California's failures attributed to gun laws still being too loose :: 01/28/2023

Two mass shootings in California, the most heavily gun-controlled state in the nation, should forever put to rest this idea that gun laws will actually stop mass shooters. After all, this is a state with all the gun control anti-gunners want at the federal level and then some.

But for some, it’s really just an excuse to push for still more, as we’ve seen repeatedly.

At Harper’s Bazaar, they have a piece where one anti-gun crusader pretty much gives up the game.

Just as the Monterey Park community—and indeed, the nation—was reeling in the wake of the Saturday’s attack, news of yet another mass shooting in California came two days later, on Monday, when a gunman killed seven people in the coastal city of Half Moon Bay. The Northern California shooting, believed to be a case of workplace violence, appears unrelated to the Lunar New Year massacre; however, seeing two mass shootings within a few days happen in California—a state known for its strict gun control laws and relatively low occurrence of gun violence—has left many wondering whether gun safety laws are enough.

Ranked the number one state for gun safety in 2021 by Giffords Law Center, California sees around a 37 percent lower gun death rate than the national average, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people compared to 13.7 deaths per 100,000 nationally. And while the state has certainly had a number of notable mass shootings throughout recent history, it is typically viewed as exempt from the near-constant gun-related attacks that plague other parts of the United States. Yet, many subject-matter experts argue that it’s really a matter of relativity.

“California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation; however, at the same time, California’s gun laws are some of the loosest and most permissive in the Western industrialized world,” Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA Law School and a specialist in gun policy, explains. “So, it’s often said when there’s some kind of shooting like this, that California’s gun laws don’t work, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not a state that restricts access to guns in any significant way. We restrict a couple kinds of guns and gun accessories, and require universal background checks and a 10-day waiting period, but those don’t make it impossible or illegal for anyone to have a gun.”

So there you have it. The problem is that people can still get guns.

Except, we’ve seen mass shootings happen in places with even more strict gun control than California. 34 people were killed in Thailand. In Russia, 8 people were killed at a university. Just a year later, 13 more were killed in another school shooting. A few months before that one, seven were killed in yet another Russian school shooting. In Plymouth, England, six people were killed in a shooting.

And that’s just a handful with plenty more high-profile mass murders available as examples. Were these the result of insufficient gun laws as well?

Or, and just hear me out on this, there’s a problem with people that we need to address universally?

See, this idea of just blaming guns is easy because it lets people absolve themselves of having to dig a little deeper. “Oh, well, we’ll just make it harder for people to get guns until we reach a point where it’s impossible.”

Yet the worst mass murders we’ve seen in his country didn’t need guns. From rental vans and fertilizer to box cutters on airplanes, evil people have found a way to do evil things. They’ll continue to do that unless you figure out some way to maybe prevent people from becoming evil in the first place.

Even then, all you’ll do is reduce the problems.

But California has now made it very clear to a lot of people that gun control isn’t going to stop the problem. Yet for others, it’s just an excuse to try and take more and more of people’s rights away. Professor Winkler there made it pretty clear that total disarmament is the only thing he apparently sees as a solution to mass shootings.

I’m sorry, but a lot of us aren’t remotely interested, nor can he convince us that we’re wrong to disagree with him.

Especially since the evidence that he’s the wrong one is clear.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/01/27/gun-laws-too-loose-n66667