By Emily Hoeven
What’s more American than a mass shooting?
That was the question posed by the Sacramento Bee editorial board following a spate of Fourth of July shootings in California and across the country: In Highland Park, Illinois, a gunman killed at least six people and injured dozens more during an Independence Day parade. In Sacramento, one person was killed and four others shot outside a nightclub early Monday, three months after a gang shootout that left six dead and 12 injured. And in South Los Angeles, a street takeover ended in a fatal shooting early Monday.
The shootings came just a few days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a pair of bills that he said would help protect Californians, especially kids, from rising rates of gun violence: One bill tightens restrictions on so-called “ghost guns” — those intentionally made untraceable — while another would hold companies liable for marketing certain firearms to minors.
- Newsom: “As the Supreme Court rolls back important gun safety protections and states across the country treat gun violence as inevitable, California is doubling down on commonsense gun safety measures that save lives.”
- But Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, told the Associated Press he believes both laws will be overturned under the higher standard for gun rights established by very U.S. Supreme Court ruling Newsom referenced.
Interestingly, guns are not among the hot-button topics Newsom mentions in a 30-second ad from his reelection campaign that began airing Monday not in California, but on Fox News stations across Florida.
- Newsom: “It’s Independence Day, so let’s talk about what’s going on in America. Freedom is under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors. I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”
The ad appears to be Newsom’s latest attempt to elevate his national profile amid intensifying culture wars — and his latest attempt to draw a stark contrast with Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida said to be contemplating a 2024 presidential bid.
- Newsom told CNN: “We’re as different as daylight and darkness.”
- Newsom has repeatedly said he has no plans to run for president, but when “he makes these moves, it makes political folks roll their eyes and say, ‘Of course he’s running,” Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political strategist, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Due to what aides said was a prior family commitment, Newsom didn’t participate in a virtual meeting President Joe Biden held Friday with a handful of Democratic governors to discuss the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
- Newsom left California Friday and will return at the end of the week, Anthony York, the governor’s senior advisor for communications, told me Monday. He did not respond to questions about Newsom’s whereabouts.
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Second shooting at Oakland school on 9/28/2022. In August a 12 yr old shot a 13 yr old. Now 6 adults shot. One person witnessed the shooting but no details yet.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-school-shooting-injures-6
Well, we just most recently had a prime example of draconian weapons laws not working. The former Prime Minister of Japan, shot with a home-made firearm despite the presence of Nara police in force. I saw one flash video of the guy with the gun standing right beside a cop. What was Officer Fuddo doing while a guy with a home-made handgun was standing next to him with the gun in plain sight? Perhaps ogling the comely ojosan a few yards away in another direction? Certainly not scanning the crowd for somebody with a really curious object by his side.
Japan is held up as the shining example of low number of firearms deaths each year. Left unsaid is the number of folks burned to death in gasoline fires, the number of kindergarteners and kindergarten teachers stabbed to death by a deranged individual, the number of old folks in a care home and their caregivers stabbed to death by another nut job.
Evil exists in the world and until we start putting folks who are truly troubled in mental health facilities where they are not free to leave, we are going to have these kinds of episodes.
Japan has had weapons control for Ichiro Suzuki, commoner, since the 17th century. Of course, everybody else was free to have all the weapons they wanted. Simple elitism which is one of the legs that weapons control stands on. Diane Finestine, who never saw a gun law that precluded poor folks from having guns that she didn’t just love, carried an unlicensed gun when she was La Mayor of San Fransicko. She probably could have gotten the SF chief of the popo to give her a CCP (concealed carry permit) if she had asked but her highness needn’t ask permission from a subordinate. How degrading.
In Japan right now, the police are required to check once a year to make sure the owner of a shotgun (the only kind of firearm allowed under Japanese law) has it safely stored and the ammo safely stored some place else. Do you think the local koban officer (police box) checks the Prime Minister for safe storage of his shotguns? Or the CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries?
But Ichiro Suzuki was able to hang around until Abe started to speak and fire two shots at him in plain view of at least dozens of police officers, all of whom were armed. It wasn’t until he started to run away that some cop thought “Duhh, maybe we ought to tackle that guy.”
Fortunately the Japanese are real sticklers about responsibility. Look for lots of high level police officers in Japan to apologize for their failure and resign. Unlike the US AG who took full responsibility for burning up all those women and children in Texas and continued on fat, dumb and happy in her job.
So we are going to have more laws to keep law abiding folks from having the ability to carry self-defense tools, who, had they been standing in the crowd in Nara just might have been more alert to the guy with the funny looking device on his side than the cops and prevented losing a really good public official.
Oh, and for the folks who loudly scream that blood will run in the streets if law abiding folks carry weapons for self defense, half the states in the country have laws that allow such folks to carry firearms without a permission slip form their overlords and blood isn’t running in the streets. That only happens in places like NY, Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, just to name a few dem controlled cities.
It’s been proven academically, and it makes common sense: More Guns means Less Crime. Let’s make Thousand Oaks a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary City. This is the Founding Father’s recipe for securing safety in a free nation. Any adult who can legally purchase or possess a firearm should be presumed to have the right to legally carry that firearm, without any need for a government permit. The T.O. Council can advise the Chief of Police that we do not support the enforcement of any state laws that violate the 2nd Amendment. You can learn more by doing an internet search for “Jeff Schwartz Thousand Oaks.”