Gavin Newsom said California could do to guns what Texas did to abortion. Did he mean it?

One could look at the Supreme Court’s absurd ratification of Texas’ convoluted abortion ban and foresee the dissolution of our constitutional order. No less an authority than the court’s conservative chief justice, John Roberts — quoting from a decision by his most influential predecessor, John Marshall — warned that endorsing the state’s end run around the court’s holding in Roe v. Wade could reduce the Constitution to a “solemn mockery.”

But California Gov. Gavin Newsom considered the court’s chaotic jurisprudence and saw something else: a situation that, to quote no less an authority than Eric “Otter” Stratton of “Animal House,” “absolutely requires a really stupid and futile gesture be done on someone’s part.” And Newsom was just the guy to do it.

The day after the court’s latest failure to block the Texas law, which is designed to elude court review by harnessing private lawsuits rather than state action to enforce the ban, Newsom issued a 108-word statement proclaiming himself “outraged” and threatening retaliatory legislation to control firearms by similarly sneaky means.

Newsom’s press release was good for a spate of national media coverage and social media attention but not much else. It represents another blown opportunity to make policy that would protect anyone threatened by gun violence, compulsory childbearing or any other depredation of the reactionary takeover of the judiciary.

Roberts warned months ago that letting Texas’ law stand would make it a “model for action in other areas.” By at least feinting at being the first to realize that possibility, Newsom demonstrated an abiding talent for occupying the symbolic political vanguard to questionable practical effect, much as he did with marijuana legalization as lieutenant governor and gay marriage as mayor of San Francisco.

The governor acknowledged that legislation is not really his job, saying he directed his staff to “work with the Legislature and the attorney general on a bill” to enable civil suits against anyone making or selling an assault weapon or “ghost gun” components, which are designed to elude firearms laws. Even though the Texas case has been bouncing around the courts since last summer, Newsom had no detailed legislative proposal to offer. He hadn’t even rounded up a sponsor, betraying a remarkable lack of effort in a state where lawmakers would line up to have their names attached to a gun control bill with gubernatorial backing.

As for the attorney general, Rob Bonta, his reaction was dutiful but noticeably tepid, particularly considering that Newsom gave him his job. “As always,” Bonta said, “we look forward to working with the governor and the Legislature to use all tools available to us to save lives, lift up our people and promote our values.”

But if the governor does muster the energy to draft a real bill and engage in the legislative process, it’s not clear that the proposal he vaguely outlined would save any lives, let alone lift up any people. The weapons Newsom singled out — assault rifles and ghost guns — are already addressed by California laws that, at least so far, have not been struck down by the federal courts.

Nor has California exhausted every opportunity to regulate guns in new and meaningful ways without resorting to Texas-style skulduggery. Yes, the state’s gun laws are more restrictive than most — and the state is safer than most as a result — but it’s not the least violent or most regulated.

Just a few months ago, Bay Area Assemblyman Marc Levine’s bill to impose an excise tax on firearms for violence prevention programs stalled amid resounding silence from the governor’s office. Rather than float a phantom of a bill while lawmakers are out of session, Newsom could have lifted a finger for Levine’s measure — as the lawmaker publicly implored him to do — or any other extant piece of legislation.

And if the governor were really sincere about sticking it to far-right jurists and their escalating assault on the 49-year-old, 7-2 ruling that the Constitution prohibits state-coerced childbearing, he could have directly challenged the court’s much more recent and narrow invention of an individual constitutional right to possess and wield guns for reasons unconnected to the national defense. He could have found himself a legislator to introduce a bill creating a broad right to sue anyone keeping or bearing a handgun, which is what Washington, D.C., and Chicago did until an activist court stepped in to help keep their citizens as armed as possible.

Of course, even if Newsom were launching the all-out left-wing counterattack at which he merely gestured, it would raise the question of whether he should. His argument is that right-wing Texas politicians and Washington judges did something so dangerous and wrong that we should ... do the same thing? If anything is more dangerous than the court’s unraveling of Americans’ bodily security from public intrusion and private arsenals, it’s probably hastening the disintegration of our legal and governmental union. The proposition that two groups of states can coexist following fundamentally different laws has already been disproved decisively and at great cost.

In that respect, we can be grateful that Newsom, unlike his reckless political opposites, appears less than committed to his stated course.

This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM.