It didn’t take long for the tragic mass shooting in Sacramento early Sunday morning to become yet another flashpoint in the national debate over gun control. The basic facts were barely coming to light when politicians rushed to call for new gun laws. That’s not how anyone serious about preventing gun violence should proceed.
California already has the strictest gun laws in the nation.
The fact that mass shootings happen even here speaks to the blunt reality that laws have limits, that only law-abiding gun owners follow gun laws and that there are more complicated factors driving not only the broad phenomenon of gun violence but individual acts of gun violence.
In this particular case, Smiley Martin, one of three suspects in the shooting, should not have had a gun. He’s a convicted felon with a record that goes back a decade, with crimes including domestic violence and assault with great bodily injury.
According to reporting by Sam Stanton at the Sacramento Bee, Smiley was sent to prison in 2018 for assaulting his girlfriend, facing a 10-year sentence. He was rejected for parole in 2021 but released less than a year later due to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabiliation’s use of pre- and post-sentencing credits.
In 2021, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office opposed his parole, citing his lengthy criminal history, which included his 2013 arrest after being found just six months after his 18th birthday transporting an “assault weapon and large capacity magazines to potential buyers.”
In other words, we’re dealing with a situation involving an alleged perpetrator of gun violence who has, for the last decade, operated outside of the law when it comes to guns.
And yet, we’ve heard the president use this shooting to once again call for sweeping federal gun laws, including bans on arbitrary types of firearms.
We’ve also seen Sacramento politicians get in on the action.
There’s a renewed legislative push for bills that, among other things, would make it easier for people to sue gun companies and ban marketing of guns to minors. These are, to be direct, not the proposals of people serious about addressing gun violence.
Regardless of what the answer is or what the appropriate policy is, a more proximal factor one would expect a competent legislature to consider is whether, in fact, Smiley Martin, a violent criminal, should have been released from prison so soon. At the bare minimum, that merits scrutiny, especially if lawmakers are falling over themselves promoting gun control.
We must also take notice that our criminal justice system clearly isn’t doing what it should be doing.
The state of California has long known that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hasn’t really been living up to the latter word of its name, despite having a budget that continues to grow largely because Gov. Gavin Newsom loves to throw money at the prison guards union. How about, instead of throwing money at CCPOA, ensuring CDCR offers effective rehabilitation programs? Just a thought.
And of course, there’s the low-hanging fruit. The state maintains an Armed and Prohibited Persons System which, while not perfect, is, as its name suggests, a list of people who should not have guns under the law but are known to have them. Addressing that list is likely to yield more tangible benefits to public safety than proposals targeting law-abiding Californians exercising their constitutional right to keep and bear arms and businesses lawfully serving said Californians.
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Only law-abiding gun owners follow gun laws, criminals DO NOT follow laws!
Democrats see everything as subjective, how they feel things should be, their whole world is subjective. Not Objective.
To Democrats, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant, If the Democrats do not WANT to believe them or they disagree with them. Democrats will just make up their own, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History to fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
To fully advance the Demonic, Lying, Treasonous, Socialist Democrat Party’s destructive agendas: is to divide our citizens with hate and promote; rioting, burning, looting, open borders, gun control, radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, the LGBTQ lifestyle, unfettered sexual identity, transgender “gay marriage” and the like, the pagan Liberal left Democrats must do away with GOD, our Constitution, common sense, morality, Christian values and free religious exercise altogether.
Under the guise of “anti-discrimination.”
IF they were ‘law abiding’ THEY WOULDN’T be criminals!!
I like the Biden video frame 🙂
This is a classic illustration underscoring the truth that government is all about control—not results. Politicians do not fix problems—they prolong them because somewhere along the way there is a personal reward for them for following a certain agenda. This is why the actions of Liberals is so predictable.
ANd as pointed out elsewhere.. THE LEFT, who for decades has been ‘champions of victims rights, the poor/middle class etc’, SEEM TO HAVE completely given the middle finger to ALL OF THOSE folk…
Does anybody (besides brainless politicians) think that stricter gun laws will curtail this punk, hoodlum gang violence. Punks like these two illegally get their guns; they don’t go to a gun shop. Next thing you know we will have another war – a War on Guns. It too will profoundly fail.
AND SINCE as a crook, he shouldn’t bY LAW HAVE EVEN HAD that gun, and live streamed himself WITH THAT GUN IN HAND.. HAD cops been on the ball, and watched him, the MINUTE HE DID That live stream, he should have been ARRESTED ON THE BLOODY SPOT…
They broke every gun law Californication has except maybe transport cross state lines. Face it, these people are nothing more than ANIMALS. Both have extensive criminal histories with one on early release. This as are most GANG related.
Black repeat criminals kill 6 with illegally procured guns. Dem answer: more gun laws they won’t follow with no attempt to disarm gangs. Why are voters so brainless as to vote for a single Dem politician?
Biden has proposed giving illegals cell phones, how about free guns to every law biding citizens and ankle monitors to convicted criminals.
How’s about cranial bombs in the noggins of those we deport, SO IF WE catch them on this side of the border again, we can press a button!
I’ve oten said, IF THEY really want to tackle the illegal guns, GO AFTER THE GANGS!