Gun Control

Kris He walked into Arcadia Firearm & Safety in Arcadia, California, three days after his gun license became official.

The 22-year-old immigrant from mainland China walked past a Trump flag, past the rifles, and headed to the glass case displaying handguns. He didn’t grow up around guns, but after seeing the gun store’s website in Chinese, he hoped owner David Liu would answer some of his questions.

“I speak Mandarin and Cantonese. They can use their mother tongue and talk to me. I will try to explain to them about the law and about the safety of firearms,” said Liu.

The Republican-led Missouri state house on Wednesday voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms on public land without adult supervision.

The proposal to ban children from carrying guns without adult supervision in public failed by a 104-39 vote. Only one Republican voted in support.

A federal law barring marijuana users from possessing guns violates the Constitution, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled.

The decision cites last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling that affirmed an individual right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.

The ruling came as challenges to gun laws across the nation have escalated since the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive New York firearms law in June 2022. The high court held that there is a constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home, leading states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois to respond by doubling down on firearms restrictions.

SACRAMENTO — California bans guns for domestic violence offenders. It bans them for people deemed a danger to others or themselves. There is a ban on large-capacity magazines, and a ban on noise-muffling silencers. Semiautomatic guns of the sort colloquially known as “assault weapons” are, famously, banned.

More than 100 gun laws — the most of any state — are on the books in California. They have saved lives, policymakers say: Californians have among the lowest rates of gun death in the United States.

Yet this month, those laws failed to stop the massacres of at least 19 people in back-to-back mass shootings. The tragedies in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay have confounded Americans who regard California as a best-case bastion of gun safety in a nation awash with firearms.

No law will stop a criminal or a madman.

I moved to Santa Clarita, California from Phoenix, Arizona, when I was 12 years old. Instantly, I loved it. In my opinion, the suburbs of Los Angeles County are much nicer than the city itself—it felt like the type of safe community you would see on a television show. At such a young age I didn’t really have any political views. I knew my dad owned guns, but I never thought much of it.

Lefty gat-snatchers screech about “gun violence” when a shooting helps their narrative but go radio-silent when guns are used to protect the property — and lives — of innocent Americans.

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually trying to ban effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more often to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time, when a gun is used in a legal self-defense situation, no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop. Notable firearms instructor Clint Smith had a saying: “If you look like food, you will be eaten.” Regular criminals are looking for prey. They want easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living, they’d get a job.

Last September, Myles Sanderson stabbed and killed 11 people and injured 18 in several locations in Saskatchewan. Then in October Shaelyn Yang, an RCMP officer, was fatally stabbed in Burnaby , British Columbia. Reading about these tragic events, I found myself wondering whether stabbings in Canada are taking the place of shootings as ever more legislation and enforcement make guns more difficult to own and buy.

OTTAWA — Deep into preparations to compete next month in the Netherlands, Canadian elite-level pistol shooter Kim Britton can’t help but worry for the future.

“I envision a point where to me, even though I love it, it’ll be too challenging to pursue,” she said.

The federal government’s plan to start its firearms buyback program on Prince Edward Island as a pilot project is not going ahead, according to a news report.

The information was first reported by Maritimes media group Saltwire Network on Jan. 12, and was commented on by Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.

“Just two days after [Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s] plans to use PEI as a training ground for their firearms confiscation program were exposed – the federal Liberals have already backed down,” Shandro tweeted on Jan. 12.