The governor has maintained the measure is about protecting Californians from gun violence. But it also sends a message to a Supreme Court whose rulings Newsom and fellow California Democrats have derided, essentially daring it to either uphold the gun law or reconsider its logic in backing Texas’s approach.
“The question is whether they are complete and abject hypocrites and frauds if they reject our bill that’s modeled after that abortion bill as it relates to private right of action to go after assault weapons,” Newsom said this month.
Yet the law could stand on precarious legal ground. Even Democratic legislators who favor gun restrictions said as much in passing the bill, conceding that it employed a dubious legal strategy in the service of a larger goal.
“It is my hope and desire that ultimately this bill actually not proceed because the Texas law is found to be wrong, unconstitutional and crazy,” state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) said before voting for the measure in April.
It also drew fierce opposition from ideological allies of Newsom who warned he was empowering the very type of reasoning he had condemned. “There is no way to ‘take advantage of the flawed logic’
