LA Times Reverses Course, Slams Sanctuary City Movement -- At Least for Gun Owners
The newly Democratic Virginia legislature’s bold push to codify as much gun control as humanly possible this session has hardly been met with cheers.
In fact, ranging from universal background checks and bans on so-called “assault weapons” to a “red flag” weapon seizure law that passed in the state Senate this week, the bills within disgraced Gov. Ralph Northam’s once-failed gun control package sparked immense nationwide controversy this year as they were brought up again in the state legislature, according to Vox.
Prompting several protests, including the non-violent marching of 22,000 gun rights advocates on the state capitol Monday, Northam’s proposals have even led officials around the state to publicly refuse to enforce any gun control deemed unconstitutional — a peaceful, democratic response that many conservatives and Second Amendment supporters have hailed as patriotic.
According to the gun control left, however, such dissent, namely the gun rights movement’s co-opting of the “sanctuary city” policy, is apparently an unthinkable and inadvisable act of “faithlessness in government.”
“If local jurisdictions dislike state laws, there are democratic mechanisms for changing them. Laws that have been duly passed and enacted should be followed; that’s what the rule of law means,” writes the editorial board.https://t.co/vBSshg1v71
— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) January 20, 2020
At least, that is what the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board argued in an piece published the day before before Monday’s demonstration — one of the largest Second Amendment rallies in U.S. history.
“The simple fact is: Local governments cannot decide willy-nilly that if they don’t like a state law, they don’t have to enforce it,” the editorial board wrote Sunday. “While states may have powers unique from the federal government’s, no such duality exists at the municipal level.”
“We all have the right to protest or mount a demonstration,” the editors continued. “Local governments also have a right to dissent from laws they dislike, and to lobby for changes. That is how democracy works.
“But it is irresponsible for local jurisdictions to pick and choose which laws they will enforce, especially when such stances undermine the legitimacy of a democratically elected government and play into the hands of extremists,” they claimed.
Of course, the claim was clearly made with anything remotely resembling self-awareness thrown to the wind, considering this is the same outlet that has supported sanctuary city policies since they were popularized by California’s progressives in an effort to protect illegal immigrants from deportation.
Heck, this is the same outlet responsible for editorial opinions and third-party Op-Eds carrying headlines such as “Don’t fulfill Trump’s false depiction of California as a ‘sanctuary state’ for undocumented immigrants” and “Why sanctuary cities must exist,” in which arguments were made in favor of local law enforcement declining to honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.
And of course, the hypocrisy of it all hardly went unnoticed, as public figures like acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli took the time to poke fun at the clear double standard being set.
If you’re starved for hypocrisy, the LA Times should fill you up w/ this one: Editorial: 2nd Amendment sanctuaries are acts of faithlessness in government https://t.co/f17TPFEikk
— Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli (@HomelandKen) January 20, 2020
And what’s worse is the fact that the LA Times leaned into that very double standard within the body of its editorial, making the absurd claim that there is actually a substantive difference between Second Amendment sanctuaries and immigration sanctuaries.
That difference? The fact that immigration enforcement falls under federal civil codes while gun control enforcement falls under state criminal codes.
Apparently, refusing to cooperate with federal officials regarding civil law is acceptable.
But don’t take my word for it. The LA Times says so outright, claiming that the “movements are related in name only, and it is possible to support the latter without supporting the former.”
“Immigration codes, after all, are part of federal civil law, not criminal law, and local jurisdictions have the right to decide that they don’t want to use local tax dollars to enforce federal civil codes,” the editorial board wrote. “They may not impede the federal government’s ability to enforce its immigration codes, but they don’t have to cooperate.”
Now, if you were to ask a constitutional scholar, refusing to enforce gun control laws is, in fact, in adherence with the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land and a document that’s far more meaningful than either state criminal law or federal civil law.
Such digression, however, is wasted on the gun control left.
Anyone willing to partake in the Olympic-caliber mental gymnastics required to argue that a municipality’s refusal to cooperate with one law and not another is somehow justifiable, immediately after arguing “local governments cannot decide willy-nilly” which laws they chose to enforce, cannot be reasoned with.
And the gun control left does not want to be reasoned with.
Nobody on the left does.
They want their way — and they will justify any means, no matter how hypocritical, to have it.
The Los Angeles Times declined The Western Journal’s request for comment.
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