“I mean, the Second Amendment has become a suicide pact.”
That was California Governor Gavin Newsom in a January 23 interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News. The governor was referring to the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, that claimed the lives of Xiujuan Yu, Hongying Jian, Lilan Li, My my Nhan, Muoi Dai Ung, Diana Man Ling Tom, Wen Tau Yu, Valentino Marcos Alvero, Ming Wei Ma, Yu Lun Kao and Chia Ling Yau. The five men and six women slain at the dance studio were all between the ages of 57 and 76.
Newsom named none of the victims and failed to identify suspect Huu Can Tran, 72, described by NBC News as “an angry loner who appeared to have a grudge against the world.” As Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports, the governor was eager to talk up the “half dozen” gun-control bills he signed last year. Newsom claimed the measures “saved lives” and that “California’s gun death rate is 30 percent lower than the rest of the nation.”
O’Donnell did not challenge the claim, but wondered how the shooter got a gun that is illegal in the state.
“We will figure it out,” Newsom said. “This is going to happen. We enforce laws, but things get through the cracks, but that doesn’t mean you give up.” The governor failed to mention that a week before Monterey Park, he had let another California mass shooting slip through the cracks.
In the early hours of January 16, gunmen forced their way into a home in the town of Goshen, near Fresno. The gunmen shot Rosa Parraz, a 72-year-old grandmother, as she slept in her bed, and also gunned down Eladio Parraz Jr, 52, Jennifer Analla, 50, and 19-year-old Marcos Parraz.
Elyssa Parraz, 16, fled the scene with her child Nycholas, only 10 months old. Both fell to gunfire, and Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, told reporters what happened, based on a forensic report.
“It was clear that the shooters stood over the top of the 16-year-old mother and fired rounds into her head,” Boudreaux said. “The 10-month-old infant also suffered from the same attack.”
As the sheriff explained, “I know for a fact that this young lady was running for her life, and I know for a fact that there was no reason to kill her, but they did. I know for a fact that this 10-month-old baby was riding on the comfort of his mother. There was no reason to shoot that baby. And they did it.”
The crime was as horrific as they come but Newsom issued no statement, failed to visit the scene, and did not make himself available for television interviews on the mass shooting. This was something of a break from his standard practice.
In April 2022, when a shooting claimed six lives in Sacramento, Newsom said in a statement, “Sadly, we once again mourn the lives lost and for those injured in yet another horrendous act of gun violence.” As the governor contended, “the scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage.”
In February 2022, Newsom claimed he was “heartbroken and outraged by the death of a young woman living at a homeless encampment near a freeway onramp in San Francisco.” If Newsom was heartbroken and outraged by the execution of Elyssa Parraz, Nycholas Parraz and four others, he failed to make it known. The reason has to do with the identity of the executioners.
There can be little doubt that the “cartel” mentioned by Sheriff Boudreaux is MS-13, already responsible for a reign of terror in Mendota, also near Fresno, with multiple murders and trial witnesses hacked to death. Federal authorities took the lead against the gang, and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was not concerned with their “status.”
In the Golden State, false-documented illegals, including violent criminals, are a privileged, protected class. And Newsom is known for kindness to criminals. In one of his first acts as governor, he reprieved 737 convicted murders on California’s death row, included Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas, and “Tool Box Killer” Lawrence Bittaker, who raped and killed five teenage girls in 1979 after torturing them with pliers and screwdrivers.
These murderers, the worst of the worst, had all been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt and their appeals had been exhausted. Newsom is not a judge or a lawyer, and failed to present any exculpatory information he might have found.
If anybody thought Newsom is weak on citizens’ right to life it would be hard to blame them.
As Mary Theroux notes, Gavin Newson is not one of those “old fogies” who thinks abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” The abortion “celebrant” was a big supporter of Proposition 1, which amends the California constitution to “enshrine a right, funded by taxpayers’ money, to abortion on demand for any reason for the full term of pregnancy.”
All told, it’s no surprise that after the summary execution of an infant, his teenage mother, and five others, Newsom has nothing to say. Californians of all persuasions might expect their governor to go on television proclaiming that murderers of infants and their mothers have no place in California, and that the state is deploying all resources to track down the murderers of Nycholas and Elyssa Parraz and bring them to justice.
Nothing of the kind occurred, and when Newsom does speak out after a mass shooting, he betrays the familiar pattern: The governor fails to name a single victim and any suspects escape identification. Newsom exploits the case to tout his gun-control measures, oblivious to the reality that criminals don’t follow these laws, which only restrict the rights of law-abiding Californians to defend themselves.
As he revealed after the Monterey Park shootings, Newson’s primary target is the Second Amendment. As Dave Chappelle notes, the Second Amendment is there just in case the First Amendment doesn’t work out.
Turns out, Newsom also has a beef with freedom of speech.
Last year Newson signed Assembly Bill 2098, which orders doctors to conform with the “contemporary scientific consensus” on COVID-19 or face punishment. Federal Judge William Shubb recently halted the law after doctors charged that it violates their First Amendment rights. An attorney for the doctors calls the measure “a blatant attempt to silence doctors whose views, though based on thorough scientific research, deviate from the government-approved ‘party line.’”
In California and across the country, people might wonder, who is this coiffed sartorialist once known as “Mayor McHottie”? Who is this governor, who fancies himself so wise in the ways of science, medicine and the law? To find out, you have to dial it back a fair bit.
In 1943, businessman William Newsom, Gavin’s grandfather, helped Edmund G. “Pat” Brown win his race for San Francisco district attorney. In 1960, Governor Pat Brown awarded the concession for the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics to Newsom and John Pelosi, father-in-law of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In 1975, new governor Jerry Brown appointed another William Newsom, the son of Pat Brown’s pal, to a judgeship in Placer County, and in 1978, Brown appointed the same Newsom to the state Court of Appeal.
Gavin Newsom is a former nephew of Nancy Pelosi, who hails the “spark of divinity,” in criminal gangs like MS-13. When Gov. Newsom declared the state of emergency in 2020, he praised the “leadership” of Nancy Pelosi, only part of the story.
Judge William Newsom, who passed away in 2018, handled the estate of J. Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world. Primary heir Gordon Getty, Gavin’s close friend, best explains the governor’s pose as a successful businessman. He got his start in politics when Democratic Party kingmaker Willie Brown appointed him to the San Francisco parking commission, but the connections run deeper.
Gavin Newsom is on record that “there’s no greater political mind in our lifetime than Governor Brown.” As Californians will remember, Jerry Brown opposed the 1978 tax-limiting Proposition 13 as the end of the world. When it passed in a landslide, 64 percent to 35 percent, Brown acted as though he had written the measure and proclaimed himself a “born-again tax cutter.” That was never true, and Brown became the leader of California’s pillage people. On his watch, California imposed some of the highest income and sales taxes in the nation.
Jerry Brown is also a three-time presidential loser (1976, 1980, and 1991). For his part, Newsom clearly wants to be president, perhaps in 2024? In his “Moonbeam” phase, Jerry Brown wanted California to have its own space program. Brown-Pelosi protégé Gavin Newsom is an astronaut of arrogance.
Indifferent to crime victims, Newsom holds himself above the law, and trashes the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. If people across America want to see one-man rule in action, they can’t do any better than this belch from the ruling class.