San Diego Supervisors Attack Gun Rights

In this Dec. 9, 2015, photo, a sales associate walks past semiautomatic rifles at Bullseye Sport gun shop in Riverside, Calif. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Commentary

Now San Diego is getting into business of suing the perfectly legitimate and honorable business of making guns. Americans use guns not only for hunting and as a hobby, but also to defend themselves, as the CDC writes.

Reported the San Diego Union-Tribune on a June 13 board of supervisors meeting, “In a 3-2 vote, the board approved a proposal by Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Terra Lawson-Remer, and supported by Supervisor Nora Vargas, directing the county counsel to pursue liability claims against firearms businesses for violence associated with the guns they sell. Supervisors Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson, the two Republicans on the board, voted against the measure.” It was a party-line vote in this once heavily Republican city.

The action is similar to AB 1594, by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), also a radical leftist in the mold of just-recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The bill would authorize lawsuits by government or private persons to sue the gun manufacturers simply for making their product. It is supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, both Democrats running for re-election.

But let’s just look at San Diego as a California microcosm. According to the Criminal Justice Clearinghouse: “While one homicide is obviously one homicide too many, and the number of homicides jumped 35 percent over the past year (from 85 in 2019 to 115 in 2020) in the San Diego region, it is important to note that this number is much lower than the historical high reported in 1991 (278) (Figure 1).”

“In addition, when the City of San Diego (which had 49 percent of the region’s 2020 homicides) is compared to other large U.S. cities with preliminary 2020 crime numbers, San Diego had the lowest homicide rate per 100,000 population of the six. … [A] firearm was the most common (57 percent) weapon type used in homicides in the San Diego region in 2020.”

The report did not cite specific the reasons for San Diego’s recent jump in homicides, but did note these general trends across America: “According to preliminary national figures, homicides across the country were up 15 percent during the first half of 2020 amidst the pandemic, with other analyses showing increases as high as 37 percent. Possible hypotheses for these increases have included growing gun sales during the pandemic, including ‘ghost guns,’ less belief in police legitimacy, as well as decreased proactive policing, which has been shown to be correlated with lower crime rates.”

Notice the last two: a crisis of “police legitimacy” and “decreased proactive policing.” Also note how the rise in homicides, nationally and in San Diego, occurred during the pandemic, and largely during and after the summer riots two years ago. Those are two anomalies that ought to mean we should wait a few years to draw conclusions. It may well be these numbers could start dropping again.

The San Diego Board of Supervisors thus is advancing a moral panic. It is not acting on the facts, but on emotion—and for political gain and posturing among fellow leftists. Now to the facts.

Consider San Diego’s Leading Causes of Deaths in 2020. Keep in mind there were 115 homicides that year, as quoted above, of which 57 percent were gun homicides, or 66. The following is from a San Diego County chart, from which I’ll provide the part from 2020. Homicides, gun and non-gun, are so low in America’s Finest City they’re not even on the county’s own chart.

With diabetes at 852 and nutritional deficiencies at 138, maybe the Board of Supervisors ought to sue junk food companies. No more s’mores on the city’s beautiful beaches for you! And with accidents/unintentional injuries even higher, at 1,513, maybe they should sue ladder companies.

Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis are at 411, so it’s time to bring back alcohol prohibition. Don’t touch that beer!

This lawsuit, like the state one, only will cost taxpayers money for the legal bills. The U.S. Supreme Court roundly has rejected attacks on the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” You can’t “bear arms” if the arms makers were sued out of business.

The three anti-Second Amendment supervisors also seem not to have noticed voters even in left-wing San Francisco are in a “throw the bums out” mood, dumping not only Boudin, but in February three radical School Board members.

Americans hate tyranny and are beginning to organize to repeal it.

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