California Gov. Gavin Newsom is one of the most anti-gun lawmakers anywhere in the country. His actions really make me want to put the emphasis on the first syllable of the word "country," if you get my meaning.
But he's recently made a bit of a pivot on one issue, and it's an important pivot.
The big question is just how important it is and, perhaps more importantly, just what that change means for the Second Amendment debate in this country.
You see, Newsom is now trying to become Mr. Law-and-Order, and some figure there are lessons to learn there.
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.
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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.
That's actually a fair assessment.
After all, look at South America and Africa for a moment. These are filled with nations that have extensive gun control laws on the books and tons of so-called gun violence. However, few of them are truly what we'd call "stable societies." Most have rampant economic issues with extreme levels of poverty. That is instability in and of itself.
But while Newsom is unwilling to outwardly admit that, he's making that aforementioned pivot to address the instability that exists in his state. He's "backing the blue," at least more than he was, for one thing, because law enforcement provides stability.
What we're also not going to see Newsom outwardly admit is that this pivot is a tacit admission that his anti-gun policies didn't work.
After all, if they did, why would he need to pivot at all? If gun control made everything better, then he should have been able to stabilize society in his state without having to do anything else. Sure, there would be homelessness still, but it wouldn't matter because there would be no firearms with which to create problems.
As we know, that's simply not what happened.
Newsom's actions illustrate that he, on some level, knows this but lacks the testicular fortitude to actually admit that he made a mistake, especially since he's been pushing for a gun control constitutional amendment--this one a different sort of tacit admission, namely that the Second Amendment precludes those restrictions.
It's a shame he won't admit what anyone who cares to look can see.
