The San Francisco Chronicle is listing all the gun controls California has adopted since July 1, 1993, but they do not mention all the mass shootings and deaths that have marked gun control’s arrival.
In fact, the Chronicle column begins by mentioning California’s 101 shooting (July 1, 1993), which took the lives of eight innocents, then quickly transitions to note that “people” hoped the shooting would lead to gun control throughout the nation. Instead, they say, it lead to more gun control in California while much of the nation loosened gun restrictions in the decades that followed.
The Chronicle notes:
The U.S. saw many high-profile massacres in the years that followed [the 101 shooting], and most of them hewed to the same pattern. The nation would grieve, activists would call for change, and politicians would unleash legislation. Some of it intended to get guns off the streets. But much of it was meant to assure gun owners they could still carry weapons.
They then list Columbine (April 20, 1999), Sand Hook Elementary (December 14, 2012), and Orlando Pulse (June 12, 2016). They noted that while must of the country loosened gun laws following these attacks, California passed more and more gun control.
They banned “assault weapons” in response to Columbine, they prohibited “kits intended to increase the capacity of ammunition magazines to more than 10 rounds” after Sandy Hook, and they voted to adopt background checks for ammunition purchases after Pulse.
The Chronicle column does not mention that the federal “assault weapons” ban (1994-2004), was in place when Columbine occurred. Nor does it mention that one of our nation’s most high profile mass shootings—San Bernardino (December 2, 2015)—occurred after almost all the gun controls were passed. More recently, California has witnessed the YouTube headquarters shooting (April 3, 2018), the Yountville Veterans Home shooting (March 9, 2018), the downtown Fresno shooting (April 18, 2017), the ambush /shooting of two Palm Springs police officers (October 8, 2016), and Elliot Rodger’s May 23, 2014, killing spree, among many others.
California’s recent history is not simply a history of gun control but a history of the failures of gun control.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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