I’m sure I’m not the only one seething at Gov. Newsom’s consistent politicization of every tragedy involving someone using a gun illegally to kill another.

The arrogance of the governor man – who wants to trash the Constitution in the interest of public safety – is unbelievable.

Two recent mass shootings have occurred in his state under his watch in recent days despite all of the laws against killing and all of the restrictive gun laws already on the books. Why is that, Governor? Because gun laws are only so effective. There is a human element that is unpredictable and frankly uncontrollable.

Let’s be honest. We have some defective people in society who can commit mayhem and murder with any tool of their choosing – guns, cars, bombs. If you melted every gun down there would still be mass killings, only employing different tools. Consider that Darrell Brooks killed six people at a Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade by running them over in his SUV. Yet Newsom didn’t call for SUV control, did he?

The four college students in Moscow, Idaho were all stabbed to death by an oddball with a large knife.

With Newsom, this is all about politics: Attack any American institution or individual who wants the ability to protect one’s home and property with a gun. This at a time when our soft-on-crime governor bends over backwards to let dangerous felons out of jail.

Horrible killings like this happen because of the state of our fallen world. And despite the quest of politicians to ensure it won’t happen again, we all know it will.

NBC reported that Monterey Park shooter Huu Can Tran, 72, was “an angry loner who appeared to have a grudge against the world — not just his ex-wife — people he crossed paths with.” 

After the mass shooting of people in Monterey Park in Southern California that left seven people dead, Newsom immediately suggested that the Chinese community “didn’t even know how to comprehend a gunshot wound.” Tran was an immigrant from China where mass shootings have occurred as well as mass stabbings.

There is evidence that Tran was angry at his ex-wife and accused her of destroying his trucking business. He sounded like an angry bitter man filled with rage and hate. All we need to do is pass a law to make being hateful a crime, right?

Days later a 66-year-old Chinese national, Chunli Zhao, was arrested for shooting up his workplace in Half Moon Bay. There were reports that he felt disrespected at work and that his employer wanted him to pay $100 for damage he caused when his forklift struck a bulldozer. He also told police that he was bullied. This wasn’t the first time Zhao was accused of violence.

Newsom, however, wants to punish all who obey the law because of the evil deeds of a few. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth when he claims to have “great respect” for the Second Amendment, and in the same press conference calling it a “suicide pact.”

When I purchased my gun in 2014, I had to pass a background check, as do a lot of mass shooters. So tell me again how such stringent measures are eliminating violence?

Last summer in Japan – a country where people don’t own guns – former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated with a gun at close range two days before a parliamentary election.

Newsom is ever quick to blame such tragedies on the National Rifle Association and Republicans, as if they were the ones pulling the trigger. He has the NRA in his scope because they are powerful donors to conservative candidates. If he wants to blame anyone for the problem of mass shootings he might take a good hard look in the mirror. Newsom campaigned for governor on the lie that he supported the death penalty for capital crimes, but spun a 180-degree turn and placed a moratorium on the death penalty. Hence, California murderers know they won’t be punished in the gas chamber or by lethal injection. (But in Trans’ case he had a death wish and took care of his sentence by suicide.) They know they can serve short sentences too.

Of course, whenever the would-be Gun Grabber-in-Chief goes about his daily routine or when he’s safe in bed at night in the Governor’s Mansion, his life is being guarded by special agents of the California Highway Patrol who carry guns. Being the elitist that he is, Newsom thinks we are far less important people to be able to protect our loved ones with our weapons.

Democrats never seem to be satisfied with gun laws becoming ever stringent with each year. Gun laws only protect so far. People who pass background checks to legally own guns can and will misuse them against others, especially if dealing with mental issues.

To borrow from that James Carville saying from the 1992 campaign, “It’s a sin issue, stupid.” No amount of legislating can remove hate that resides in some people’s hearts. The best we can do to counter that is arming peaceful people.

* * * * *

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux believes it the killings of a family in Goshen was drug related and possibly the work of drug cartels. When you hear cartels, think Mexico and open borders – you know, the border that Newsom and then Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued Trump to stop building the wall.

One thing is for sure: Whoever did the killing – including an innocent 10-month-old baby – if captured, won’t ever be executed in California. Newsom has ensured that won’t happen.

* * * * *

Beware of this Jason Kassel fellow out of Fresno. He’s a Democrat who in two years wants to take out Rep. Tom McClintock in the 5th Congressional District (which includes Hughson, Keyes and Modesto but not Ceres).

He’s upset that conservatives like McClintock are against raising the debt ceiling, as if $31.5 trillion in debt isn’t enough.

I’m on Kassel’s email list and he never seems to end with the inflammatory rhetoric and scare tactics. He called McClintock a legislative terrorist while evoking dark images of the country burning to the ground.

He starts out on press release saying: “In the movie ‘The Dark Knight,’ the character Alfred attempts to explain the Joker’s psychopathy to Bruce Wayne with the phrase, ‘Some people just like to watch the world burn.’ This phrase makes me think of Congressman Tom “Marjorie Taylor Greene” McClintock. Like the Joker, he seems intent on watching how high and hot the flames will be when his constituents watch their mortgages and 401(k) accounts burn in the economic flames of a government debt default.”

The U.S. will not default on its debts if it doesn’t raise the debt limit.

Ending the overspending sounds like a great practice for us Americans who cannot continue running up credit card debt in our own households, yet Kassel says “McClintock is burning the lives of his 5th District constituents.”

Big government’s nonstop overspending is hurting Americans with inflation and high taxes.

Kassel sounds like a bona fide wackadoodle when he suggests that conservatives are QAnon – a group which doesn’t exist like Antifa which burns and throws rocks in violent protests – and calls the “professional Republican Party is delusional, bizarre and very violent.”

Beware of this demagogue when he gets out his map and plots out his campaign route through Stanislaus County for the 2024 election season.

* * * * *

I thought social distancing was over.

I’ve been covering city meetings for decades now and the City Council Chambers continue to be set up in a way that doesn’t send a good message to citizens. The pandemic is over which begs the question: Why does the city continue to have the audience sit out into the overflow room where it’s harder to hear and a big gap between the dais and the audience? The city also has the audience “roped off” from the council and staff tables, sending the message of “don’t approach us.”

If the excuse is that long tables of staff members necessitate pushing the audience out away from the dais, why can’t city staffers sit in audience chairs like Public Works Director Jeremy Damas used to?

Some of the council members who campaigned on being approachable to their constituents should end this set-up.

* * * * *

The Left continues to lose its mind.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed an emergency order Thursday declaring a 15-day state of emergency and mobilizing up to 1,000 National Guard troops after leftists went violent over the weekend of Jan. 21-22.

Antifa protesters – mostly white young people who feel guilty for being white –participated in rioting in which rocks were thrown, fireworks launched and a police vehicle set ablaze in front of the Atlanta office building. Six Antifa extremists were charged with counts of domestic terrorism by the Atlanta police following Saturday’s riot. Five of them flew in from other states to inflict their terror. (Why isn’t Kassel condemning this violence?)

Five of the accused came from out of state. One of them was a spoiled rich kid who is a liberal non-binary kook named Francis Carroll, 22, from Maine.

Protesters were originally drawn to Atlanta to march in memory of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a self-proclaimed queer climate activist from Venezuela who was shot and killed by police on Jan. 18. He was part of an environmental group protest trying to block the construction of a new $90 million Atlanta police training facility. The anti-police group dubbed their campaign “Stop Cop City.” Georgia authorities say Terán shot and wounded a Georgia State Patrol officer, who returned fire, killing the activist.

Have you ever seen a more confused group of domestic terrorists in your life? Of course, in the 1960s we had war protesters yet their protests seemed principled against violence of war. But to see misguided souls who are confused about their own gender warring against law and order represents a destructiveness and evilness that defies logic.

* * * * *

The country’s focus this past week was on the beating death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old resident of Memphis during a Jan. 7 traffic stop. We were shocked to see five officers – none of them white this time – using a motorist as a punching bag to the point of death.

We were all shocked because the officers’ actions were shocking. There was no need for those five officers to exact their aggression on a driver who, by all appearances, posed no threat and appeared cooperative. It evil behavior with not one them intervening at end the beating.

But in another aspect, it’s not all that shocking knowing what community they were raised in. Memphis has one of the highest crime rates in America.

I think the corporate news media is culpable in some way. Hear me out: The knee-jerk reaction and rush to judgment in any and every case where a black person dies at the hands of police is covered ad nauseam, with important facts glossed over. The media told the lie that Michael Brown was shot by Ferguson police with his hands in the air saying “Don’t shoot!” when he didn’t and the hulking man was in a full charge motion toward the officer. The media push of the untrue narrative of systemic racism in white America – instances of race-based brutality are isolated – has put a damper on police recruitment. Not only does that kind of publicity paralyze officers to think twice about approaching a person of color and looking the other way in preventing crime, it scares away good people from becoming officers. They know that any death – intentional or not – during police contact could become a media spectacle resulting in a prison term. Because fewer people want to be cops, hiring standards have been lowered (including giving waivers for prior felony convictions). Absent the best of the best, what does that leave in the candidate pool? Jackboot thugs who want a badge for ulterior motives?

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com