Unsurprisingly, Democrat Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who shepherded multiple gun control laws through the legislature while serving as Senate President in the California legislature (including a ban on semi-automatic rifles that was vetoed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown) has pinned the blame for the shootings on guns, not the individuals pulling the trigger.   

“Overall crime is down and yet we come back to the same thing — too many guns,” Steinberg said. “Our police department does its very best to try to confiscate as many of these weapons as possible, but they are everywhere.”

So what does that say about the effectiveness of California's gun control laws, including those that Steinberg himself helped put in place? It's not easy for law-abiding Californians to exercise their right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or other lawful purposes, but criminals don't seem to have much trouble at all in illegally acquiring guns and ammunition despite the state's "universal" background checks for both firearms and ammo, bans on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines, and a plethora of other statutes that lawmakers have put in place with the promise of public safety. 

Steinberg's premises is fundamentally flawed. Sacramento is an outlier among U.S cities when it comes to homicides this year. There are plenty of locales where gun ownership is even more common and fewer gun control laws that are in place that have seen significant declines in homicides in 2024. To name just a few:

• -16.9% in Memphis
• -24.5% in Dallas
• -19.9% in Kansas City
• -27% in San Antonio
• -40.4% in New Orleans
• -34.6% in Cleveland
• -47.6% in Jacksonville, FL
• -25.7% in Oklahoma City

Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho told the Sacramento Bee that while there are multiple factors driving the violence, one of the biggest challenges he faces is dealing with a rise in juvenile crime. 

Sacramento County prosecutors handled 357 juvenile cases that involved firearms in 2023, up from 222 in 2020, according to data provided by Ho’s office. The D.A.’s Office prosecuted 25 juveniles in shooting cases in 2023, up from 16 in 2020. There were 26 juvenile homicide defendants in 2023, the same as in 2020. Illegal gun possession among juveniles accounted for 84 cases in 2020, rising to 126 by 2023.

“We are seeing right now a lot of juveniles committing violent crimes,” Ho said. “We’re seeing a lot of crimes committed by younger and younger people.”

Driving that increase, in part, are reforms to some juvenile justice laws and policies that make it harder to try underage offenders as adults, Ho said.

Another factor is the use of social media by young people to flaunt their difference and fights with rivals, he said.

“They’re getting on social media,” Ho said. “They’re taunting their rivals, they’re flashing guns, they’re talking about gangs and then what’s happening is there are violence and shootings and crimes that spiral and escalate out from those instances of social media.”

Sacramento Police Officer Allison Smith, who serves as a spokeswoman for the Sacramento Police Department, told the paper that illegal "sideshows" are also driving violence. Two of the five murders in the city last weekend took place at these illegal gatherings, which have also become a belated focus of state legislators in recent months. 

For decades, California Democrats have done their best to destroy the culture of responsible gun ownership, and while they haven't succeeded, they have managed to create a flourishing culture of criminality by reducing penalties for offenders and other soft-on-crime policies. Proposition 47, approved by voters in 2011 with the backing of Democrats like then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, reduced many felonies to misdemeanors and allowed thousands of inmates to gain early release. 

As Lois Shade, the former mayor of Glendale, California, recently wrote in a newsletter for the group Southern California Republican Women & Men:

Prop 47 reduced illegal drug possession of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to misdemeanors; and, stealing less than $950 through forgery, fraud or theft got a citation – no jail time. And, criminals got away with it so over time it has escalated into the smash and grabs that are causing businesses like Walmart, Target and small mom and pops to house much of their stock behind glass cases or some just closing up shop.

A.G. Harris was also responsible for overseeing the lab that analyzes DNA collected from criminals and Sacramento D.A., Anne Marie Schubert, provided Department of Justice statistics showing those samples went from 15,000 to 5,000 a month after 47 was approved. What A.G. Kamala Harris failed to disclose in her analysis of Prop 47 was those arrested on suspicion of committing felonies have their DNA collected and thousands of people who commit less serious crimes – misdemeanors - no longer must provide their DNA. After 47 passed, 250,000 DNA samples were no longer analyzed.

Sacramento's problem isn't "too many guns". It's too many individuals who feel emboldened to commit violent crimes. Steinberg has himself and his fellow Democrats, including Kamala Harris, to blame for the dysfunctional criminal justice system created through the passage of laws like AB 109 and referendums like Proposition 47. 

California voters have the chance to undo some of Prop 47s most damaging elements through another referendum this November. Despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat legislators, and some of the state's largest newspapers, a recent poll showed Prop 36 getting the support of more than 70% of likely voters. And while Kamala Harris proudly supported Prop 47 a decade ago, she now refuses to say how she'll vote on Prop 36; another profile in cowardice from the Democratic candidate running away from many of her previous positions. 

Prop 36 would at least start to restore some semblance of sanity to California's criminal justice system, which in turn would make it easier to go after the violent and prolific offenders who are frequently getting a slap on the wrist for their crimes. One of those members of the Democrat establishment opposed to Prop 36, is (you guessed it) Sacramento's mayor. I guess Steinberg prefers to crack down on the right to keep and bear arms instead of getting tough on the relatively few individuals who are directly responsible for his city's increase in homicides.