Gavin Newsom swats down CBS reporter’s Second Amendment question — msn.com
That’s not really the way I saw it. Gavin Newsom is not a smart man. He’s not going to win too many forensic scrimmages against another adult.
The reason the CBS reporter was talking to Newsom about guns and the Second Amendment is that we had 3 mass shootings in 3 days in California. I’ve heard that California has the strictest gun control laws of any state in the country, whatever that means, but we still had 3 mass shootings in 3 days.
What Newsom was responding to was not even a question. He had just finished calling the Second Amendment a “suicide pact” when the reporter pointed out that many people in the U.S. support the Second Amendment.
This was Newsom’s swat-down reply:
“Yeah, I have great respect. I have no ideological opposition with someone reasonably and responsibly owning firearms and getting background checks and being trained and making sure they’re locked [up] so their kid doesn’t accidentally shoot themselves or a loved one. Absolutely not. Never suggested that. That’s what they immediately do. ‘He wants to take away your guns.’ I just want to take away weapons of war that are illegal on the streets of California and should be illegal across the United States.”
I think what he’s missing here is that two of the shootings were carried out with guns that are legal to own in California. Whether or not they were legally obtained I do not know, but I do know that only a small percentage of gun crimes are committed with legally obtained weapons.
The third shooter had a gun that is not legal to own in California. It was an old gun so he may have acquired it before it was banned or he may have bought it in another state.
But so what? The shooter is no longer alive but if he were, he’d be charged with what? — 11 counts of murder and one count of possessing an illegal firearm? That’s a deterrent?
Good luck reducing gun violence with more laws and more laws and more laws. It’s not going to work.
I saw this interview on the news. Not noted in the article cited above is that Newsom and the reporter were walking along a sidewalk, closely followed by Newsom’s bodyguards, all of whom it’s safe to assume were carrying guns.