Gov. Jerry Brown Signs Bill Removing Penalty for Using Gun in Crime

Gov. Jerry Brown
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At the end of the latest legislation session Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill removing mandatory enhanced sentencing for criminals who use guns in the commission of their crimes.

He did this at the same time that he signed other legislation making it illegal for teachers to be armed on K-12 campuses for self-defense.

Liberal logic–teachers are not allowed to shoot back if under attack and criminals face no mandatory sentence enhancement for using a gun in carrying out an attack.

Assembly Bill 424 made it illegal for teachers to be armed for self-defense and Senate Bill 620 removed the mandatory enhancement for using a gun for crime. SB 620 removed the mandatory enhancement from the Penal Code and placed it at the discretion of the judge presiding over the case.

The ChicoER observed, “So on one hand Brown and the Legislature make it more difficult for a teacher to protect children against gun-wielding criminals, while on the other they reduce potential penalties for gun-wielding criminals.”

Bills like AB 424 and SB 620 were the result of lawmakers scrambling to find any remaining areas where gun bills could be passed. After all, California Democrats passed so many laws in 2016, via Gunpocalypse, that the bills they passed this year served to either extend extant controls or repeal mandatory gun penalties for criminals, as in the case of sentencing guidelines.

Yet as with older gun controls, these new controls only impact law-abiding citizens. We saw proof of this in “the wave of legal purchases” that preceded the implementation of the laws contained in Gunpocalypse. Law-abiding citizens were getting out and buying everything they could while doing so was still legal.

The ChicoER noted such purchases “tell us that new gun laws have their greatest effect on law-abiding shooters, not those bent on criminal or violent misuse. Gang members and other gun criminals, by their nature, don’t make legal purchases. Rather, they acquire weapons and ammo surreptitiously, in ways that don’t leave paper trails of ownership.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com

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