After several mass shootings in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, clearly still dreaming of the presidency despite running his own state into the ground (it didn’t stop Buttigieg, did it) gave a high-profile interview in which he slammed the Second Amendment and demanded gun control while surrounded by armed guards.

Par for the course for the lockdown champion of the French Laundry.

Gun control is a convenient excuse that allows pro-crime politicians to pass the buck for the mess in their cities and states to Congress or the Supreme Court. “Don’t blame us,” is the message. “Blame D.C.”

As the last generation has shown, it’s possible to dramatically slash crime and violence through increased policing. In the wake of the BLM race riots, Democrats have rejected that approach. Instead they opened up prisons, ended enforcement and tied the hands of police officers. The resulting crime was inevitable.

Focusing on the ‘man bites dog’ incidents of mass shootings is a convenient way to avoid dealing with the 99% of violent attacks to build a movement around the less than 1% that they can blame on congress.

Gun control doesn’t actually stop targeted killings or mass shootings. Japan, Europe and the other places that gun control activists have pointed to in the past have had their own high-profile attacks.

Japan has lower crime rates than we do, not because it has gun control, but because it has a different culture.

Politicians like Newsom want us to believe that in the same state where heroin and meth are widely available, despite being banned, guns will disappear if D.C. eliminates the Bill of Rights.

Newsom knows he’s lying. So does his party. But as long as they can make those arguments, it’s a convenient distraction from their record on crime.