In recent weeks, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has turned 180 degrees on things like limiting police power and dealing with homeless encampments. This might seem like either a move to common sense or election-year desperation as he tries to appeal to voters outside of his state. Perhaps he got passed up for the VP slot due to the disorder in his state, and he’s hoping for a 2028 run for the big chair. But, my take on this is that it’s just a natural consequence of California’s anti-gun policies and culture and the total mindset of people who think that way.
Before anyone points out the absurdity of this simple argument, I’m not saying that all countries without guns in the hands of citizens end up like California with rampant crime, homelessness and people being one of the top exports. There are plenty of very stable countries that have strict gun control laws and also have law and order.
But, places that anti-gun people point to as great examples of gun control working out aren’t California. None of those places have the problems California has. They don’t have the housing shortages pushing people into the street. They don’t have the economic desperation at the bottom that drives people to turn to crime and go back to it after getting out of prison. They don’t have social decohesion that leads to disconnectedness, desperation and rampant drug addiction.
None of those problems are easy to solve, and most of them can’t be solved by government. If anything, government did dumb things to create crippling housing shortages, lost economic opportunity and create an environment for kids who weren’t raised to be good people. The only way a population in that bad of shape can keep itself safe is through personal freedom, which includes being able to defend yourself from the dregs of society.
When California decided to go after good people while taking it easy on the criminals and addicts they felt bad for without any real problem solving for that crowd, the result was inevitable. Unlike say Norway, California didn’t address poverty and other social problems while taking away people’s guns, turning good citizens into criminals and holding true criminals unaccountable. Then, they were shocked to see that they didn’t get the same result that those kinds of countries got.
If anything, the appearance of homemade gun designs like the FGC-9 in those countries, minus the mass shootings, shows us that a stable society is what keeps the violence down, not gun control. So, California and other such states copied the wrong things from those countries and are now left wondering why it doesn’t work out.
The Misguided Return To “Law & Order”
With intractable social problems and gun control failing to fix everything, California is left with just one other solution: clamping down harder.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer explains the conundrum as a “J Curve”. When a society is open (as in free), it can flourish. But, really restricted societies can also have a lot of stability, even if they can’t be as stable or prosperous as open societies that respect their citizens and serve them instead of treating them like subjects. But, at the bottom of this curve are societies that aren’t open enough to be prosperous and are closed enough to be artificially stable. These countries tend to suffer continuous political violence until they either open up or close down (or self-destruct entirely).
With California heading toward the bottom of that curve while having leaders who don’t value a really open society, the only other option left to them is to clamp down hard to try to restore order.
But, they aren’t at the bottom yet and might not survive the trip across and up the other side of the curve into such a police state, as there are very valid reasons that police have had their hands tied in California. For example police chases have mostly become a thing of the past in all 50 states because people realized that police chases are more dangerous than the bad guy getting away in many cases. So, chases have been restricted to only those situations that are more dangerous to the public than the chase itself (a wise policy that keeps the police and reckless criminals from harming more innocent people).
No more excuses. https://t.co/QyiehmqhkJ
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 26, 2024
Instead of fixing underlying problems and trying to address crime with openness, he’s trying to take California law enforcement back to the days when Los Angeles police chases were the highlight of any cable news day. He’s also looking to do the same thing with homelessness:
No more excuses.
We’ve provided the time.
We’ve provided the funds.
Now it’s time for locals to do their job. https://t.co/oMQiWggJBa
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 25, 2024
Instead of solving the housing crisis with open systems and letting the free market provide the housing supply people need, Newsom is instead trying to clamp down on the homeless population in his state and force them into something akin to Star Trek’s “Sanctuary Districts” (something Deep Space 9 writers set in 2024 California, interestingly enough). Instead, California’s endless supply of HOA Karens and draconian zoning leads to a closed system that can only close down further.
None of this is going to work, though. Like when California copied half of what European countries did, California’s only copying half of the red state law and order playbook. Without property rights, open government and people free to defend themselves, that’s going to fail spectacularly and lead to further crackdowns on personal freedoms or at the very least, the utter collapse of California.
Can’t we just remove a star off the flag and hand that state over to Mexico and be done with it?
newsob puts on a crime fighting face and the San Francisco self confirmed Indian kamala goes Black with an on demand cadence shift…and Vivek Ramaswamy is Dirty Harry and the new Don Cornelius.
Ralph, that’s the best idea I’ve heard lately! Let me make a suggestion. Let’s keep the star and everything north of San Francisco. Let’s go a step further. We’ll keep the stars, but the Pacific NW east of the Cascades are on their own.
I meant west.
How about we keep the territory of California but deport about half the residents back to Mexico and Africa?
And, China.
It’s election season and once again a liberal/progressive democrat resorts to ALAR. What is ALAR you ask… Act Like a Republican. By suddenly supporting all the things they have fought against for the last 4 years only to return to their old ideology and agendas once they get the results they were looking for.
The Biden Administration suddenly decided to pretend like they want border enforcement. They’re lying about it though. Kamala’s stump speech includes pretending like she wants to limit illegal immigration. She says she needs to pass that “bipartisan border bill” that Trump opposed. That border bill made illegal immigration legal! It guaranteed a certain level of walk-in legal immigration. The money was to help usher more people in. She has zero respect for her constituents to lie like that. Democrat voters are stupid for supporting Kamala & Co. The media has broken their brains. TDS is real.
Government cannot solve poverty. President Johnson tried that, and all it accomplished was a vast expansion of the welfare rolls. When the government hands you what you need to survive, and private industry does not pay as well for minimum wage jobs, there is no incentive to get off the rolls, leading to generational welfare recipients. Generational welfare leads to fatherless families, drug abuse, and of course, an increase in crime. It doesn’t help that California’s public school system has gone down the crapper even after billions of dollars were thrown at it; unfortunately, most of that money went to pay for administrative jobs as the State imposed greater and greater reporting requirements and less money for class rooms and teachers. And so on. This was just a sample of the innumerable problems brought on by state control.
“There are plenty of very stable countries that have strict gun control laws and also have law and order.”
Hmmm not really. What they have is control over what gets reported or is considered ‘crime’.
For example: In most places in Europe rape of female foreigner ‘tourists’ is rampant (especially in the UK, ‘un-offically’ dubbed with the title of ‘rape capital of Europe’). But its not reported in crime stats and media because ‘they are not citizens’ and they don’t want to ‘upset’ the tourist industry too much because its worth million of $$$ annually. And, for example, there are 40% of the U.K.’s ‘sex workers’ murdered annually and less than 5% of them appear in the U.K. annual crime and murder stats.
and also…
“There are plenty of very stable countries that have strict gun control laws and also have law and order.”
That’s also not true for a variety of other reasons, one being human nature free will. Criminally minded people can decide to commit a crime or not.
And, for example, in the U.K. they have strict gun control laws but violent knife crime is rampant and the mentally ill and criminal response to ‘strict gun control laws’. But unless it something ‘sensational’ or involves ‘well known’ people it doesn’t get reported in the media and then police don’t seriously investigate unless there is a known perpetrator which leads to thousands of ‘cold cases’ annually that do not make it into stats because they are cases without a known perpetrator thus do not fulfill the requirements for being included in crime category stats.
And oddly, overall we do that same thing here in the U.S. with assaults and rapes and murders where if there is no perpetrator known or can be discovered the crime is not reported in crime stats. This leads to, for example, literally thousands of knife attacks annually not making it into crime stats (over ~1,600 daily across the United States, making ‘knife violence’ rates outnumber the so called ‘gun violence’ rates ~1,000 : 0.5).
All this type of stuff, first post and this add on… makes – “There are plenty of very stable countries that have strict gun control laws and also have law and order.” – actually a false statement. A country can not have stability with restrictions of anything AND still actually have “law and order” simply because you can not ‘legislate’ human nature free will. Law and order only works if the people will follow that law and order concept, if they choose not to do so it simply does not work and that leads to a government imposing ‘other means’. And one means is to keep up the charade that government is in control of it to keep the people believing in their government control. And one of those charade means for “countries that have strict gun control laws” is to simply control what is or is not reported so they can continue to claim ‘less crime’ or “law and order” because they have “strict gun control laws” and its a false impression because that combination doesn’t really exist.
and as an example….
On July 26 2024 – 3 children dead, 7 others injured, in mass-knifing attack at Taylor Swift-Themed dance class in Southport, UK > https://www.foxnews.com/world/taylor-swift-completely-shock-after-attack-uk-dance-class-third-child-dead
No gun, but hey, use a knife instead
It’s always total anarchy or police state shenanigans with these people.
Conveniently the pain caused by either the anarchy or the police state is always the fault of their political enemies. Always win-win for the elite leftists.
Politicians like Newsom and Harris have no core beliefs or principles. They abandon stated principles whenever they need to climb the next step on the ladder.
Newsom is every bit the same corrupted tyrannical dictator he’s been form the start. He’s the front man for the destruction of his state. He should be locked-up for treason and live the rest of his life in shame.
California as a state is a disgrace. I had a brother in law who was really screwed up in the head. He was a paranoid schizophrenic who was gay and had contracted HIV through his actions. Now, I don’t care if someone is gay. That’s their problem is the way I see it. But in his schizophrenia he ran away from his responsibilities here on the east coast (His dog, his apartment, his job etc) and went to CA after embezzling a ton of money from his and his father’s business. He of course blew it all and became homeless. The state only enabled his stupidity that ultimate led to his death last year. Instead of institutionalizing a schizo they instead gave him a room in a rundown former motel that was converted into a kinda like halfway house. They openly used drugs via syringe and it was cringeworthy. As long as the state sponsors such activity, they are complicit in the actions of those people. And until the gov’t of that state is completely revamped, it will never change.
I started reading this without taking note of the author. It is very much a well reasoned, articulate analysis of the problem with a libertarian philosophy. I could relate horror stories about how the local Karens cause homelessness by obstructing the construction of new housing. I was therefore mildly surprised then amused to see that it was written by Jennifer Sensiba. After reading her articles on other sites related to other issues (Solettas and Solar Power Satellites), I am utterly amazed.
I can certainly relate with the point that HOA Karens contribute to homelessness by obstructing the construction of new housing. This in turn contributes to poverty and crime. Unrestrained illegal immigration only exasperates the problem. Government is the problem, not the solution.
I had the misfortune of owning land in Oregon that I wished to sell for a housing development. The local Karens (aka “blue haired bitches”) and the Tualatin Hills Parks and Recreation District coveted my land for a park. THPRD and the Karens felt entitled to pay me only pennies on the dollar for my land. I was quite amendable to donating the unbuildable portion of my land for a park. Unfortunately; that didn’t satisfy the Karens or the THPRD.
After fighting the Karens and the THPRD for over a decade and actually having to “move” my land from Multnomah County to Washington County, I was poised to sell. THPRD responded by sending one of their own security guards over to their “park” adjacent to my land to repeatedly commit arson of an abandoned house that THPRD had been attempting to get permits to demolish. The repeated arson fires enabled THPRD to obtain emergency waivers that enabled demolition. THPRD and the Blue Haired Bitches also exploited the arson fires by attempting to falsely implicate me. Half a year later, John Michael Townsend, a THPRD security guard, was arrested for these arson fires. Even after Townsend had signed a plea agreement and was scheduled for sentencing, a THPRD official threatened me with a civil forfeiture lawsuit to confiscate my land. I regret resisting the temptation to avulse his head.