After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a Texas state law that bans most abortions there, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll push for a new California law that will bar the manufacture and sale of assault rifles in the state.
“I am outraged by yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’ ban on most abortion services to remain in place, and largely endorsing Texas’ scheme to insulate its law from the fundamental protections of Roe v. Wade,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday night. “But if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”
The California anti-gun law, Newsom said, would be modeled on the Texas law that makes abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy and allows private citizens to sue doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion to enforce it.
Newsom said he was directing his staff to work with the state Legislature and Attorney General Rob Bonta on a new law that would allow private citizens to sue manufacturers or distributors of assault weapons.
“If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” Newsom said in the statement.
(Times Sacramento bureau chief John Myers contributed to this report.)
