In a news conference on Wednesday, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) made it apparent that his answer to recent mass shootings in California is going to be to restrict concealed carry.
According to The Sacramento Bee, Newsom is supporting Senate Bill 2, which tightens the criteria for issuing concealed carry permits in reaction to the Bruen (2022) ruling of the US Supreme Court.
As a result of that ruling, California’s “good reason” requirement was eliminated, as was New York’s need for proper cause prior to issuing a concealed carry permit.
Other specifications for concealed carry permit issuing are planned under Senate Bill 2, including “additional age limitations, tight weapons storage and training rules, and limits on where permit holders might carry firearms in public.”
Breitbart News cited a CNN story that four mass shootings occurred in California last week. The first two of the shootings, Half Moon Day (7 fatalities) and Monterey Park (11 fatalities), were committed using handguns. But neither event was related to the state’s concealed carry statute.
The subsequent two incidents, one outside Beverly Hill (three died) and one in Oakland (eight shots, one fatal) were unrelated to concealed carry as well.
“The majority of peer-reviewed published research shows that the states that issue the most concealed handgun permits all had the highest decreases in violent crime,” according to John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, who talked to Breitbart News about the effect concealed carry has on crime.
