Gun Controllers Twist Sacramento Shooting

Police officers work the scene of a crime in Sacramento, Calif., on April 3, 2022. David Odisho/Getty Images

Commentary

To make sure proper evidence was acquired, police took 18 hours to clear the bodies of all six people killed in the shooting in Sacramento Sunday morning. During that time—while the bodies still were lying on the ground—gun-control proponents were quick to the draw trotting out all their long-disproven reasons for eviscerating Americans’ Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Typical was the Los Angeles Times “news” report, “Sacramento mass shooting renews calls for legislation targeting gun violence,” updated about 15 hours after the shooting. It was based on minimal facts of the actual events, and included no skepticism of the need to start grabbing almost all of the 400 million-plus guns currently owned by Americans.

You don’t need any more reason why California needs the alternative newspaper you’re reading right now.

The second paragraph of the Times article read, “Hours after the barrage of gunfire in an entertainment district near the state Capitol, City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela said putting more law enforcement in the streets won’t necessarily stop the violence. She said the state and federal government need to ‘step up on guns.’

“‘It didn’t need to happen at all if we had the right laws in place,’ Valenzuela said.”

She didn’t know if the guns used themselves were illegal according to existing law. And, again, with 400 million-plus guns in America already, how is she going to pry them from the hands of the owners, almost all of them law-abiding?

The Times quoted a statement by Gov. Gavin Newsom, “The scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage.” It noted he has signed several gun-control bills and is backing lawsuits against the gun industry for manufacturing its perfectly legal product. Yet none of those actions prevented the new shooting.

Said powerful state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles), “Just blocks from the Capitol, this mass shooting will be a reminder of action needed to save lives. The legislature will act.” Is the legislature going to personally go out and confront armed criminals. And will it do anything about all the illegal arms soon to be floating around the world from the carnage in Ukraine and possibly coming across the Southern border the Biden administration has opened up?

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, also a former president of the state Senate, called the shooting “a senseless and unacceptable tragedy. In what sane society do we allow the proliferation of assault weapons in the way that we see being used indiscriminately, not just in Sacramento but in other parts of the country?”

But how did he know if an “assault rifle”—really just a political term for a mean-looking regular rifle—was used that early in the investigation? And how will he seize all the estimated 20 million “assault rifles” owned across America?

The Times and the gun controllers it quoted also didn’t explain how they were going to cancel the Second Amendment when the U.S. Supreme Court looks likely to enhance gun rights in the pending New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case. Or how federal gun control laws could be enacted when Congress will likely flip heavily Republican in November—even as Democrats in swing districts run away from the gun issue, especially in such states with heavy hunting populations like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The fact these gun controllers never admit is, except for the past two years after the 2020 riots following George Floyd’s killing, gun murders in America have declined sharply the past 30 years—precisely the same decades where gun rights have been enhanced in most states, instead of restricted as in California.

Indeed, Georgia just became the 25th state to pass what’s called “Constitutional Carry.” It means you don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed gun if you legally can own one.

The thinking is, such laws put doubt into the minds of potential assailants that their victims might be armed. Could the Sunday shooting in Sacramento have been prevented, or perhaps shortened by quick return fire, if many of those in the crowd had been carrying concealed weapons legally?

We can’t possibly know. But it’s worth thinking about. Especially as we find out more about what really happened from more credible news sources not eager to press a terrible shooting as another excuse to attack the Bill of Rights.

If law-abiding citizens in Georgia can carry concealed guns to protect themselves against rabid shooters, why can’t Californians?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.