Gavin Newsom Builds National Profile in Wake of Dual Mass Shootings

Gavin Newsom (Mario Tama / Getty)
Mario Tama / Getty
Joel B. Pollak

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) continues to build his national profile in the wake of two mass shootings in his state, using familiar talking points on gun control — even though his own anti-gun legislation has fizzled.

The shootings — one in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, that left 11 dead and nine wounded on Saturday, and another series of shootings in Half Moon Bay that left seven dead and more injured — have shocked the state.

In both cases, the suspect was an older Asian male, robbing Democrats of their usual talking point about white supremacist violence, and denying them the opportunity to blame political opponents, though some still tried:

But Democrats continued to push for gun control, and that is where Newsom jumped in. He used catch phrases such as calling guns “weapon[s] of pure mass destruction,” and calling the Second Amendment a “suicide pact.”

It is not clear what either of those phrases is intended to mean. Millions of Californians own guns for self-defense — a growing necessity in an age when Newsom’s party has moved to “defund the police” in some communities. In San Francisco, the shortage of police officers is being described as nearly “catastrophic.”

Moreover, despite California’s gun control laws, which are among the strictest in the nation, the state is the worst in the country for mass shootings. Newsom highlighted a Washington Post article that claimed that California’s gun control laws have lowered gun deaths per resident. But what the article — and Newsom — ignored is the fact that FBI statistics show that California still leads the nation in active shooter events.

The shooter in Monterey Park also used a type of weapon that has been banned in California for several decades.

Courts have also recently struck down many of Newsom’s gun controls. Last May, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s ban on semiautomatic rifle sales to 18-to-20-year-olds was unconstitutional, and a federal district judge recently blocked the fee-shifting provisions of one of Newsom’s prized gun control laws, saying that the state was wrongly attempting to discourage “the peaceful vindication of an enumerated constitutional right.”

Some of Newsom’s reactions to the shootings were entirely uncontroversial — such as his statements of grief, and his visit to honor hero Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the first mass shooter.

It is difficult to imagine Newsom paying the same visit had the young man used a weapon: many Democrats reject the idea of a “good guy with a gun.”

Regardless, Newsom is using the issue to signal to Democrats that he is a leader on the cultural and social issues in which they take pride in distinguishing themselves from Republicans — with the 2024 race in sight.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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