California’s Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco breathed a sigh of relief when California’s latest gun control was blocked and he suggested Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) targets law-abiding citizens while giving criminals a pass.
On January 7, 2024, Breitbart News noted that the law expanding gun-free zones for California concealed carry permit holders had been blocked during a last minute appeal by the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
Otherwise, law-abiding permit holders would have faced a slew of new places in which they were barred from being armed for self-defense.
Sheriff Bianco responded to new gun control being blocked by telling FOX News the gun controls were part of an “anti-gun ownership” agenda from the start.
He then highlighted what he sees as the differences between how Newsom treats criminals and the law-abidign: “The fact about everything we’re doing taking away the gun rights and ownership and the (carrying a concealed weapon) aspect of the whole thing — where you can carry and where you can’t — it flies in the face of what they do with criminals.”
Bianco continued, “They have a very pro-criminal stance in California, and they have for years, all of the laws. Newsom’s goal is to close as many prisons as he can, to not prosecute and to not sentence anyone to state prison. They blame law enforcement. They blame society. So, there’s never a personal responsibility on someone’s criminal behavior. It’s always someone else’s fault. And there is this agenda that is extremely pro-criminal in Sacramento.”
He suggested that Newsom “needs to drop his gun agenda, his anti-2A agenda. And he needs to concentrate on the skyrocketing crime in California and the quality of life issues for the residents of California that are being destroyed by the policies that he is promoting.“
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a Turning Point USA Ambassador, and a pro-staffer for Sightmark. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.