Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to California on Wednesday in the wake of several mass shootings that have shocked the state and the nation — but which defy talking points about gun control or extremism.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Monterey Park on Wednesday to honor the victims of one of the three mass shootings that have left her home state reeling this week.
Harris will lay a wreath at a memorial in honor of the 11 people killed by a gunman at a dance studio during a Lunar New Year celebration on Saturday night. She will meet with victims’ families and Brandon Tsay, the 26-year-old worker who disarmed the gunman at a second dance club.
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Less than two days later, as the community grieved at a candlelight vigil, seven more people were killed in a pair of shootings in Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County. A 67-year-old man is suspected of opening fire at two rural farms about a mile apart on Monday, shooting some of the victims in front of children who lived nearby and had recently been released from school. The shooting suspect, identified as Chunli Zhao, was believed to work at one of the farms. Police have not revealed a motive in those shootings.
The Biden administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) have both renewed calls for more gun laws in the wake of the shooting, though it is unclear how any new laws would have prevented the attacks. A gun allegedly used in the Monterey Park shooting was already illegal in California.
Moreover, President Biden recently signed a bipartisan law on gun control that represented the high water mark of Republican willingness to accede to new provisions like background checks for those under 21, but without a rifle age limit or “assault weapons” ban.
Newsom’s own ambitious gun control legislation has been running into trouble in the courts recently, as the Second Amendment limits the degree to which government at any level can infringe on gun ownership.
Still, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed Tuesday that the administration would use the mass shootings to renew pushes for more ambitious gun control laws that have little hope of passing Congress.
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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