It's important to note that these are the sort of people who directly profit from gun control: gangsters and politicians. To say nothing of law enforcement, the legal system, or prison systems. The Philippines (apparently where the weapons were to be trafficked from) is rife with arms manufacturing, both legitimate and black-market. [0] Enact further gun control in California and these are precisely the sort of arms that will be in the hands of cartel soldiers, gangsters, and criminals, with no commensurate bulwark in the civilian population.<p>Also I just have to laugh at the levels of hypocrisy here from the left. Quite an interesting change of pace from the typical marital infidelities of "family-values" Republicans.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-21840183" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/business-21840183</a>
Some context for that year in CA politics: State Senator Ron Calderon was indicted by the feds in a pay-to-play sting on a film tax credit, State Senator Rod Wright was sentenced to 90 days in prison for breaking the law about living in your district (he served only a few hours, CA prisons are too overcrowded), and then State Senator Leland Yee was indicted by the feds in a sting that was actually meant to get Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow but ensnared a State Senator by chance. The State Senate actually suspended all three members.<p>CA remains a popular target for federal stings, Shrimpscam was a famous example of a federal sting that ensnared many members way back, but now there are much more recent examples. It was a crazy year, and the indictment for Leland Yee was nuts, it read like a crime novel.
>As a legislator, Yee supported strict gun control laws and was named to the Brady Campaign’s Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll.<p>Well that's ironic.
Well making guns illegal was always going to be about as effective as making meth illegal. And with the same side effects, like making black market sociopaths, like Lee, rich and powerful.
Bismarck said something to the effect of "the less people know about how law and sausages are made, the better they sleep at night."<p>Cases like this can sometimes make it look like there are rare bad apples in a given political system, but I'm sure we would be nothing short of outraged if we knew the full truth of every politician's back-room dealings in this country.
Yee was also one of the most vocal critics of video games, and wanted a ban on video games that portray gun violence.<p>EDIT: Why I was downvoted for pointing out a fact?