Newsom Laughably Claims He’s Not Anti-Gun

Gavin Newsom’s attempt to reinvent himself as a moderate Democrat ahead of the 2028 presidential elections has been amusing to watch, but his latest effort to spin away his positions is downright laughable. 

As my colleague Sarah Arnold reports at Townhall, Newsom recently sat down with podcaster Shawn Ryan and was gifted a Sig Sauer P365 X-Macro, which gave the California governor an opening to declare that he’s not anti-gun at all. 

Instead, he stated his opposition to “large-capacity magazine clips” and “weapons of war” – the phrase leftists use for America’s most popular rifle, the AR-15. The governor also said he is “sometimes” anti-“out-gunning” the police.

So, a couple of things before we even get into Newsom’s record as governor and his rampant hostility towards the right to keep and bear arms. Does Newsom have a valid Firearms Safety Certificate, which is required before any Californian can purchase or accept a gun as a gift? He’s never said anything about having one in the past. 

Newsom also joked about Ryan trying to get him in trouble with the TSA, but the process of acquiring a firearm in his state isn’t a laughing matter. Newsom couldn’t actually take possession of the pistol even he has a valid FSC. Instead, Ryan has to ship it to a federally licensed firearms dealer in California, and the governor has to go through a background check and wait 10 days before he’s legally allowed to walk out the door with it. 

Of course, Newsom didn’t mention any of that. Instead, he claimed that, besides his distaste for those “large capacity magazine clips” and “weapons of war” (presumably referring to AR-15s and other semi-automatic long guns) he doesn’t have any ideological opposition to people keeping and bearing arms at all.

There’s a wealth of evidence to the contrary, including this quote from 2023, when Newsom signed a Bruen response bill into law that, among other things, enacted more than two dozen new “sensitive places” where lawful concealed carry is banned. 

Only in America do we see the kind of carnage and chaos of gun violence that destroys our communities and our sense of safety and belonging,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “America is number 1 in gun ownership and we far surpass every developed nation on Earth in gun deaths – it’s not complicated. In California, we’ve passed common sense gun safety laws and they work: we have a 37% lower gun death rate than the national average. We’re doubling down on gun safety and strengthening our public carry law to protect it from radical Republican attacks.”

Gavin Newsom believes gun ownership is directly tied to “carnage and chaos”, which sounds to me like he’s got a problem with you and I (or anyone else) owning guns, period. 

During his time as governor Newsom has signed dozens of gun control bills into law. In fact, he’s signed or allowed every gun control bill that’s reached him to become law. If Newsom “only” has a problem with large capacity magazines and so-called assault weapons, then why has he said “more guns, more lives lost”? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=live  

In that same press conference, Newsom complained that the Bruen decision would lead to “more handgun possession”, which in turn, he argued would lead to more suicides, more officer-involved shootings, and more violent crime. 

Newsom has never once complained about jurisdictions in California charging $1,000 or more for a two-year carry permit, even though that price tag inevitably means that some responsible gun owners can’t afford to exercise their right to bear arms. He’s signed legislation into law that bans gun shows on all state-owned property, and wrote in an April, 2018 letter that ““[p]ermitting the sale of frearms and ammunition on state-owned property only perpetuates America’s gun culture.”

This is just a small portion of Newsom’s anti-gun history, which is extensive enough to warrant an entire book, not just a blog post. 

Gavin Newsom has spent his entire political career attacking gun ownership and the right to keep and bear arms. I’m curious to see if Ryan actually called out the governor for his outrageous claims during the podcast, or if he let Newsom’s assertions go unchallenged. It would be a shame if the podcast host allowed Newsom to get away with his lies, but if that is the case it’s even more important that Second Amendment advocates remind voters what Gavin Newsom really thinks about our Second Amendment rights. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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