Register Opinion Desk Continues to Target Dave Min; Reminds Us of Our Constitutional Right to Keep and “Bare” Arms

His byline isn’t on the column, but Register Opinion Editor Sal Rodriguez’s fingerprints are all over a story about State Senator Dabe Min’s tweets regarding the tragic mass shooting at Cook’s Corner this week.

Many of OC’s electeds and candidates for office issued statements regarding the shooting; there were the usual “thoughts and prayers” from Republicans and the response from Democrats offered calls for stronger and stricter gun legislation.

Min’s official statement is below:

Senator Dave Min’s Statement on the Mass Shooting at Cook’s Corner in Orange County(SACRAMENTO, CA) – Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) released the following statement in response to the recent mass shooting at Cook’s Corner, a historic bar located in Trabuco Canyon.“I’m heartbroken by the news of yet another mass shooting tonight, this time at Cook’s Corner, a historic bar in the heart of Orange County. My team and I are monitoring the incident and will do everything we can to support law enforcement. Our district is one of the safest areas in the country, and yet we too are repeatedly afflicted with the scourge of mass shootings. An office park in Orange, a church in Laguna Woods, a bar in Trabuco Canyon. There is no place in America that is safe from the scourge of gun violence. There is no community not affected. My heart breaks for the families and loved ones of the victims. We cannot rest until we end gun violence in this country.”

Min’s Tweet took it a step further in a string of two Tweets:

• Recent shootings in Orange County illustrate the problem with the “good guys with a gun” argument. A sitting judge, a retired peace officer, an auto mechanic… these men all would have qualified as “good guys”… until the moment they decided to kill people.
• I can’t believe I have to say this, but the answer to gun violence is not more guns. There’s a reason the United States is the only developed nation with anywhere close to these levels of gun violence. More guns = more gun violence

The headline on Rodriguez’s column labeled this response as “incoherent.”

Not as incoherent as a Sal Rodriquez standup comedy routine where insulting audience members with sexist, racially-charged, and homophobic comments in an effort to get laughs might be, but examine the Register column for what it really is  —  another shot at taking down a candidate for Congress who has a documented strong record on passing tough gun laws.  Min wrote and passed SB 915 that banned the sale of firearms and ammunition  on all state property–the first piece of legislation in the United States to do so — so no more gun shows on the fairgrounds.

Sal writes:

But here, too, Min is obviously engaging a strawman. The response of an ordinary person to the Cook’s Corner shooting, like most mass shootings, is one of horror. No one of any prominence in California has merely called for “more guns” in response to the Cook’s Corner shooting.

It’s a cheap caricature of Second Amendment defenders’ positions which Min simply wishes to argue against without substance.

The rest of his tweet is similarly substance free. We live in a country with hundreds of millions of legally owned guns, this is true, as well as many more illegal guns. We live in a country with a constitutional right to keep and bare arms. We also, indeed, live in a country where a tiny fraction of legal gun owners commit horrible crimes.

Glad to know we have a right to “bare” arms (don’t forget the sunblock).  But the Cook’s Corner shooter and Judge Jeffrey Ferguson were legal gun owners.  And I’m sure the families of their victims dont’ give a damn that they were part of  a tiny percentage of legal gun owners (who allegedly) commit horrible crimes.

The editorial wraps with a reminder of Min’s DUI because gun violence can’t be that bad, right?

The Register’s editorial pages could have done a real community service and examined legislation that could reduce gun violence. Instead, it’s a cheap shot of using a mass shooting tragedy to target a candidate for office they don’t like.