Yesterday, President Trump raised more than a few eyebrows with his remarks about the Second Amendment and protests after the shooting of Leftist anti-ICE activist Alex Pretty in Minneapolis.
“Well, I haven’t heard that. But he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun…Bottom line, everybody in this room, we view that as a very unfortunate incident, okay? Everyone, unless you’re a stupid person. Very, very unfortunate, isn’t it,” the President said. “I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I say, that’s a, very unfortunate.”
We do have a right to carry a gun to a protest; we do not have a right to interfere with law enforcement, federal or otherwise.
But the President's remarks caught the eye of Gavin Newsom, who never misses an opportunity to demonstrate how hypocritical and opportunistic he truly is.
Nothing is sacred in Trump's America — not the First Amendment, not the Second, not even life itself.
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 27, 2026
We, the People, will not allow the Trump Administration to erode our rights. https://t.co/9lZPTWyREn
Really, Gavin? You want to go there? Fine. We'll go there.
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Gavin Newsom has been handed multiple losses in courts over his anti-First Amendment laws, having signed three anti-free speech bills into law. The first bill, AB2655, required "large online platforms such as Facebook to remove or label deepfakes within 72 hours of a user reporting it." A judge struck down that bill in August. Senior U.S. District Judge John Mendez said of AB2655, "no parts...can be salvaged." In 2022, Newsom signed AB 587 into law. That bill required social media companies to "publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms and report data on their enforcement of the policies." In 2024, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down that law on First Amendment grounds, with Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. writing in the opinion, "But even ‘undeniably admirable goals’ ‘must yield’ when they ‘collide with the … Constitution.’”
Last fall, the California Senate passed SB 771, which would fine social media companies that "intentionally amplify violent or extremist content." Newsom must've gotten tired of getting slapped down in court, because he vetoed that bill.
But Newsom's track record on the Second Amendment is even worse than the First Amendment.
Newsom really is remarkably shameless—a sort of funhouse mirror Trump. Newsom, at this very moment, is still trying to repeal the Second Amendment! He signed a bill in CA banning carry at protests. He signed a bill in CA preventing anyone who challenges CA’s gun laws from… https://t.co/hD8xR3j4O7
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 28, 2026
The entire post reads:
Newsom really is remarkably shameless—a sort of funhouse mirror Trump. Newsom, at this very moment, is still trying to repeal the Second Amendment! He signed a bill in CA banning carry at protests. He signed a bill in CA preventing anyone who challenges CA’s gun laws from obtaining attorney’s fees. He signed a bill in CA that regulated what can be said about guns in print, if it is possible a minor might read it. Four months ago he signed a bill in CA that bans Glocks. This whole thing is a weird act, built atop the presumption that nobody can read.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has filed a suit against the Glock ban, Assembly Bill 1127, which Newsom signed into law last October. In July of last year, the Ninth Circuit ruled against California's background check requirement for purchasing ammunition.
Newsom was very mad about that ruling, issuing a statement that read, "Strong gun laws save lives — and today's decision is a slap in the face to the progress California has made in recent years to keep its community safer from gun violence. Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition and their voices should matter."
Huh. So the will of the voters matters when Gavin likes it. But when they vote for things he doesn't like, he ignores their will, as he's done with Prop 36, the tough-on-crime bill passed by California voters. Newsom's legislature refuses to fund the bill.
Since taking office in 2019, Newsom has signed around 70 anti-gun bills, including SB 1327, which would allow private lawsuits against distributors of illegal firearms. He also supported an 11 percent tax on firearms and ammunition sales. While mayor of San Francisco, he supported Proposition H, which prohibited handguns in the city, and he was the leading supporter of Proposition 63, which required background checks for ammo purchases.
Does Newsom think we're stupid? That we'll just take him at his word that he's the champion of our First and Second Amendment rights? We have the Internet, and the Internet is forever. We all get to see how anti-free speech and anti-gun Newsom really is.
And thanks to posts like this, we also get to see how shamelessly he lies.

