I’m curious if there’s any gun control that California Gov. Gavin Newsom really dislikes.
My guess is that there’s not. He seems to love it all and his fellow California Democrats do as well. The fact that one is running for president is definitely a concern, but that’s mostly because she could import the state’s anti-gun laws to apply to all of us.
Yet one has to wonder if there’s a line in the sand that Newsom won’t cross.
If there is, these new laws are clearly not on the other side of it.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several gun control measures Tuesday, including one that allows the court to consider stalking and animal cruelty as grounds to restrict access to firearms.
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Under the new laws, a judge can consider stalking, acts of animal cruelty or threats of violence as evidence for a gun violence restraining order. A person who has a misdemeanor charge dismissed because they were found to be mentally incompetent will also be prohibited from possessing a gun. Current laws only apply such restrictions to cases involving felony charges.
Another law targets ghost guns by requiring law enforcement agencies to prohibit their contracted vendors from selling guns meant to be destroyed. The measure received bipartisan support from the Legislature.
The new laws also aim at providing more protections for domestic violence survivors. There’ll be fewer exceptions for police officers to continue carrying a gun if they were perpetrators of domestic violence. Law enforcement is also required to take away firearms from offenders.
Of these, only the last one doesn’t bother me. I resent the idea that a regular person could be denied their gun rights for domestic violence charges, but a cop isn’t. I’m not a big fan of two-tiered legal systems.
The rest, however, are a problem.
See, it’s not that I think stalking or animal cruelty are good or acceptable things. They’re not. Neither are threats. However, what’s happening here is that they’re expanding the various things that are considered a bridge too far little by little. Right now, it’s things that no one will defend and it’ll stay that way for quite a while. They’re expanding the criteria incrementally until almost anything would be grounds for a restraining order.
And that law supposedly targeting “ghost guns?” It does no such thing.
Most of the contracted vendors police deal with–meaning they have reached an agreement in exchange for money–are companies that take used guns and sell them to licensed dealers. They make exchanges as a way for law enforcement agencies to get new guns at a reduced price. It sounds like this law will prohibit that practice and drive up costs for law enforcement across the board.
The companies that sell gun parts that end up in so-called ghost guns are usually doing that to make money because they take in the guns for free. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t require a contract, but maybe I’m wrong.
Still, I don’t see this being the win many like to think, especially when there are plenty of new parts being made every day.
But California isn’t really all that interested in stopping criminals. They’re interested in making guns forbidden and nothing else.
