California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) cited the 1997 “gang related” shooting of his 16-year-old cousin Armando this week as a reason for pursuing more gun control for law-abiding citizens.
The police report indicated that Armando was “spraying graffiti on a wall” in Echo Park when a passenger in a car shot and killed him. Rendon said, “He was certainly getting in trouble and hanging out with the wrong crowd. The crowd he was hanging out with was in gangs. I don’t know if he was.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Rendon said that going to Armando’s funeral taught him that “[t]his can happen to any family.” And he cited Armando as one of the motivations for passing seven new gun controls in June. Six of those controls were signed by Governor Jerry Brown on July 1, and the the seventh was signed on July 22.
Eight months after Armadno was killed another of Rendon’s relatives, 38-year-old Charles Martinez, was shot and killed. Martinez was the “estranged husband of another of Rendon’s cousins” and was shot in Montecito Heights, allegedly “by a man with whom he had a dispute.” Rendon points to Maritnez as a motivation for more gun control, too.
Another cousin, JoJo Martinez, was shot to death in 1995, but no reports on the circumstances of his death are available. Rendon also points to JoJo as a motivator for 21st century gun control.
Rendon cites his relatives’ deaths as reasons for passing more gun control without noting that the gun control he passes will only impact people who follow the law. Moreover, the recent passage of a “high capacity” magazine ban, along with the enhancement of the “assault weapons,” ban had absolutely nothing to with the shooting death of his Charles Martinez, shot with “a .45 caliber pistol.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.