say I’ve had two for my work, a couple dozen for firearms purchases, a couple pointlessly long ones for NFA purchases and one more for extracurricular volunteer activity. Is that enough? What’s the magic number so I can just go ahead and have them done.

    Shamamalon twist!!!!! Ready for it???? If I should go apeshit leftist crazy and harness the power of TDS to murder a bunch of people which one of those background checks would have prevented it?

    • #6. If it was done three times and you had to pay $47,296 for it the second time and get a refund of $267.31 on the third try. Also purple, because that’s how many flapjacks fit on the roof.

  6. StLPro2A, I’ll let you google this guy, but noted legal scholar Ronald Dworkin says the value of a liberty has a relationship to its potential social cost. When gun controllers talk about saving lives and it is a relative few when you discount suicides, I suggest that if they want to eliminate the 2nd why not go for 4 through 8 which would keep more criminals off the streets and save even more lives. I’ve never gotten a response to that. I also ask the left to give me a philosophical reason why a law-abiding citizenry should be disarmed. No answer to that either. One other thing the left fails to do is examine where most of the gun violence takes place. A couple of years ago 25% of it was in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington D.C.

    • Golly, it would take a lot of good folk off the streets, too. But if it saves just one life, it’s worth imprisoning almost everyone…

      • Like East Germany and the rest of the communist block, and North Korea today. Tge countries were prison camps writ large where the crime was life and so was the sentence.

  7. ‘Just because California has a law on the books doesn’t mean it will accomplish anything but serving as an inconvenience for law-abiding citizens.’

    You’re missing the big picture here. Inconveniencing law abiding citizens is the whole purpose of California’s gun laws.

    • Didn’t America have ammo laws in the past because they wanted to stop black and brown people from going into the gun store and buying some or a lot?

      I know weapon control and licensing in America has been due to racism and white supremacy. It doesn’t look all that different from the past when it comes out of a Democrat’s mind.

      • True. And wouldn’t you think that the nation’s first black President would have the tiny amount of intelligence required to hear himself, when he described (on national TV) how the great and overpowering cost of American firearms was not being paid by the 87% of the country who were *not* black, instead was young black men killing young black men, reiterated same thing for about 10 minutes, and then concluded that we needed the 87% who were NOT responsible to be subjected to “universal background checks” and other nonsense. What. A. Moron.

        • 97%. Black males aged 17-34 commit approximately 52% of murders in the U.S. That age bloc comprises only 3% of the U.S. population. Past time to change 13% to 3%.

    • “You’re missing the big picture here. Inconveniencing law abiding citizens is the whole purpose of California’s gun laws.” Correct Gov. These laws are meant to discourage good citizens from making guns and ammo purchases and thereby reducing the numbers of gun owners. Albeit a slow process, make no mistake, this is a part of their overall plan to disarm good citizens. The anti’s response will be, “we didn’t say you couldn’t make a purchase IF you follow the processes of laws”!

  8. This guy passed four background checks for firearms (there were more at his house), and a federal check for his silencer. He presumably passed a background check for his employment, and there were no red flags for mental conditions in his past. What flipped this guy? Who knows. There are rumors that he had some kind of a dust up with a co-employee for which he potentially faced disciplinary action, but he resigned before any action was taken. In short, this was Mr. Law Abiding Citizen until he was not. The conclusion is a simple and direct as can be–there is not a law on the books in any stage, no matter how restrictive its laws, that would have or could have prevented this incident.

    • I would like to see the shooters toxicological blood work and also know what brand of can he was using.

      Will that happen? No.

      I agree, no law can stop someone willing to trade their life.

    • The “good guy until he turned bad guy” is exactly what scares the useful dummies that leftists use to push gun control. These sheeps stay away from bad areas and are not dealing with bad guys, so they feel like crime cannot reach them. But any law abiding gun owner can flip at any moment and start shooting indiscriminately. So, they scream: let’s disarm everyone.
      The way the media shows every one of these mass murders for weeks and fail to even mention the hundreds of thousands of times guns are used to protect lifes every year just cements the feeling of gun ownership being a lot of risk for zero gain.

      All of that is intended and aimed at the final goal of total civilian disarmament. Only then the leftists can finally get their version of utopia.

      • And then the REAL killing can start. Nothing like a socialist utopia to foster a kinder and happier oppressed people complete with reeducation camps.

  9. When a law doesn’t have the desired result, the clear course of action is to make another law just like it.

  10. Anyone else think Newsom looks like a cross between Bradley Cooper and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho?

  11. “the fact that someone who clearly passed two separate FBI background check”

    The problem I have is that the FBI does not have agents “investigating” DROS applications. This is done by the DOJ. The FBI “investigates” after the discrepancy (red flag) is discovered.
    Manipulative reporting always makes me skeptical.

  12. If all the people at the office building had been armed,the shooting would have stopped mych sooner.
    Gun free zones kill people.
    Local militias needed across America.
    Out of control militarized police,socialists,liberals,criminal congress and open borders must be dealt with.

  13. Gavin Newsom is just like the rest of the democratic idiots. They do not give a damn about saving lives. All they are interested in is control. Start eliminating these damn murderers instead of filling up prisons for us to support for life. Newsom and all the rest of California’s idiot politicians will not do a damn thing to clean up their own state with illegals, gangs, homeless, and crazies, but they can tell the rest of the country what they need to do. If just for once they ever passed a law that actually accomplished something, the rest of the country might pay attention, But that is not going to happen.

  14. These nuts are only looking to make the news and by doing so they show for all just how ignorant they are of current weapons laws; they are all so wound up in making noise inorder to get into the press and play to their followers/contributors that the fail to recognize the real problem. The basic problem is in the number of illegal weapons already on the streets and in the hands of criminals, the number of transfers to friends and family members with out going through a background check and the inability or knuckle dragging by Congress in presenting workable legislation within the confines of the Constitution and all its Amendments which will allow those with mental/psychological problems which should deny them the right to have a firearm.

  15. Gangsters, murders, drug dealers, school shooters, and bank robbers want guns totally outlawed. That makes their job safer without anyone to shoot back. If any of these low lifes get captured, it is the cops duty to protect the criminal, to the point of murdering a person (relative of dead victim) trying to get justice (revenge) on the criminal. Far too many laws protect the criminal, and condemn the innocent. Makes sense because its the criminals who pay the lawyers mega bucks to skip prison. Also a lot of judges get quite rich in the process.

  16. California is likely to face severe electricity shortages this summer. Hopefully a monumental fubar occurs and Newsome gets blamed and roasted—–like Gray Davis back in the pre-Arnold days. Not that a replacement would be any improvement from a 2A standpoint, but Newsome is incredibly stupid and dishonest.

  17. gavin cheated on his wife with his (best?) friends wife…..
    some moments in our lives define us

  18. Newsom has as much credibility to tell anyone how to do anything as deBlasio does. 2 imbeciles on opposite coasts driving their cities into the ground at lightning speed.
    A guy who passes a law allowing me to openly shit on public sidewalks doesn’t have the chops to talk about controlling anything.

  19. Anti civil rights Homosexuals and Liberal gun owners, who are Fudds, helped put Gavin Newsom into office.
    They also helped to disarm school staff and teachers in California.

  20. I am amazed California does not limit the amount of ammo you can purchase in a year.
    They already limit the number of guns you can buy.
    It seems logical they would limit ammo…cause guns!

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  22. My guns don’t do anything on their own.

    You need background checks on people. How’s that sanctuary state thing working out?

  23. I would like to publicly apologize for the ignorance and gutter-rat morality of
    #MyRepugnantGovernor
    @GavinNewsom
    who’s spotlight hunger, coupled with his a low-life character of stupidity, is a complete and total embarrassment representing The Golden State.
    His lack of character is only matched by his personal infidelity victimizing women, and his putrid stain of socialistically retarded liberal leadership.
    #VoteAllDemocrats

    • I’m a 64 year-old native who can easily see the proof that gold does tarnish. We have to get out of this place.

  24. The people of California are the REAL problem, they elected this moron after Hippie-dippie Jerry. If you who the Hippie-dippie Weatherman was you know what I mean. Purse your lips, blow through them while flipping you over them.r index finger rapidly up and down

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