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On Tuesday, February sixth, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to maneuver ahead with 18 ideas to scale back “gun violence.” The 18 ideas got here from a report produced after Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Terra Lawson-Remer compelled the county to pay a whole lot of 1000’s of taxpayer {dollars} to rent a biased anti-gun agency to research what they described on the time as an epidemic of gun violence.
The examine confirmed that San Diego trails many different related cities and the state of California in terms of deaths the place a gun is concerned. Round 70% of deaths the place a gun was concerned have been suicides and round 30% have been felony homicides. Virtually non-existent? Unintentional deaths, college shootings, and mass shootings.
It’s uncommon that somebody in San Diego dies in an incident involving a gun, but when they do, they’re seemingly an aged white male in east county committing suicide or a profession felony in south-west San Diego County in a neighborhood already ravaged by profession criminals. Regardless that the report clearly confirmed that “gun violence” shouldn’t be the epidemic that the anti-gun teams like to say it’s, we will all the time do extra to assist our neighbors, buddies, and colleagues.
The 18 suggestions within the report ranged from offering sources to stop suicide and assist folks get out of a lifetime of crime, to establishing a whole division liable for serving to to enact new methods to remove your weapons. There was even a impartial suggestion that the County present free gun locks. Enacting the ideas that have been centered on the precise acknowledged issues, suicide and profession criminals, have been supported by everybody. The impartial suggestion of free gun locks was supported by everybody. The ideas that fund a whole anti-gun division, together with a full-time worker, and level the County within the course of implementing and supporting much more restrictive gun legal guidelines that solely the law-abiding comply with, have been strongly opposed by individuals who respect the Second Modification and strongly supported by those that are anti-gun.
So, why not cross the portion the place now we have consensus and go away the divisive, costly, overstepping measures out? At the very least for now.
Tuesday Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond tried to separate out the insurance policies the place there was consensus and miss the divisive, overreaching anti-gun insurance policies. Anderson made a movement and Desmond seconded the movement to solely cross the ideas that think about suicide prevention, crime prevention, and free gun locks and miss the anti-gun elements. Final yr, Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Nora Vargas already refused to cross these ideas with out the anti-gun measures, so it was no shock that they’d vote the identical approach once more.
The vote hinged fully on newly elected Supervisor Monica Montgomery-Steppe.
Montgomery-Steppe was on the San Diego Metropolis Council earlier than she ran for County Supervisor to switch disgraced, failed, alleged sexual assaulter Nathan Fletcher after he was compelled to depart workplace by involved voters. Montgomery-Steppe had the massive benefit of working as a Democrat in a district that’s overwhelmingly registered as Democrats and her metropolis council district was an enormous part of her supervisor district. Seeing that the maths labored so effectively in Montgomery-Steppe’s favor, I met along with her.
It was a pleasant and attention-grabbing assembly that gave me an oz of hope. She instructed me that she hung out within the south and noticed that weapons are nothing to worry. She expressed curiosity in acquiring a hid carry allow. She instructed me that she didn’t comply with the extremism on weapons that Terra Lawson-Remer dogmatically sticks to and he or she agreed that the extremist gun legal guidelines in California are a transparent instance of what Democrats describe as institutional racism. Montgomery-Steppe promised me entry to her as soon as elected and mentioned she was not taken with partisanship or extremism. I genuinely believed that she had a honest curiosity in serving to her group.
After Tuesday’s efficiency, I’m not as positive.
I tried a number of occasions to talk with Montgomery-Steppe concerning the proposal and the thought of bifurcating the measures that assist forestall crime and suicide from the measures which might be simply anti-gun. Now in workplace, she wouldn’t speak to me. As an alternative, she communicated by a go-between that she would overview the fabric I despatched her. When it got here time to vote, Montgomery-Steppe didn’t take the chance to face towards extremism and the institutional racism she claims to abhor. She made some extent of claiming she would vote for all of it.
To paraphrase her rationalization from the dais, she expressed that every of the 18 ideas wanted the opposite 17 or they’d not work. This declare shouldn’t be correct and even the agency that produced the report acknowledged that the ideas have been every standalone. For instance, you don’t have to rent an new anti-gun county worker for $150,000 with the intention to make gun locks out there to the general public without cost nor do you want a brand new worker to fund packages that assist San Diegans contemplating suicide.
I don’t know why Montgomery-Steppe made the choice she made to vote for extremism and institutional racism regardless of each being towards the values she claims. The go-between who’s near her claims Montgomery-Steppe is afraid that Lawson-Remer’s father (who has a historical past of political consulting) will run somebody towards Montgomery-Steppe if she doesn’t toe the road on the anti-gun extremism that Lawson-Remer is understood for.
It’s not unimaginable, however I don’t have proof. Allow us to all hope, for the nice of the County, that Montgomery-Steppe finds her approach and finds a strategy to steer her votes away from extremism and away from hurting San Diegans.
Within the meantime, vote for Kevin Faulconer for Supervisor District 3. See SDCGO’s voter information right here: www.SDCGO.org/voterguide
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