There is a stage in normal human development—it occurred for my son when he was three—when a child will tell you he did not eat the cookies even though he has crumbs all around his mouth. They grow out of it; if, that is, we laugh and tease them about how those funny cookie crumbs got there.
Some politicians though, particularly the ones in states or districts in which all the big media outlets are on their side, don’t grow out of this.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is an example of this sort of case of arrested development. Newsom went on to former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan’s podcast and claimed he is “not anti-gun at all” as he was being gifted a California-compliant SIG Sauer P365 X-Macro.
Newsom made it appear that he was accepting the gift by saying, “This is fabulous. You know what, the last thing people would expect is that I respect this gift.” He even added, “I’m also deeply mindful and respectful of the Second Amendment and peoples’ constitutional rights.”
But, off camera, something else happened.
A Fallbrook, Calif., news outlet called Village News told the story. They published an item from the office of California Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R) that said, “Newsom rejected the gift because of compliance rules and left the firearm behind in Tennessee. Newsom’s team has since admitted that the California anti-gun laws are so complicated that they have had to hire legal counsel to conduct a legal review.”
DeMaio then got a little cheeky by saying that it “would be an absolute shame if Governor Gavin Newsom inadvertently violated one of his own anti-gun laws, but the extraordinary hassle he now faces proves not only that he is a hypocrite but that the Draconian gun laws he imposed on regular Californians should be scrapped.”
The criticism of Newsom is well founded. Newsom is so opposed to our right to keep and bear arms that he even proposed a gun-control constitutional amendment that would all but repeal the Second Amendment.
Nevertheless, Newsom is trying to pretend he is not responsible for constitutional infringements that are a direct result of the many gun-control bills he championed and signed into law.
Just after this happened, Newsom said it was a “slap in the face” when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that the state’s background-check requirement for ammunition purchases is unconstitutional.
This case, known as Rhode v. Bonta, has been backed by the NRA and its affiliate, the California Rifle & Pistol Association. This win for freedom is the result of the court applying the text-and-history test established in the NRA’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court victory New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).
These are your NRA dues at work, but the court fight is not over. As this was going to print, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) was expected to request an en banc (or full court) review of Rhode v. Bonta. The Ninth Circuit does have a history of staying and reversing similar Second Amendment-related rulings via en banc reviews; for example, it did this in Duncan v. Bonta. However that works out, the losing party could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
As for Newsom, he is clearly attempting to rebrand himself as a centrist as he eyes a run for the presidency in 2028; the trouble for him is his actual record is all over his face.
