Gavin Newsom angry
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

California, already home to some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, has enacted even more restrictions under Governor Gavin Newsom. On Tuesday, Newsom signed several new gun laws, including SB 899 and the 2024 Animal Protection and Gun Violence Prevention Act, continuing his administration’s push for tighter regulations. This comes despite the fact that California had the second-highest number of gun deaths in the nation in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—whose research is often cited by gun control advocates to justify further restrictions.

Among the new measures is a law that allows courts to consider stalking, animal cruelty and threats of violence as valid grounds for issuing a gun violence restraining order. Additionally, a person found mentally incompetent to stand trial on misdemeanor charges will now face a firearms ban. Previously, this restriction only applied to felony charges.

The laws also include measures aimed at curbing the spread of so-called “ghost guns”—homemade firearms that are untraceable by law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies will be prohibited from selling firearms meant to be destroyed, a provision that received bipartisan support in the state legislature.

Another new law narrows the ability of law enforcement officers involved in domestic violence cases to carry firearms, while increasing protections for domestic violence survivors by mandating the confiscation of firearms from offenders.

Governor Newsom, an outspoken advocate for gun control, framed these measures as essential, saying, “California won’t wait until the next school shooting or mass shooting to act.” Yet, despite his claims, many are left questioning the effectiveness of these laws. California has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the country, despite having layers of regulations on the books.

In fact, Newsom’s full official statement on his office’s website is a laughable lie to anyone willing to dig into a little actual research: “California won’t wait until the next school shooting or mass shooting to act. In the absence of congressional action, our state is once again leading the way by strengthening our nation-leading gun laws. Data shows that California’s gun safety laws are effective in preventing gun-related deaths — which makes the ongoing inaction and obstruction by politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby even more reprehensible.”

While Newsom peacocks about laws that have had negligible impact except to hamper the ability of victims and law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves or affordably enjoying legitimate pastimes such as competitive shooting and hunting, his state has become the poster child for progressive politics run amuck. Citizens are leaving the state in droves, the homeless and their feces litter the streets and companies are closing down and moving out because criminals are going unpunished and allowed to steal and destroy with impunity. California also leads the nation in mass shootings.

Critics of Newsom’s approach correctly argue that the state’s ever-expanding web of gun laws does little to address the real issue—criminals, not law-abiding gun owners, are responsible for the violence. They point to CDC data showing that California, despite its strict regulations, still saw the second most gun deaths of any state in 2022, underscoring how gun control laws often fail to prevent crime. Instead, these laws tend to burden responsible gun owners and infringe on constitutional rights.

Pro-Second Amendment groups are particularly concerned with the trend of using restraining orders to strip people of their right to own firearms based on accusations rather than convictions. The expansion of such laws could lead to more citizens losing their rights without due process.

Governor Newsom’s new laws join a host of other recent measures that have drawn ire from gun rights advocates, including increased taxes on guns and ammunition and a ban on carrying firearms in most public places. Despite California’s aggressive gun control stance, many of these laws face court challenges, and many of them have already been struck down on constitutional grounds or had injunctions put in place staying the laws.

As Newsom eyes the national political stage, his positioning as a leader on gun control may appeal to some, but for California gun owners and Second Amendment supporters, it represents another step toward eroding their constitutional rights without effectively addressing the root causes of gun violence.

21 COMMENTS

  1. The sad fact is that there will be more victims, more needless deaths, because good people couldn’t get or keep the means to protect themselves. I despise CA. Through in NY & NJ as well.

  2. For a moment and sake of discussion, let’s assume that California’s assertion is true–that their “tough gun laws” reduced the number of victims of violent crime where the attacker used a firearm. What is the data on the number of victims of violent crime where the attacker used something aside from a firearm such as a knife, bludgeon, fists-and-feet, etc.?

    In other words has California simply traded victims of attackers using firearms for victims of attackers using alternate weapons? And has the total number of victims of violent crime (regardless of what weapon the attacker used) increased?

    Of course we will never know either way for sure since we cannot trust government, academic, nor journalistic data sources. The last few years have made it crystal clear that government bureaucrats, academics, and so-called journalists will distort data and even outright omit or fabricate data if necessary to advance their objectives.

    That last paragraph should reinforce our resolve to stand by an important position all-the-more: our inalienable right to keep and bear arms is NOT subject to arguments grounded in social utility, especially when the data which forms the foundation of social utility arguments are not trustworthy.

  3. Living out in the hinterlands, we are protected from almost all of the criminal violence in this state, and most people own guns. The new 11% tax certainly took the zeal out of adding to my collection, but I still have a few guns I’ve never taken to the range. The proposed increase in the fee for buying ammo is a real pisser though, only made worse because I can’t have ammo shipped to my door. (I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be success on the suit challenging that law.) We just barely missed having mandatory storage requirements, just shy of the Heller bright line, imposed statewide (already the law in LA and San Francisco). have to wonder what they will dream up for the next session. Oh, the “joys” of living in a one party dictatorship!

  4. California voters made a choice. Same as voters in New Jersey and Illinois. The le.gal b.utt se.x and the drug leg-@liz@ti-on crowds are the really controlling forces that’s left in those states.

    And both groups have always been anti-civil rights.

    Federal troops are not going to be sent to these rebellious states. Like they have been in the past.

    You have always been on your own. Nothing has changed.

  5. Consider a husband who abuses his wife. Every time he abuses his wife, he is exercising “power and control” over her and gets-off on it. Not only will he never stop–he will escalate over time. He may even go so far as to eventually permanently disable or even murder his wife.

    That abusive husband ignores any conscience that he may have, having decided that the “gains” of abusing his wife outweigh any sense of remorse. Of course no one can have a nice conversation with the husband and talk him down from his lifestyle of abusing his wife. In fact attempts to convince the husband to stop abusing his wife may actually enrage him and lead to yet more abuse.

    The same is true of California’s government. They get sick thrills from exercising power and control over their abused masses and no one will ever be able talk down the California government. There are only a few options for the masses in California:
    1) Submit and be abused and/or murdered.
    2) Leave California.
    3) Stay in California and vote out the abusive elements of state government.
    4) Stay in California and repel all entities who violate your rights.

    Note that staying in California and repelling state actors who violate your rights will almost certainly happen at the place and time that is extremely favorable for those state actors (and thus extremely unfavorable for you) which virtually guarantees that they will prevail and you will lose.

    Choose wisely.

    • They get sick thrills from exercising power and control over their abused masses and no one will ever be able talk down the California government Democrats.

      The same could be said of inserting 20,000 Haitian newcomers into a town of 50,000 mostly Trump supporters. They get off on punishing people.

      From the US State Dept:

      Travel Advisory
      September 18, 2024
      Haiti – Level 4: Do Not Travel

      Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.

      Country Summary: Since March 2024, Haiti has been under a State of Emergency. Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom. Kidnapping is widespread, and U.S. citizens have been victims and have been hurt or killed. Kidnappers may plan carefully or target victims at random, unplanned times. Kidnappers will even target and attack convoys. Kidnapping cases often involve ransom requests. Victims’ families have paid thousands of dollars to rescue their family members. 

      Protests, demonstrations, and roadblocks are common and unpredictable. They often damage or destroy infrastructure and can become violent. Mob killings and assaults by the public have increased, including targeting those suspected of committing crimes.

      Hey, I know. Let’s bring in people from a failed third world country, and increase the population of certain areas by nearly 50 percent over a three year period. What could possibly go wrong? *maniacal laugh*

      Remember that time Trump called Haiti a s_hole country, and the left lost their minds? Conan did that special showing how wonderful Haiti was. Someone was right, and it wasn’t the left (as usual).

  6. Earthly pleasures are the primary concern of the mostly secular population and its secular leadership in california. Their wet dreams have been made true.

    They can do drugs in public. They can urinate and defecate in public. All without fear of arrest.

    Their most important issues have been addressed.

  7. RE: “California has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the country, despite having layers of regulations on the books ”

    So not to regurgitate the agenda driven concocted Gun Violence label that singles out guns simple say, “California has some of the highest rates of Violence in the country, despite having layers of regulations on the books.”

    Regulations say you cannot shoot someone anymore than you can stab someone or run over someone, etc. Violence is Violence period.

  8. If Kim Jong Un were to wake up just extra grumpy one day and nuke cali, I’d be torn on if that was an act of war or if some one needs to call him and find out where he wants us to mail him his solid gold statue of himself

    • I would prefer that not happen as the prevailing winds would certainly carry fallout to my mostly firearm friendly state of AZ. We are still hoping for the big earthquake to crack along the fault line spilling that craphole state into the sea.

  9. You would expect gun deaths to in California to be high considering the population. Lets not use the same tactics with our words as the left. Not that I disagree with the premise of the article.

  10. (Vandalized with) Shots fired into Democratic campaign office in Arizona. (Kamala wasn’t there 😒)

    h ttps://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/arizona-democrat-campaign-office-shot

  11. Is Illinois’ Assault Weapon Ban About to Be Overturned…Again?

    “Another chapter in the saga of the Illinois Assault Weapon Ban is about to be written. This time by a trial court in Southern Illinois. Washington Gun Law President, William Kirk, discusses all the events which occurred last week in the trial on multiple consolidated cases all challenging the Constitutionality of the Protect Illinois’ Communities Act. What is going to happen? Who’s going to win? Will any of this matter? ”

    h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9iQb7VaaCA

  12. If Newsom would apply just half of the resources and effort to locking up criminals as he does trying to infringe the constitutional right of law abiding people California would probably have the lowest crime rate in the world.

  13. Ware, Mass. PD: You Can’t Dispense Tyranny and Label it Wisdom

    h ttps://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-control/ware-mass-pd-you-cant-dispense-tyranny-and-label-it-wisdom/

    “In a flagrant Trojan horse maneuver, the next stage of our “representatives’” unyielding attack on freedom has begun, while the House has once again displayed a brazen lack of scruples in using the Constitution of the United States as its personal wetwipe.

    Filling to absolute capacity the brim of human indecency by shamefully exploiting the recent tragedy in Holyoke, where an unborn babe was slaughtered by stray gunfire, shines a verifiable spotlight on the defunct moral compass of Boss Mariano and his Congressional Cronies.

    And since those fateful bullets were shot by two convicted felons, neither of whom held a license to carry, one of whom had an open firearms case against him at the time of the shooting, and wherewith nothing in this ridiculous Bill would have stayed their murderous hands, it begs the question of the true intent of HD4607.

    Massachusetts already has in place some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And if the architects of this Bill were truly concerned with the general welfare of the people, they would not attempt to implement with coercive force new restrictions that only hinder responsible, forthright Americans from protecting their families and preserving their cherished values. Rather than smiting the tree of independence and poisoning the well of freedom, rather than disenfranchising our national spirit and stripping our sovereignty to its core, perhaps those representatives in Congress should enact and support systems to punish the criminal few, perhaps minimum mandatory sentences should be increased AND ACTUALLY EXECUTED BY OUR JUDICIARY, to hold accountable these wanton hoodlums who couldn’t give a wooden nickel about any of our laws in the first place, and to whom the inked provisions of this Bill would hold about as much weight as a soggy waffle.

    Here is what a proper gun Bill might contain: 1st Offense, 2.5 years incarceration. 2nd Offense, 10 years incarceration. 3rd offense, permanent incarceration. Minimum mandatory, no exceptions; with a strong focus on mental health rehabilitation, work/life experience training, and enabling smoother pathways to higher education while incarcerated.

    At best this Bill is a futile, knee-jerk reaction to a public crisis, a fool’s plan hastily scribbled upon a piece of cheap stationary. At worst, it is nothing less than another step on the slow march towards complete authoritarianism.

    Disarming the good guys is simply not a workable strategy to reduce gun violence. Because logic demands that if you criminalize firearms, only CRIMINALS will have FIREARMS.

    That is why the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association proudly, vigorously, and unanimously opposes this Bill.

    The Second Amendment cannot be destroyed wholesale. Congress knows this. Therefore, they have opted, through this Bill, and through many subsequent, to slay the beast a little at a time. Death by a thousand pinpricks. Until the last syllable of that meddlesome phrase “shall not be infringed” is brushed away like so much crumbling ash.

    But you cannot dispense tyranny and label it wisdom. Cannot force-feed us oppression and call it security.

    For those citizens who welcome and support this Bill, who firmly believe that these edicts ushered from an ivory tower will somehow increase the general welfare and promote the safety of our great State, we recognize your desire to see positive change, we admire your noble cause to make a difference, we respect your demands to force politicians into doing something more than merely provide lip service in the form of empty thoughts and prayers. But if you happily conclude that the framers of this Bill have our best interests in mind, we gravely implore you to never forget those portentous words, spoken so long ago, at the advent of a similar despotism: ‘This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.’

    — Ware, Massachusetts Police Department via Facebook”

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