The LA Times is hardly a hotbed of pro-gun radicalism, but even they couldn’t help but notice:
The bill, SB 610, says the good-cause determination would be deemed to be met for any California member of Congress, statewide elected official or member of the Legislature.
The surprising thing about this bill isn’t just that it has appeared in California, which tends to favor restrictive gun laws, but that its coauthors are all Democrats who in the past have voted to limit gun rights for ordinary citizens.
They go on to worry about the implications of panicked politicians spraying bullets into crowds. At least the LA Times is consistent — they think it’s dangerous for everyone to carry a gun, except for the police who have magical gun powers.
There’s been sincere confusion and frustration from the gun owner community as well, and I wanted to note that California gun owners need to read between the lines of SB 610.
I expect that all but those who are intimately familiar with the labyrinth of California law with respect to carry licensing will not immediately recognize its value, but this is not a bad bill for California gun owners and we need to not push against it or the authors.
On the editorial, it’s nice to see that the LA Times is having to be more expressly clear as to what it really wants: defenseless, at-risk inner-city residents who can’t rely on the government to provide even a modicum of relief from the ever-present threat of gun violence (“young inner-city men in gang neighborhoods are at dramatically higher risk of being victims of gun violence than politicians, but there is no rush to make it easier for them to carry guns (and that’s a good thing).”)
My letter to the LA Times:
The poltical class in CA has felt itself to be special in many ways, and it was only a matter of time before it got into carrying a concealed firearm for “self-defense”, which by the way is acceptable good cause for the Sheriff in Sacramento County to issue a permit. Lee Baca, under whose supervision I live, doesn’t accept “self-defense” as being adequate, because my safety is guarenteed by normal police procedures and I don’t have “a clear and present danger” threatening my life. This is not equal treatment under the law, as I could have a permit in Sacramento.
I don’t recall any CA politicians being the victims of violent crime recently, but law-abiding citizens seem to be victims of violent crime on a daily basis. Politicians have armed security at their workplace, and many have their own private or taxpayer funded security. My security is me Very few of us law-abiding citizens have someone with a gun backing us up, though Lee Baca assures us we don’t need to be armed in public because he and other LEO’s have us covered. This is a matter of ego, not of fact. Or, if it is fact, then I have to presume any violent crime that occurs has to be with the approval of local LEO’s. It can’t be both ways.
CA suffers from higher violent crime per capita than any “shall issue” state and is regressive in its “may issue” law. Numberous lawsuits have shown how sheriffs and chiefs have capriciously used their discretion to play favors with carry permits. CA is not “progressive” in its gun laws, which were racially and class-driven in the beginning, and which have under Lee Baca the exact same result of discrimination by race and economic means as before, when you sort who has permits by zip code. In violence hot spots like Beverly Hills, you find permits. In the peaceful gardens of Compton there is no one at risk or no one trustworthy in Baca’s eyes to have a carry license.
The facts show that hysterical predictions about “gutters full of blood” and “Wild West” shootouts over a bagel don’t happen when a state goes to “shall issue”. 40 states made that conversion and now 4 states allow concealed carry without a license, which I have mixed emotions about. I have had a TX carry permit for 11 years and think the training I have done to qualify and renew the license has been useful. It is a grave obligation, or I think it is.
I can carry concealed in 25 states, but not CA. TX honors CA carry permits, but CA, being ever so special and, I guess, “better”, doesn’t honor TX or any other state’s permits. I have no interest at all in violent confrontation for any reason, but I can do my best and it might find me. In that case, my human right of self-defense is compromised by Baca’s hubris. He has stars on his collar points and carries a weapon. I don’t have stars on my collar points, so I can’t carry. What a big man he is. And I must be a lesser level on the food chain. I don’t agree about that.
Equal protection under the law should mean exactly that. The political class put on their pants as I do, one leg at a time. If they can enjoy “shall issue” rules, all citizens, especially those paying their salaries, should.
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I might add that the irony the sponsors are all Democrats who have done their best to disarm the law-abiding is completely lost on them. They are “better” than any schlub taxpayer, in their own minds, and the “self-defense for me but not for thee” is part and parcel of their world view.
I thought the coauthors were the rare pro-gun CA D-‘s. Does LAT have a retraction in store?
Markie Marxist sez: “As Orwell so understandingly put it, ‘Some animals are more equal than others.’ It’s just common communist sense to have more privileges for politicians, and my commie compadre politicians in Commiefornia have more common communist sense than most people have.”
I’d pay cash money to see the entire Cali. state legislature on the firing line with live ammo. We could make book on the number of NDs and wounds during the session.